Whatcha got to lose?

Stuart Morrison, the President of CLB Media, is an iconoclast with a taste for controversial pronouncements about the industry and a decidedly conservative take on things like government support and other sacred cows. Now he's stuck his finger in the eye of his colleagues in the business-to-business press by volunteering (without being asked) to pay for a survey of salaries by a third-party consulting firm JobChart International. Anyone who goes in on it, including CLB, gets a look at the aggregated results.

So far, Bruce Creighton, President of Hollinger's Business Information Group, which publishes 30 titles, has said he won't cooperate. You can bet that Rogers, Canada's biggest trade publisher, will say the same.

You see, the conventional wisdom is that the industry is too small and too closely held to allow for objective research of this type without giving away properietary information and an edge to the competition. Morrison is challenging that assumption and you can bet he is having fun, no matter which way it goes.

He is also dead serious (enough to pay for the research) because he is frustrated that nobody knows what an Editor or a Production or Ad Manager is really worth. When CLB bought and merged several different companies recently, it found huge differences in compensation.

Perhaps Creighton, and others, don't want to reward Morrison's mischief. Or perhaps they are all too aware what the outcome would be and they don't want to look like cheapskates. Or have they been overpaying?