http://www.newsguild.org News and headlines about the media industry from the Guild Reporter Copyright 2005 The Newspaper Guild en-us Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:57:26 -0400 Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:57:26 -0400 http://newsguild.org/rss/reporter.gif http://www.newsguild.org 119 50 http://inthesetimes.com/article/6328/there_is_power_in_a_union The overall value of unions to society at large is not in question. Yet many, many generally intelligent, humane individuals do not share, what to us, is an obvious conclusion. This split is akin to that between believers in a Christian God and atheists. Each side harbors great minds, each side is certain of its rightness and rarely does anybody switch sides without a rare revelation involved. Philip Dray’s new book, "There Is Power in a Union," explores some of the reasons for that dynamic, and their implications for all of us. http://inthesetimes.com/article/6328/there_is_power_in_a_union http://www.truth-out.org/flying-flag-faking-news62920 Edward Bernays is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society." http://www.truth-out.org/flying-flag-faking-news62920 http://www.mediaworkers.org/index.php?ID=7634 Monterey Herald management opened contract negotiations with the Guild with requests for several economic concessions, citing the continued slide in advertising revenue. The Herald’s proposed three-year contract seeks the right to implement up to three separate one-week furloughs before June 30, 2011. The Herald also proposed a 1% pay cut during the term of the contract and it wants the right to freeze the 401(k) match. http://www.mediaworkers.org/index.php?ID=7634 http://www.stlouisguild.org/headlines/?p=962 Following a course of events that can only be classified as “regressive bargaining,” the St. Louis Guild has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the Pekin Daily Times. The complaint follows a change in the management team at the table, with the company’s new point man discarding several tentative agreements by claiming that "tentative" means "not final" — dated signatures by both sides notwithstanding. http://www.stlouisguild.org/headlines/?p=962 http://www.newsguild.org/index.php?ID=9578 New York-based Freedom House has rated 165 nations on their workers’ rights records on a five-point scale ranging from “free” to “very repressive.” The U.S., with 37 other countries, is rated “mostly free,” but is sharply criticized for its weak labor laws and declining private-sector union density — a decline the report’s lead author says is due to employer control of the union organizing process. The report also blames right-to-work laws. http://www.newsguild.org/index.php?ID=9578 http://www.mediaunion.ca/archives/2010/09/buyouts-offered-at-png/ Postmedia, Canada’s largest newspaper chain, has begun job reductions at newspapers already picked clean by the Asper’s Canwest ownership days. Today letters went out to employees at the Victoria Times Colonist, Vancouver Sun and The Province announcing buyouts. The basic provisions are 6 weeks pay per year of service to a maximum of $150,000, but few other details have been made available. http://www.mediaunion.ca/archives/2010/09/buyouts-offered-at-png/ http://calaware.typepad.com/calaware_today/2010/08/feinstein-no-shield-law-for-bloggers-wikileaks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CalawareToday+%28CalAware+Today%29 A bill headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate could extend protection to journalists who refuse to divulge their materials or sources, but contentions have arisen as to who should share that protection. California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein, unsuccessful at excluding bloggers from the bill, now wants an amendment excluding Wikileaks. http://calaware.typepad.com/calaware_today/2010/08/feinstein-no-shield-law-for-bloggers-wikileaks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CalawareToday+%28CalAware+Today%29 http://www.nlrb.gov/About_Us/News_Room/template_html.aspx?file=http://www.nlrb.gov/shared_files/Press%20Releases/2010/R-2780.htm The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that a union practice of displaying large stationary banners at a secondary employer’s business is not coercive, and so does not violate U.S. labor law. The decision was issued in three Arizona cases in which union carpenters held 16-foot-long banners near establishments to protest work being performed for the owners of the establishments by construction contractors that the union claimed paid substandard wages and benefits. http://www.nlrb.gov/About_Us/News_Room/template_html.aspx?file=http://www.nlrb.gov/shared_files/Press%20Releases/2010/R-2780.htm http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4904 Kicked out, bought out or barely hanging on, investigative reporters are a vanishing species in the forests of dead tree media and missing in action on Action News. I-Teams are shrinking or, more often, disappearing altogether. Assigned to cover multiple beats, multitasking backpacking reporters no longer have time to sniff out hidden stories, much less write them. In Washington, bureaus that once did probes have shrunk, closed and consolidated. http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4904 http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/nation%E2%80%99s-only-black-staff-editorial-cartoonist-laid-off-at-%E2%80%98south-bend-tribune%E2%80%99-62494-.aspx Ron Rogers — who is believed to be the only African American working full-time as an editorial cartoonist at a daily newspaper —is losing his job at the South Bend Tribune. Rogers will draw his last cartoon for the Tribune on Friday. "I wanted to be the first black editorial cartoonist on the country since I was 14," Rogers said. "I just hope my departure doesn’t discourage somebody else who might want to do this." http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/nation%E2%80%99s-only-black-staff-editorial-cartoonist-laid-off-at-%E2%80%98south-bend-tribune%E2%80%99-62494-.aspx http://www.clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=8658E661C5C0435EB8E4BF288BDF1F30 Over the years, I’ve criticized the PD, mostly because I once worked there and knew it could be better. But I’ve grown to appreciate its pluck, especially its reporting on the worst public corruption case in Cleveland’s history. Despite its uncertain future, dwindling staff and shrinking ad revenues, the PD has stirred the community to outrage and played a key role in changing a 200-year-old county government — thanks to new leadership without any binding ties to the city. http://www.clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=8658E661C5C0435EB8E4BF288BDF1F30 http://www.cwa-scacanada.ca/EN/news/2010/100823_nbay.shtml Employees at The Nugget in North Bay, Ont., are using social networking and transit ads to enlist readers and advertisers in their battle to preserve the local nature of the daily newspaper. Dave Dale, president of the North Bay Newspaper Guild, says his remaining 70 members are frustrated by layoffs, consolidations and looming contract clawbacks as Quebecor-owned Sun Media squeezes small-town assets to shore up the bottom line in bigger centres. http://www.cwa-scacanada.ca/EN/news/2010/100823_nbay.shtml http://paidcontent.org/article/419-analyst-paywall-subscribers-worth-a-quarter-of-print-readers/ Even if newspapers migrate every print reader to paying online, they will still face big losses, according to one analyst. Annual income per paywall subscriber on TheTimes.co.uk and WSJ.com is just a quarter that from subscribers to UK quality dailies’ print editions, he concludes, while switching off the presses might save newspapers 25% of their total costs — which is not enough to make up the gap from the smaller online income. http://paidcontent.org/article/419-analyst-paywall-subscribers-worth-a-quarter-of-print-readers/ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/has-rupert-murdochs-paywall-gamble-paid-off-2067907.html As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O’Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O’Neill’s exclusive — only follow-up stories by rival news organizations such as The Guardian and ITN http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/has-rupert-murdochs-paywall-gamble-paid-off-2067907.html http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/27/1794359/stop-killings-of-honduran-journalists.html#ixzz0yNxNvWK7 Honduran radio reporter Israel Zelaya Díaz was found dead Tuesday night on the side of a rural road in San Pedro Sula, making him at least the eighth journalist killed in that country this year. If past killings are any guide, his murder will go unsolved — a pattern that suggests a deeper breakdown of law and order, undermining Honduras’ desire to put last year’s political violence behind it. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/27/1794359/stop-killings-of-honduran-journalists.html#ixzz0yNxNvWK7 http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/09/next-big-thing-tv-newspaper-staff.html Newspaper and TV newsroom mergers could become the next big thing as profit-pressed publishers and broadcasters seek to cut costs and strengthen their digital presence. But will hybrid newsrooms live up the promises of producing better journalism? The performance of the longest-running major newsroom merger — the combination 10 years ago of the Tampa Tribune and WFLA — is far from encouraging. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/09/next-big-thing-tv-newspaper-staff.html http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/30/a-century-later-teddy-roosevelts-speech-on-corporate-power/ Ex-Presidents almost always follow a small number of well-worn scripts. Some rush to cash in on their celebrity. Some do charitable good deeds. Some just lay low. Exactly one century ago, on August 31, 1910, we had an ex-President who took a brash and bold leap that took him far beyond these narrowly circumscribed roles. On that day, in the middle of Middle America, Theodore Roosevelt essentially called on his fellow citizens to smash the nation’s rich down to democratic size. http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/30/a-century-later-teddy-roosevelts-speech-on-corporate-power/ http://www.nlrb.gov/About_Us/News_Room/template_html.aspx?file=http://www.nlrb.gov/shared_files/Press%20Releases/2010/R-2779.htm The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that a union violated its duty of fair representation in requiring nonmember dues objectors to restate their position every year, despite their express desire to have the objection continue from year to year. The ruling grew out of a case in which a union member had informed his union that he wished his objection to continue indefinitely; the union responded that all dues objections had to be restated annually. http://www.nlrb.gov/About_Us/News_Room/template_html.aspx?file=http://www.nlrb.gov/shared_files/Press%20Releases/2010/R-2779.htm http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/poster-boy-for-debt-no-more-gatehouse-media-gets-rating-upgrade-62465-.aspx GateHouse Media, which took on heavy debt to fund a newspaper buying binge just as the industry was about to tumble into its worst-ever recession, received something Tuesday that would have seemed extremely unlikely just last year: a ratings upgrade from Moody’s Investors Service. Moody’s upgraded GateHouse’s “probability of default rating” to Caa3 from Ca which while an improvement is not exactly a ringing endorsement. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/poster-boy-for-debt-no-more-gatehouse-media-gets-rating-upgrade-62465-.aspx http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/bankruptcy-court-appoints-mediator-for-tribunes-talks-with-creditors-62477-.aspx The court overseeing Tribune Co.’s increasingly contentious 19-month bankruptcy case appointed a mediator Wednesday to assist in the Chicago media giant’s talks with its various creditors. U.S. Bankrtupcy Judge Kevin Gross was named mediator for the tangled talks. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/Headlines/bankruptcy-court-appoints-mediator-for-tribunes-talks-with-creditors-62477-.aspx http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/31/latin-american-democracies-lash-out-at-the-press.html Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home? http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/31/latin-american-democracies-lash-out-at-the-press.html http://www.truth-out.org/media-manipulates-end-war-iraq62826 Sadly, it is not merely the president and others who have a political motive for perpetuating the myth that the United States has ended our national nightmare in Iraq. More troubling has been the performance of the mainstream media, which, in print and on television, have been witting pawns in this massive deception, reporting on the war as if it were truly over, celebrating this historical moment and ignoring crucial details. http://www.truth-out.org/media-manipulates-end-war-iraq62826 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ipad_newspapers.php All of the major western newspapers have an iPad app now: the New York Times, Wall St Journal, Guardian, USA Today, Financial Times, and others. There are also new forms of news services that have arisen based solely on the iPad’s touchscreen interaction and multimedia capabilities: Newsy and Flipboard come to mind. In this post we’ll look at how some of the leading newspapers are using iPad, what the user experience is like, and what could be improved still. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ipad_newspapers.php http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/michael-eisner-ready-cross-finish-line-tribune-co-20528 Michael Eisner is ready to cross the finish line. An announcement on the former Disney CEO becoming the chairman of the Tribune Co. is imminent, a person familiar with the talks has told TheWrap. "Right now, it’s going to be Eisner,” the person said. "The lenders are going to try to take the company. It’s the only way they are going to get some of their money. But they’re not ready yet." http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/michael-eisner-ready-cross-finish-line-tribune-co-20528 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/01/rupert-james-murdoch-news-corp-pay While Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers laid off journalists and fought their way through a global advertising recession, the Australian-born media mogul endured a modest degree of personal belt-tightening: his take-home pay dropped by 6%, to $16.8m. Although still a hefty sum, Murdoch’s annual pay packet was his smallest since 2003. The 79-year-old billionaire’s salary was unchanged at $8.1m, but his performance-related bonus fell 20%, to $4.4m. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/01/rupert-james-murdoch-news-corp-pay