Today's Top Stories

Check Out ROC's 2013 Diners' Guide to Ethical Restaurants

It's here: The (Guild-represented) Restaurant Opportunities Centers United's annual guide to eating out ethically, telling you which restaurants are doing a lousy job with pay and benefits and which ones are worth your support as a diner. The guide looks at 150 of America's most popular...

Solidarity Works! Fired Cablevision Workers Reinstated

All but one of the 22 CWA members at Brooklyn Cablevision who were fired in January are back on the job. Through email, Facebook, petitions and rallies, more than 100,000 people showed their support for the workers, who have been trying for the last year to negotiate a fair contract after an...

Unions Happy With Obama's Choice for Labor Secretary

From CWA to Jobs with Justice, labor organizations are applauding President Obama's choice of Tom Perez to head the U.S. Department of Labor. In a statement Monday, CWA called him an "inspired choice" whose "experience reflects a fervent devotion to working families." Official White House photo...

Petition: Stop California's Fee-for-Records Bill in Its Infancy

California's Administrative Office of the Courts has written a bill that imposes a $10 fee each time someone requests a court file -- a fee that would also apply to journalists, who regularly request dozens of such documents as part of ordinary beat reporting. Public records already are prepared...

Pew State of the News Media 2013: Challenges Intensify

Here's the good news out of Pew's 2013 report on the state of the news media: newspaper circulation is hodling steady, and even growing on Sundays. But the bad news is that, “There are more signs than ever that the reduced reporting power in the news industry is having an effect and may weaken...

Albany: Without Us, New Press Would Print Blank Pages

The Newspaper Guild of Albany is thrilled about the new press that will display our work like never before. We congratulate the Hearst Corp. for making this major investment at a time when many others are abandoning daily delivery. At the same time, the Hearst Corp. has not shown a similar...

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Fewer job openings following this recession than following 2001 recession

Heidi Shierholz — March 11, 2011 — Economic Policy Institute

This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released an extremely disappointing January report, showing that the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings was 5.0-to-1 in January, unchanged from the revised December ratio. January marks 23 months that the â€œjob seekerâ€™s ratioâ€ has been at or above 5-to-1. By comparison, the highest it got in the early 2000s downturn was 2.8-to-1. A job seekerâ€™s ratio of 5-to-1 means that for 4 out of 5 unemployed workers, there simply are no jobs.

Walking the Walk: Finding Budget Solutions, Not Scapegoats: Lessons From an Oregon Victory

Amy Dean — March 11, 2011 — truthout

The political experience of Oregon over the past two years illustrates two important points: it demonstrates that people, when offered a choice, are willing to pay for the things that are important to them. And it shows how progressives can run a disciplined campaign to overcome right-wing rhetoric and enact policies that make the wealthy contribute their fair share to preserve essential community services.

Happy birthday, Rupert Murdoch, but what next?

Michael Wolff — March 11, 2011 — The Guardian

Entering his ninth decade, with Fox News, with the Wall Street Journal, with his vast holdings in the entertainment business, and with his newfound eminence as a digital prognosticator and force (although he does not use a computer), Rupert Murdoch seems more powerful than ever. But, alas, he is 80. It is another new chapter. It is destined to be a Shakespearian one. How could it not be? His executives wait. His children circle.

Murdoch ally 'warned MP not to pursue hacking scandal'

Cahal Milmo and Martin Hickman — March 11, 2011 — The Independent

A British Member of Parliament, in an incendiary speech last night, accused the country's biggest police force of deception and its biggest newspaper group, Rupert Murdoch's News International, of engaging in the "dark arts" of tapping and hacking. Suggesting there was a "full-blown, copper-bottomed scandal", he said attempts had been made to suppress the full scale of the wrongdoing, which goes as far back as 2002 and has a "substantial" number of victims.

Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in custody, Libya officials confirm

Ian Black and Peter Beaumont — March 11, 2011 — The Guardian

Libyan government officials have confirmed that Guardian correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is in their custody after he went missing while reporting from the country. The foreign ministry in the capital Tripoli said that Libyan authorities were holding Abdul-Ahad along with a Brazilian journalist, Andrei Netto. The two are believed to have been detained close to the coastal town of Sabratha on Monday.

U.S. Radicals Offer Lots of Advice, But Few Are Ready to Take Risks

Harry Kelber — March 11, 2011 — Labor Educator

For more than 30 years, well-meaning, savvy trade unionists have offered proposals to revive an ailing and declining AFL-CIO -- to no avail. All the plans that were presented at well-attended conferences, all the articles that were written and widely distributed, all the resolutions that were debated and approved, failed to change the federation as the citadel of labor conservatism and guardian of the status quo.

The NYT versus the Huffington Post: a cat fight over kitten vid

Richard Adams — March 11, 2011 — The Guardian

Call it the battle of the old media versus the new: a war of words has broken out between Arianna Huffington, founder of the eponymous website, and Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, trading blows through their respective publications. Meanwhile, the New York Times is soon to erect a paywall across its web content, cutting the pirates and counterfeiters off from the New York Times as a source. How that works out as a revenue generator for the New York Times is another matter.

Does Metaphorical Framing Really Work?

Brooke Gladstone — March 11, 2011 — National Public Radio

While editors and journalists worry about whether a simple word choice could influence their readers, politicians take another tack. They use metaphors all the time, explicitly in order to persuade people to view things their way. In this experiment, describing crime as a "beast" or as a "virus" resulted in vastly different attitudes and policy recommendations.

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