Labor & Employment Law

New Journalism, New Organizing Strategies for Freelancers

By admin

Steve Stallone, International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) president and editor of Ralph, the publication of the California Media Workers Guild, describes how members of The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America (TNG-CWA) are experimenting with innovative programs to strengthen the newspaper trade and their jobs as print communicators. Stallone is editor of the series.

As newsrooms shrink at many cash-strapped media organizations, pundits are pronouncing the death of traditional print sources of journalism. The 1,800-member California Media Workers Guild has responded by exploring new economic models and pioneering projects to sustain quality jobs and quality journalism.

In a weeklong series of special reports, “New Times: New Guild,” launched yesterday, Local 39521 California Media Workers Guild activists write about their experiments with innovative programs to keep themselves and their trade alive.

Said Carl Hall, a science writer and staff representative for the California Media Workers Guild, who originated and directed the series:

We hope to kick-start a larger conversation on the future direction and forms of journalism.

Yesterday’s first installment addresses how the industry is shedding staff reporter jobs and instead using more freelance-generated copy. The California Guild’s response: organize the first Freelance Unit of any TNG local so they can’t be pitted against represented staff writers.

Membership in the Freelance Unit is growing since it has real advantages?a professional development program, a juried press credential and help with the business of freelancing. As it grows, the unit is looking for workable bids to get members health coverage.

Another Guild goal is to develop a voluntary Fair Freelance certification for news entities to adopt, a kind of combination “Good Housekeeping” and “Fair Trade” seal signifying the employer adheres to journalistic and ethical standards and compensates its media workers fairly.

Today’s installment chronicles how the Guild is partnering with the University of California-Berkeley School of Journalism and philanthropist/investor F. Warren Hellman to create the nonprofit Bay Area News Project. The goal: To experiment with new forms of sustainable labor/community, nonprofit news operations and continue producing quality journalism to cover issues the corporate media is abandoning.

Other segments of the series include a story on how the Guild is using the language skills of its court interpreters unit, in collaboration with linguists and journalists, to find ways to help newsrooms overcome language barriers and create a more diverse, multilingual journalism that reflects our changing society and makes it more inclusive and democratic.

Later in the week, the series takes a look at how the Guild is forming a media training consortium with academics, Silicon Valley tech communicators and labor and government workforce developers to prepare today’s journalists for tomorrow’s journalism technologies.

The website includes a comment section for readers to join in on the conversation about the direction of journalism and journalists, what it should be and how we get there.

Says TNG/CWA President Bernie Lunzer:

It’s almost impossible to predict the future of media in the U.S., but it is possible to anticipate the future of work in our industry. The California Media Workers Guild is doing just that?taking smart and necessary steps to organize and represent all of the workers that make our industry vital?and helping to shape the future. If we stick together and form strong communities, we’ll preserve quality journalism, and the people who make it possible.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).