The postmark deadline for submitting entries for the Heywood Broun award has been extended to Tuesday, Feb. 17. Broun, one of the Guild’s founders, was a crusading New York City columnist whose reporting took on injustice, corruption, intolerance and other social ills, while giving voice to...
The New York Guild has sent a letter to The New York Times signaling its intent to arbitrate a recent round of layoffs. “We’re asking to have the arbitrator evaluate the layoffs…and whether it was in compliance with the contract or not,” Guild President Bill O’Meara said. Last fall, the Times...
An award named for CWA President Larry Cohen in honor of his tireless movement-building efforts will be presented to a Guild member or local staffer every other year at TNG-CWA conferences. The Guild, meeting in Orlando last week, surprised Cohen with the news at the end of a fiery speech that...
TNG-CWA President Bernie Lunzer was re-elected to a third term last week, but he won’t be known as president of The Newspaper Guild-CWA. He’s now the president of The NewsGuild-CWA, a name that conference delegates agreed was better suited for the changing news industry and the diversity of...
Reader editorial employees voted 19-0 Friday to unionize as the Reader unit of the Chicago Newspaper Guild. The new unit will now elect officers and select a bargaining team to negotiate a contract with Wrapports LLC, owner of the Reader and the Sun-Times. Over the years, the idea of joining a...
A thunderous speech from CWA President Larry Cohen, a meticulous by-the-numbers look at the news industry, past, present and future, and success stories from locals were among the first-day highlights of the Guild conference underway in Orlando. Cohen, who is retiring in June, received standing...
Six Missouri Jobs with Justice workers, represented by the St. Louis-based United Media Guild, have unanimously ratified a new three-year contract with pay increases annually, raising the minimum pay for a JwJ organizer by $2,000. Raises in the first year range from $1,000 to $4,000, depending on the position. Workers will receive 3 percent raises in the second year and 2 percent in the third. The contract also raised the meals per diem for work-related travel by $10 per day.
In an abuse of the Guild-Reuters contract and a blatant quest to squeeze more work out of non-Guild editorial employees, upper management has expanded the job roles of supervisors to include reporting, and lots of it. The trend has been detrimental to the Reuters file, the careers of Guild-covered journalists and the Guild's ability to effectively represent its members, the New York Guild reports. Last June, Reuters management identified 56 Editors-in-Charge that it believed were eligible under the Guild's contract to perform Guild-represented work -- about twice the number that existed when the unit's current contract was ratified in July 2011.
News that ISIS had killed a second Japanese hostage, journalist Kenji Goto, has brought an outpouring of sympathy "in a country that traditionally shuns citizens caught up in dangerous conflicts," The Atlantic reports. "But Kenji Goto was not an ordinary citizen. As a journalist, Goto traveled across war-torn countries like Liberia, Iraq, and Kosovo, producing documentaries with his own money that showed daily life in the world's worst conflict zones."
In his first interview since being freed from an Egyptian jail after 400 days, Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste called on authorities to release his colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy. "I feel incredible angst about my colleagues, leaving them behind", Greste said on Monday. "Amidst all this relief, I still feel a sense of concern and worry. If it's appropriate for me to be free, its right for all of them to be freed," he insisted. Greste was put on a plane out of the country by the Egyptian authorities a day earlier.
Chris Shelton —
January 30, 2015— CWA District 1 Vice President
CWA District 1 Vice President Chris Shelton thanks CWA members and locals from all sectors, including the Guild, for giving the children of striking Fairpoint Communications workers a joyful holiday season by donating money and toys. "The Fairpoint Communications strike by CWA members and IBEW members in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine continues. The members are standing strong even though we have now passed the 100 day mark on strike. Both unions’ members wanted to say thank you to those of you who made the holidays a reality for their children. The response to the Christmas toy drive was, to say the least, overwhelming. We also have collected over $200,000.00 in the IBEW-CWA Solidarity Fund. While our 250 CWA members have a defense fund to fall back on, the IBEW has nothing."
Minutes after Apple released its record-breaking quarterly earnings this week, the Associated Press published (by way of CNBC, Yahoo, and others) "Apple tops Street 1Q forecasts." It's a story without a byline, or rather, without a human byline — a financial story written and published by an automated system well-versed in the AP Style Guide. The AP implemented the system six months ago and now publishes 3,000 such stories every quarter — and that number is poised to grow. Philana Patterson, an assistant business editor at the AP tasked with implementing the system, tells us there was some skepticism from the staff at first. "I wouldn't expect a good journalist to not be skeptical," she said. Patterson tells us that when the program first began in July, every automated story had a human touch, with errors logged and sent to Automated Insights to make the necessary tweaks. Full automation began in October, when stories "went out to the wire without human intervention."
The Jefferson City press corps has voted to give the Missouri Times until the end of March to clean up the news organization’s ethics mess or face the possibility of losing credentials to cover events in Missouri’s state capital. Ten representatives of wire service, print and broadcast news organizations met Monday to discuss the lobbyist-sponsored parties that Times’ publisher Scott Faughn had held for lawmakers at the newspaper’s office in Jefferson City. While some press corps members appeared ready to vote to take away the Times’ allocation of capital office and parking spaces, the group approved a motion giving it the chance to draft a newsroom policy of editorial independence as well as time to demonstrate that the lobbyist-sponsored parties were no longer taking place.
A Washington Post journalist detained in Iran for more than six months will stand trial “soon,” Iran’s official news agency reported Wednesday, but the charges against him remain unknown. The report by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency gave no additional information about Iran’s allegations against Jason Rezaian, The Post’s bureau chief in Tehran. Rezaian, a dual American-Iranian citizen, also has not had access to legal counsel since his detention in late July. “We have yet to hear any accounting of any charges against Jason, who after six months in custody has still not been provided access to a lawyer,” said a statement from Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor. “It is appalling and outrageous that Jason remains behind bars. A fair and just approach by Iran’s judiciary could only result in his immediate release.”
allegations against Jason Rezaian, The Post’s bureau chief in Tehran. Rezaian, a dual American-Iranian citizen, also has not had access to legal counsel since his detention in late July. “We have yet to hear any accounting of any charges against Jason, who after six months in custody has still not been provided access to a lawyer,” said a statement from Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor. “It is appalling and outrageous that Jason remains behind bars. A fair and just approach by Iran’s judiciary could only result in his immediate release.”