Layoffs at Newspapers and the Squeeze on American Workers
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Most of today’s Democracy Now! about workers1: I) layoffs at the newspapers and II) a new book: The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.
I. The discussion of layoffs at the newspapers raised the question of whether bloggers aka citizen journalists can/will fill the gap. Chris Hedges, senior fellow at the Nation Institute is not optimistic:
I could believe that if there was reporting on the internet. You know, most of the bloggers don’t even pick up a phone, much less go out and report a story. Reporting a story, especially doing an investigative piece, is laborious, expensive, time-consuming.
Linda Jue, Director of New Voices in Independent Journalism and the past president of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, on the other hand:
…I am witnessing, actually, in the Bay Area numerous new enterprises starting to come up, being formed actually by journalists, to find new business models that would be—that will sustain very good journalism…
II. The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. Steven Greenhouse, labor reporter for the New York Times, discusses the plight of workers and the role of contemporary unions. He has some interesting remarks about the “Change to Win” coalition of 5 major unions that left the AFL-CIO.
[More when DN! gets the transcript up.]
1There is brief mention of more bank failures in the headlines. See next post.
