Published 2012.01.24 in CommPRO.biz 

http://www.commpro.biz/news/thursday-january-24-2013/

Do The Math

Those of us who have spent time in communications, be it journalism or public relations, are familiar with what we call a “Grandstand Move.” That’s when an outfit with a well-deserved lousy image will roll out some event or policy designed to make them look good. With luck they garner a ton of positive media attention. So it is with Walmart. Their latest is a pledge of a job for every returning veteran during their first year out of the service. It got Walmart more positive media than they’ve seen in years. Even we were impressed until we got to thinking about it.

The majority of jobs in the Wonderful World of Walmart are low-wage, part-time with zilch benefits. When you’ve served in the workplace culture prevalent in our military, who wants that kind of job?  Bill Simon, who runs the Walmart stores in the United States, joined the company less than ten years ago. He was paid about $8.5 million last year. Our guess is that not many of the hundred thousand vets Simon estimates Walmart will hire over the next five years will take home even the average US paycheck, let alone much above that figure. A hundred thousand hires over five years is just 20,000 a year, roughly four or five a year per Walmart store. So if you do the math Walmart’s offer to our veterans doesn’t add up to all that much.

Ironically, Bill Simon’s big announcement came just a few days before Fortune magazine rolled out their 2013 listing of the 100 best places in America to work. It’s no surprise that Walmart didn’t make the list. It was dominated at the top by Google and other enterprises that employ mostly high-skill, high-wage people. Except for the one in fifth place, Wegmans, a family owned supermarket chain.

Wegmans is one of only thirteen companies that have been on the Fortune list since its debut. They have more employees than any other company in the top forty on the list, and while they pay well, the majority of their people are not in the upper brackets. The Fortune research model includes a scientific sample drawn from all full-and-part time employees. In Wegmans’ case that includes the young people who round up shopping carts from the icy and snow-covered parking lots in the northeast where their stores are located.

The message is pretty clear, it’s the culture. Walmart can roll out all the PR events and policies they can come up with, it won’t change their culture. Their people on the front line do not create the culture – that comes from the top. Wegmans is in the hands of the fourth and fifth generations of the Wegman family who carefully guard their culture. Walmart is controlled by the Walton family. Their wealth is close to a hundred billion dollars; sadly that’s about all they have to show for it.

British Tabloid Culture

British Tabloid Culture

There’s a celebrity “A” list from Hugh Grant to JK Rowling parading before Lord Justice Leveson in London. The ongoing Leveson Inquiry is investigating media ethics in Britain centered on the Murdoch phone hacking mess. The celebs, along with lesser known folk, are laying out the damages the phone hacking, celebrity stalking, tabloid press has inflicted on them. Yes, it’s not just the Murdoch papers that employ these pond scum techniques. Nor is the damage limited to the crimp that it puts in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Much sadder are the tales of everyday folk, most notably the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. 

In an effort to keep the headlines coming Murdoch’s minions repeatedly emptied the voicemails from Milly’s mobile phone, leading her parents (and the police) to believe that she was alive and picking up the messages. Actually the 13-year-old had been lured into the hands of "predatory" nightclub bouncer Levi Bellfield on her way home from school and lay dead in a field at the end of that day. Bellfield was subsequently charged with the murder of two more young women. Witnesses are laying out stories of inconvenience, embarrassment, and tragedy before Lord Justice Leveson, all brought on by the telephone hacking, police bribing, peeping Tom, high speed chase stalking style of journalism favored by the British tabloids.

The lurid stories gained by these methods dim in shock value to the testimony of one former Murdoch editor, Paul McMullan, once a deputy features editor at The News Of The World. According to published reports, McMullan admitted that all these "worthy tools'” as he called them, were not only routinely used at the paper, they were aggressively urged upon him and his colleagues by their bosses.

McMullan even called out two former Murdoch executives, Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks. Coulson was the chief spokesperson for Prime Minister David Cameron by the time the firestorm hit, while Ms. Brooks headed all the Murdock newspaper holdings in Britain. McMullan said they could have been the “heroes” of journalism; instead they became the “scum,” apparently for their failure to take responsibility for the use of the worthy tools at The News Of The World.  He also calls Ms. Brooks an “arch-criminal.”

McMullan’s testimony was particularly hard to swallow when he described a culture that not only used these “tools” but believes they are “worthy tools.” He hotly defended a wide range of behaviors that we find ethically repulsive. When asked to define public interest, McMullan replied, “If the public is interested,” adding that if they don’t approve they could stop reading these stories. This culture seems pervasive among British tabloids and within the Murdoch Empire. Unlike McMullan we do not see these “tools” as “worthy,” we see them as disgustingly shameful.