Saturday, March 01, 2008

The First Blog Strike?

It had to happen some time. From Free Press, citing CWA:

    Honolulu Advertiser workers fighting for a fair contract at their Gannett-owned newspaper made union history last week when reporters staged what’s believed to be the country’s first “blog strike.”

    Their action and a landslide strike vote a few days earlier combined to push management to back down from its “last and final” contract offer and agree to new talks next week.

    For three days, members of The Newspaper Guild-CWA Local 39117 refused to post to the paper’s online blogs, including an especially popular sports site. Many writers left messages for readers explaining their absence. Reporters, photographers and artists withheld bylines and credit lines from the print edition, a more traditional form of protest among Guild members. [Emphasis and embedded link added]

2 comments:

Jill said...

Interesting! What do you think??

Scott Piepho said...

Like I said, inevitable. It's basically another mechanism or the kinds of job actions reporters have traditionally used.

It does remind me of Russo's comments while you all were getting Sammied by the Plain Dealer. Now that blogs are part of the media landscape, they are subject to collective bargaining. We're just scraping the surface of the labor issues raised by the new media.