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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3 BBC Journalists Report Being Tortured in Libya

David D. Kirkpatrick — March 10, 2011 — New York Times

Security forces working for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi physically abused and psychologically terrorized three British Broadcasting Corporation correspondents for 21 hours after they were detained trying to reach the scene of a bloody battle in a city just 30 miles from the capital, the journalists reported Wednesday night.
They said they were beaten with fists and rifles, hooded and subjected to mock executions.

Baltimore Sun union workers approve contract with voice vote

Jamie Smith Hopkins and Jessica Anderson — March 10, 2011 — Baltimore Sun

Newspaper Guild members in the newsroom, advertising and other departments at The Baltimore Sun decided with a voice vote to approve a three-year contract extension Wednesday night that will freeze wages for the first two years, while raising the company's contribution to 401(k) retirement plans. In addition, pension benefits for current employees will remain frozen, while employees hired after June 26 will not be eligible for the plan.

NPR falls into the right's trap, twice

Dan Kennedy — March 10, 2011 — The Guardian

Cowed by Republican threats of defunding, the NPR board has compounded Vivian Schiller's error by trying to appease enemies. By doing so, NPR's board demonstrated that it has not been paying any attention to the culture wars that are raging these days. If you make a blood sacrifice to the right, it just wants more. NPR should stand and fight. It might lose. The alternative, though, is to so compromise its standards and its mission that winning will look like losing.

Canadiansâ€™ Internet usage nearly double the worldwide average

Omar el Akkad — March 10, 2011 — Globe and Mail

If the future is digital, it seems Canadians are ahead of their time. Canucks spend more time online than anyone else on Earth, according to new data from web research firm comScore. And itâ€™s not even by a small margin: the average Canadian spends 43.5 hours a month on the web, almost twice the worldwide average of 23.1 hours. Canada ranks first in the number of website visits per user per month, at 95.2, and second only to South Korea in number of pages viewed, at 3,349.

Newspapers Hope Readers Will Throw Money Over the Wall

Mathew Ingram — March 10, 2011 — GigaOM

As the financial screws continue to tighten on traditional media companies, more and more are choosing to throw their eggs into the basket labeled â€œpaywall,â€ despite a conspicuous lack of evidence that erecting barriers to non-paying readers -- or turnstiles that charge them after theyâ€™ve read a certain number of articles -- has any beneficial effects. In the long run, these walls are really just sandbags against a rising tide of free content.

Wis. GOP bypasses Dems, cuts collective bargaining

Scott Bauer — March 10, 2011 — Associated Press

At least two dozen protesters spent the night just outside the Wisconsin state Assembly chamber in anticipation of a late Thursday morning vote on explosive union rights legislation that passed the Senate after Republicans outmaneuvered their missing Democratic counterparts and pushed through the bill. The extraordinary turn of events late Wednesday set up Thursday's perfunctory vote on the measure that would strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from most public workers.

Iâ€™m Not Your Scapegoat

Audrey Barbakoff — March 9, 2011 — American Libraries Magazine

Iâ€™ll admit it: Iâ€™ve always thought unions were a little passÃ©. Despite the fact that as a public librarian Iâ€™m a dues-paying member myself, I just couldnâ€™t shake the image of a typical union dude as a hard-bitten, grimy-fingered steelworker swigging black coffee spiked with gin. Being a public employee in Wisconsin during one of the most contentious labor conflicts since that archetypal steelworkerâ€™s heyday has forced me to reexamine that impression.

What Michael Moore gets about Wisconsin â€¦ and America

John Nichols — March 9, 2011 — Cap Times

Here's what Michael Moore gets: in Wisconsin, the arc of history finally has begun to bend toward justice. Something fundamental has shifted. And Moore came to Wisconsin because he recognizes how precious this moment is, not just in a political sense, not just in an economic sense, but in an emotional and idealistic sense. It is possible to believe again.

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