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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Journal Communications doubles profits in fourth quarter

Don Walker — February 17, 2011 — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Journal Communications Inc. said fourth-quarter earnings doubled on the strength of political and issue advertising at its broadcast properties. The Milwaukee-based media company said net income rose to $14.7 million from $7.2 million a year ago, while revenue rose 7.8%, to $103.7 million. Publishing revenue decreased 5.9% for the year, although the rate of decline slowed as the year progressed, with the fourth quarter down 5.5% from the same period in 2009.

The Internet Strikes Back: Why the Internet Needs Jedi Knights

Malkia A. Cyril — February 17, 2011 — Huffington Post

MetroPCS, termed "Ghettro PCS" by many low-income black and latino subscribers, specifically targets its low-cost plans at low-income consumers. On its face, that sounds great. But here's the catch: MetroPCS's cheapest packages block phone users from access to the full internet, allowing them to use only a few sites, like Facebook and YouTube. Why can't low-income phone users get great service at low cost without blocking their access to the whole internet?

Wisc. Governor Makes a Threat to Sic the National Guard on Union Workers

Mike Elk — February 17, 2011 — AlterNet

By merely mentioning the possibility of deploying the Guard to prevent a strike, Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker has threatened to militarize the attack on unions. The 150-year history of the American labor movement shows that such moves often lead to the deaths of union members and are part of a long pattern of violent intimidation by state and privately run militias that ultimately constitute an attack on democracy itself.

With Googleâ€™s One Pass, Two More Newspaper Chains Join The Paywall Brigade

Joseph Tartakoff — February 17, 2011 — paidContent.org

Included in the announcement of Googleâ€™s long-expected One Pass paid content system for publishers is news that two more U.S. newspaper chains are planning to put up online paywalls at some of their newspaper sites this year: Media General plans to use One Pass to charge users who access its 180,000-plus circulation Richmond Times Dispatch, while midwest newspaper chain Rust Communications will soon charge some users at three of its newspaper sites.

After Proposing Draconian Anti-Union Laws, Wis. Gov. Walker Invokes National Guard

Roger Bybee — February 17, 2011 — In These Times

From his first day in office, new Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker has been aggressively applying huge jolts of what Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein called "shock therapy." But apparently Walker thinks the threat of layoffs was insufficiently intimidating, revealing that he's also ready to call out the National Guard if public workers stay home in protest of what may be the most draconian anti-union legislation ever offered in the United States.

Reporting to Conclusions

Rem Rieder — February 17, 2011 — American Journalism Review

For too long, mainstream journalism has pulled its punches. Admirably dedicated to fairness, balance, not picking winners and losers, it too often settled for "on the one hand, on the other hand" stories that left readers in the dark. Clearly it's important to be impartial. But that doesn't mean treating both sides of the argument equally when one is demonstrably false, or even deeply flawed. To treat everything equally is to create a false equivalency. And that really shortchanges the readers.

Thousands protest anti-union bill in Wisconsin

Scott Bauer — February 17, 2011 — Associated Press

Thousands of teachers, students and prison guards descended on the Wisconsin Capitol on Wednesday to fight a move to strip government workers of union rights in the first state to grant them more than a half-century ago, but it cleared a major legislative hurdle without the changes they sought. The Statehouse filled with as many as 10,000 demonstrators who chanted, sang the national anthem and beat drums for hours in demonstrations unlike any seen in Madison in decades.

The Internet Strikes Back to Save Net Neutrality

Michael Weinberg — February 16, 2011 — Public Knowledge

This week, Congress is going to begin to decide if it wants to support the idea of net neutrality. It is going to start examining whether the government should ever be able to step in if internet service providers decide to pick and choose which websites and services work, and which ones do not. It will start considering a bill that would not only repeal the FCCâ€™s current net neutrality regulations, but also prevent the FCC from making any net neutrality rules in the future.

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