What are the education deformers and neo-liberal Obama shills at the Kaplan Test prep-owned Newsweek magazine worth?
A dollar.
Uh, huh.
One dollar.
The buyer, Sidney Harman, who started a business selling FM radios in the 1950s and built it into one of the largest audio equipment companies in the world, agreed to take on the very large financial debts of the magazine, but also keep the staff and editorial policy as it currently is.
In return, he gets Newsweek for a buck.
That's an interesting stipulation Harman agreed to.
The magazine is losing $30 million a year.
Each year since 2007 the magazine has lost more money.
This year the magazine is expected to lose $45 million.
The magazine reorganized last year to try and make itself more financially viable, but the reorganization failed to become profitable or even decrease losses.
Now, taking the education deform model that the writers and editors at Newsweek promote on public schools, since the people at Newsweek can't get their acts together and make any money or even lose less money than the year before, and since the various attempts to make the magazine profitable have failed, shouldn't Newsweek be shut down, the editors canned, half the staff fired and the magazine turned over to a for-profit education management organization that will bust the union the remaining staff belong to so that employee hours can be increased and salaries cut?
Also, shouldn't staff salaries be merit-based and depend upon sales, revenues and readership?
I mean, fair's fair.
If that "turnaround" and performance-based strategy is good enough for the Central Falls, Rhode Island school and other schools that Newsweek urges be shut down for "failing," isn't it good enough for the hypocrites at Newsweek?
Newsweek's headline for the famed "Fire Bad Teachers" story was "In No Other Profession Are Workers So Insulated From Accountability."
Oh, really?
What about journalism?
What about at Newsweek?
Kaplan also owns the Washington Post now, doesn't it?? Interesting that conflict of interest only exists if you tutor a kid who attends your school, and you teach in NYC. Otherwise, conflict of interest is some vague intellectual concept. Is this Harman guy from those treasured speakers my dad had, those Harman-Kardon speakers?
ReplyDeleteKaplan owns the Post, yes, as well as Newsweek before the sale to Harman. Whenever they promote testing, accountability measures, etc., it is always a conflict of interest which they never ever disclose. They make money off the stuff. In fact, Kaplan Test Prep is the ONLy part of the company that is profitable. The Post loses money too, just not as much as Newsweek.
ReplyDeleteHarman, btw, is the husband of Congresswoman Jane Harman.