One question: what are we ready to change?

Bernie Lunzer, President

01 Dec 2009

The Guild Reporter

The only thing certain about the future of journalism is that there will be at least two conferences somewhere this week to discuss the future of journalism. Well, maybe not during the holiday season.

You also are likely to see some columns roundly condemning News Corp. for threatening to block Google from searching its sites, because News Corp. is obligated to give its work away for free. So says Jeff Jarvis, who wrote “What Would Google Do?” available at Amazon.com for a mere $17.81. The newest wrinkle is that News Corp is negotiating with Microsoft and its search site, Bing, which could actually result in real revenue flowing back to newspapers.

Bernie Lunzer, President

We’ve spent a fair amount of time working the issues: attending those many conferences, testifying before Congress, working with reform groups and promoting alternative ownership ideas. And we’ll continue to pursue cooperatives, employee stock-ownership and agency-style employment ownership models, like the News Project in San Francisco that brings together public broadcasting, the Guild and the Berkeley J-school.

We’ll also continue seeking legal changes that would enable quality journalism to survive. I’ll state loudly that if banks can be bailed out, journalism can, too. Do we want direct infusions of government money into newspapers? No—meaning we don’t want a situation in which government controls the press. But if it’s possible to create a hands-off public endowment that helps sustain news organizations, digital and otherwise, why not?

But our primary focus in the coming months will be on answering the question, “What does a media union look like?” Between the collapse of the traditional business model and the overall economic meltdown, we need to look at our own resources. We need to examine who our community of interest is, and how we grow it.

Very real discussions are taking place about strengthening our ties to freelancers and stringers. It’s possible the future of media work will rely on more contingent labor—but that doesn’t mean such workers should be forced into the economic fringe. Quality journalism requires quality compensation, not to mention a sense of dignity and a voice in one’s working conditions. Our commitment must be to all media workers, and several Guild locals are already pushing in that direction.

We’re also formulating a strategic study of our resources and goals, with the understanding that the challenges posed by a rapidly shifting industry will require us to be willing to change ourselves. Many Guild locals already are looking into mergers with other locals and sharing resources. We are reappraising how we assign work at the national level and how that work gets done. This is about acknowledging the challenges before they become a crisis. We’ll work with local leaders to reorient our union, and hope to suggest material changes by next summer.

What we will not do is concede defeat and give up. Our locals have been making a huge difference in the lives of their members, and while they haven’t always liked the choices confronting them, they’ve been able to negotiate and improve outcomes. Indeed, the biggest reason for hope is the resolute nature of the activists I see throughout the union.

We all have to deal with change. But we don’t have to accept outcomes that don’t preserve quality jobs and decent working conditions. There will be a media industry and media workers 10 years from now. The only real question is whether the workers will have any say in what the industry looks like. I’m betting we will.