THE GUILD REPORTER - JUNE 2010 - VOLUME: 77 NUMBER: 2

TOP STORIES

• Desperately looking for a ‘name’ interview . . .
  

One problem resulting from the news industry’s implosion is the unseemly scramble it sets up among those trying to remain in the game—never mind those trying to break in. Combine that with a naïve understanding of big business and unions and the results can be at least embarrassing, if not tragicomic.



• Gussied-up magazine resurrects predatory style of ‘labor journalism’
  

It’s unfortunate that the phrase “lipstick on a pig” has become so clichéd, because there’s no better way to describe the “new” National Organized Labor Journal. Formerly a drab, tabloid-sized rag stuffed with stolen stories and union pretensions, the Journal appeared only infrequently and then only as a clone of the more notorious Trade Union Courier.



• Invisible black homo blues . . .
  

In the spring of 2009, The Baltimore Sun laid off about 60 people, including about a third of the newsroom staff. In the months that followed, a website conceived and funded by the Writers Guild of America, East Foundation—which has a mission of perpetuating the art and craft of storytelling—was created as a space for their stories, with help from the Washington-Baltimore Guild. The site is wbng.org/stories/index.html. Its stories are numerous, poignant, often heart-breaking—and perhaps all too familiar at a growing number of newspapers across the continent. They’re also well worth reading. Here are excerpts from one of them; the headline on this story is his.

GUILD NEWS

• Broun winners: fresh twist on a familiar story
  

David Jackson and Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune have won the 2009 Heywood Broun Award, for their reporting on patients abusing other patients in nursing homes. They will receive their plaques and a check for $5,000 at an evening ceremony July 23 at the Washington Hilton.



• Saffron robes and pixels
  

Richard Gere had just ducked into a side entrance of Radio City Music Hall. A sea of monks in saffron and maroon robes had already swept in, along with thousands of ticketholders, for a three-day course on Buddhism and meditation. I, too, was taking a three-day course, but mine had been paid for by the Newspaper Guild and it was in digital video editing.



• Cuban unionists seek lifting of U.S. ‘chokehold’
  

The 60-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba is “a chokehold” on the Caribbean island nation, Cuban union members told their U.S. colleagues during nine U.S. unionists’ recent research trip there.

OTHER NEWS

• Next up! Young union activists speak out
  

In a scene one postal worker from Chicago said was unlike any other union convention he had attended, more than 300 young union activists from around the country sharply quizzed top AFL-CIO leaders during a three-day conference in June, in Washington, D.C.



• ‘Young people want real community from labor’
  

How can we inspire young union members to become young union activists? As a breakout discussion facilitator at the AFL-CIO’s recent “Next Up” young workers summit, I asked this core question of four different groups of attendees in our sessions.

COMMENTARY

• Who we are —what we’re doing
  

The Newspaper Guild-CWA continues to fight for quality journalism and fair working conditions and wages within the news industry. Our industry has been pummeled by the recession, bankruptcies and advertising losses. Through all of this our locals have been incredibly active in maintaining their strength, even with membership loss and givebacks.

LETTERS

DAYBOOK

FROM THE MORGUE

Guild Reporter Archives