The Washington Post has a blog post today urging the journalists of the Tribune Media Company to take action in the fight against the dastardly Koch Industries, which is rumored to be considering a bid to acquire the company. Steven Pearlstein urges those employees to sign a letter declaring that "if the newspapers were sold to an owner who won’t invest in quality, politically independent journalism, they will take their talent and experience elsewhere."
Then the current ownership, Pearlstein writes, will be forced to advise prospective buyers of the threat, thus driving down the price of the already devalued company, and making a sale even more difficult.
For some reason Pearlstein describes this as "leverage."
What happens if the Kochs buy the company anyway? Glad you asked.
Some might wonder what would happen if the threat fails and a hostile new owner takes over and promptly fires all the signatories. My guess is that if an owner has such little respect for value of knowledgeable and experienced journalists, then the chances are those journalists would wind up leaving or being fired for other reasons. The eventual outcome would the same either way.
So they threaten to quit if Koch buys the paper, and if Koch buys it anyway ... they wait to see if they get fired for making an empty threat? Apparently Pearlstein thinks so little of these journalists that he assumes they won't have the courage of their convictions.
And maybe that's a fair assumption, considering Pearlstein is employed by George Mason University, the home of the Mercatus Center—self-described as "the world's premeier university source for market-oriented ideas" and generously funded by the Kochs. Pearlstein doesn't seem to fear the consequences of trashing one of his employer's largest donors. But then he could always fire himself in protest.