Reporter Melinda Henneberger writes about the touching realism of the Broadway play, "Lucky Guy," about the late tabloid columnist Mike McAlary, and what it says about the value of print journalism. "There is no substitute for knocking on doors. There is no substitute for taking tips seriously....
Hyatt housekeepers are leading a fight against President Obama's nominee for Commerce Secretary, Penn Pritzker. The longtime member of the Hyatt board and heir to the Hyatt fortune, she has "exhibited a broad pattern of labor abuses, including aggressive outsourcing, low wages and the...
The Guild has added its name to supporters of a bipartisan federal shield law bill introduced last week in the U.S. House and promoted during a news conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Addressing the secret seizure of AP reporters' phone records, Guild President Bernie Lunzer said, "We are...
The AFL-CIO-Union Plus Dreams of Jobs and Freedom Scholarship is funded by the AFL-CIO and its member unions to help graduating high school seniors realize their dreams of a college education. The scholarships honor the 50th anniversary (Aug. 28) of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,...
Sue Ogrocki, an Associated Press photographer in Oklahoma and a Guild member, was at Plaza Towers Elementary School on Monday as children were rescued."Parents and neighborhood volunteers stood in a line and passed the rescued children from one set of arms to another, carrying them out of harm's...
After nearly five months of negotiations, the Guild bargaining team has reached a tentative contract with the Seattle Times that includes a 1.5 percent wage increase next year and a lump-sum bonus in 2015. A vote is expected within two weeks; the bargaining team is unanimously recommending...
The NLRB has issued a 24-page report examining employers' social media policies, looking at various incidents involving employer-employee disputes involving social media that came to the NLRB's attention in the past year. And while the NLRB didn't side against employers every time, it did find that several companies' social media policies were unlawful because they interfered with federal labor law protection of concerted activty.
The Australian government has reportedly put itself on a war footing with Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper division after it published, and then retracted, an erroneous report about the country's prime minister that linked her to a former boyfriend and the alleged embezzlement of union funds. There are also increased prospects to a wider review of media ownership amid concerns that Murdoch, who owns 70% of the country's papers, has too much power.
The scientific method isn’t a single thing. It’s a collection of conventions and best practices, rigorously applied. While the need for journalism and the demands on it differ in many ways from those of science, it is a discipline that -- like science -- seeks truth. There is no “journalistic method” to rival the scientific one. But in that body of conventions and practices, there’s much that journalists should emulate.
Labor unions are something that divide people. On one hand, a majority of Americans give labor unions credit for improving wages and working conditions for workers (65%). However, at the same time, most Americans also are very critical of labor unions which are seen as being to be too involved in politics (72%) and more concerned with fighting changes than trying to bring about change (71%).
Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and parades. But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest march would be more appropriate than a parade. Perhaps there would still be something to celebrate on Labor Day if government was coming to the rescue. That's what it did in the first decade of the 20th century, when giant corporations threatened the economy, and then again in the 1930s, when American workers didn't have the money to keep the economy going. But this time Washington is paralyzed.
The web equivalent of anonymous pamphlets is a vital use of the internet. If everyone not only had to be identified but could be traced by security services, freedom of expression would suffer. Yet the prevalence of anonymity in online debates has helped to spawn a culture of aggression. Not only are many sites plagued by “trolls” and “flame wars” between rivals but anonymity can be abused to bully others and be unpleasant.
Michael O'Neal —
September 1, 2011— Chicago Tribune
Tribune Co. asked the judge in its bankruptcy case Wednesday for authority to pay management bonuses for 2011 ranging from $16.4 million to $42.5 million, despite declining performance at the Chicago-based media conglomerate. The publisher said in January that it generated $635 million in cash flow last year, but the next month it cut its forecast for 2011 cash flow to $497 million, reflecting a drop in political advertising as well as diminished performance by its newspapers.
The British government is being urged to allow newspapers to gain charitable status. According to a report on the Third Sector website, a group of "journalists, academics and charitable funders" will ask the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to make it easier for charitable trusts and foundations to fund not-for-profit local newspapers. At present the Charity Commission does not recognizse the provision of news as a charitable activity, the report said.
