A friend of mine noticed an interesting take at sj.com (sports journalists dot-com) recently on what the poster declared to be the dawn of the Post Fear Factor era in journalism.

In short, this writer argues that print has become all stick and very little carrot. Particularly in the Dean Singleton-run MediaNews chain, and especially in its imploding L.A. News Group. Thus, one of the prime motivators of reporters in the business in recent years — long hours and drudge beats in the hope of full-time work and a real beat — has, essentially, vanished.

And that, the author contends, has emboldened many of these under-paid and over-worked kids and journeymen to give up being afraid to speak up or complain about abysmal working conditions and what seemed to be turning into a lifetime as a Second Class journalism citizen.

“Migrant farmworkers with laptops,” our author calls those journalists.

I asked this person for permission to run the sj.com post … and the individual asked for some time to think about it more and rewrite.

Here it is, in full. Thanks much to the contributor.

I believe the post Fear Factor era has taken hold throughout much of journalism amid this historic downturn or even downfall, but that it’s even more pronounced in the House of Dean. Another post on the “More From Lean Dean’’ thread said something like “yeah, we’re emboldened, we have nothing to lose.’’ I think it runs a little deeper than that. The longstanding paradigm in journalism, like all impacted professions, involved the concept of paying your dues. It is completely appropriate for those aspiring to build a career – especially an exciting one such as sports journalism once was — to put up with things you wouldn’t have to do in a job at the bank. The assumption has always been, at least until a few years ago, that you got something in return if you did, and part of that bargain included a healthy dose of bullying by old-school editors because that’s just the way the business of putting out a paper is. No crying in baseball, so to say.

Singleton has, does, always will (as long as he’s in business), take advantage of that to the hilt, squeezing all the free milk he can get without all the burdens that come with owning cows.

The emerging revolt against Singleton management is a bottom-up phenomenon. Many of us now have nothing to lose. That’s true. But the post-Fear Factor era didn’t just start with the last round of layoffs. It is the culmination of a shifting paradigm. As recently as five or six years ago, some rock-star reporter out of college could get their foot in the door of a metro daily, blow away their editors, and soon find themselves covering a glamor beat. It gave the rest of us who were in no way exceptional the belief that if we kept plugging away, paying our dues, we’d get somewhere someday. But it started to seem fairly obvious to most of us that it isn’t going to happen. We might be dreamers, but simple arithmetic tells us that consolidation and content sharing are not a good thing if your idea of a glamor beat isn’t Long Beach Poly [high school].

What started out as sapped morale kept getting worse. It got to the point where reporters started challenging our editors. In LANG, it wasn’t just the kids just out of college supposedly paying their dues. Many of us locked in jobs for years (part-time pay for full-time hours, or full-time freelance) that were the legal equivalent of migrant farmworkers with laptops. At a certain point, it became apparent our dues was feeding a Black Hole. We weren’t willing to pay our dues in the way we had, and at a certain point editors had to accept the fact that they couldn’t pile on the workloads their editors once assigned them. What had always seemed acceptable no longer was. I think that fed a cycle that had a trickle-up effect. Middle-level management has had its morale sunken in a pretty significant way in recent years, too, and it’s finally working its way up the Singleton food chain. Working conditions have many people in LANG upset – mid-level editors included, and they’re speaking out.

Matt Kredell and Val Kuklenski aren’t among that group, but their willingness to take their fight public reflects an attitude pervasive throughout the industry. Two people with really good instincts told Lean Dean that they were willing to take a stand, and that burning a bridge doesn’t mean much when it’s a bridge to nowhere.

Maybe a lot of us sense that an overextended man mired in debt is apparently in no position to dispense retribution. In the end, Singleton will probably bring down himself. Nevertheless, I believe those of us in an out of the company need to shed light on who this man is, and how the way he does business affects his employees, and people who live in the areas his newspapers supposedly cover.

The biggest misconception about how Singleton amassed this Empire is that he has this great clustering strategy, or he’s this brilliant businessman equally adept at buying low as working the banking system.

B.S.

He owns all these papers because his presence in the business of journalism has never been appropriately scrutinized. How many people outside of journalism really know who he is? When was the last time Lean Dean ever got mentioned on a cable news show? Worst Person in the World?

He’s managed to slip below the radar in markets where he’s making an impact in an insidious way. The powerful are now less accountable in markets where Singleton is the only game in town – which right now is probably at least half the state.

Nobody knows the consequence of winning this fight. It could be that many good people lose their jobs, which would make it a hollow victory to be sure. But I’m hopeful a more benign company will swoop in and take over a big chunk of the properties. Someone with enough cash to ride out a downturn, maybe because they believe that there’s value in the work journalists do. Hopefully, someone willing to bring back the Fear Factor — in a good way