Delaware News Guild & Biden Blackout
REV talks with Natalia Alamdari about local news coverage of the Reade story on his podcast. I’m not buying into the Reade story, so I suppose I am taking part in the “stonewalling”. I will say this though – Biden is definitely guilty of being an old white guy.
News Journal education reporter Natalia Alamdari joins Rob in the virtual bunker to talk to talk about education policy, the organizing of the Delaware News Guild, and her reporting on the Joe Biden case from a local angle.
Show Notes:
The advantage, one supposes, of purging the News Journal newsroom of virtually every journalist employed there 20 years ago is the lack of institutional memory.
More than 30 years ago, at a time when the News Journal newsroom had roughly four times more employees — and about four times as many subscribers — than it has today, its staff voted to join the Newspaper Guild. It sought a contract with Gannett, which used the same methods it did in every case in which one of its newsrooms tried to organize — it stalled, stonewalled and used every tool at its disposal to deadlock negotiations until, after more than a decade of fruitless effort, the Guild voted to decertify.
In short, lotsa luck, folks, but you’re pissing up a rope.
Alby,
Thought about your phrasing: “purging the News Journal newsroom of virtually every journalist employed there 20 years ago is the lack of institutional memory.”
Just did a quick count and there are at least 10 reporters/editors/photographers on staff who were there when I left, which just happens to be 20 years ago. I have said much the same thing in the past five-six years, but that’s quite a bit of experience still in the building — and it makes up nearly one-third of a newsroom staff of 32.
So, it’s not like the paper/website is totally overrun with cub reporters. Nevertheless, the operation makes a disproportionate amount of what look like rookie mistakes and even thinking that a union drive might succeed is just the most recent.
Fair enough, but how many of them were in supervisory positions then, or are now? Management isn’t going to tell them their efforts are doomed.
For that matter, how many of those 32 people would even be eligible for union representation? Even before I left, the chiefs-to-warriors ratio was absurd. I can’t image it’s gone in the other direction since.
Trying to remember where I sat at the time, and I think the union campaign was in ’90 or ’91. Of the people I named, I think Tresolini was the only one on the staff at the time. Henry Freeman was running the newsroom at the time, and I recall one meeting when he said he was going to move Steve Lambert from City Editor to Business Editor to piss off the business reporters who were in the forefront of the union campaign. A week later, Lambert was running the business desk.
Everyone prominent in the union campaign was driven out, most sooner, a few later. Someone should warn the current staff about that.
You fucks, your cowardice built the mess we are in now. Thanks, boomer.
Which fucks?
which 10 are they? Talorico, Tresolini, a photographer and . . .?
Just remembered Martin Frank. At least I think he’s still there.
I think Robert Long as well, though I’d hardly count him as a journalist.
I got photographers Bretzger and Corbett, sports writers Frank, Myers and Tresolini, reporters Parra, Talorico and Cormier, and behind the scenes Okamoto and Long.
Cormier, of course.
Fool me twice…
Who is Amy Roe in the upstate Delaware firmament, and where does she get the authority to attack others on Facebook?
She was involved in the fight to keep Bloom Energy out of Newark.
Who did she attack on Facebook, about what?
Me. I posted a Tara Reade opinion that I’m guessing caused some metoo agita. Nothing against me too, but there are limits about everything. I still have unresolved feelings about the treatment of Al Franken by me too. Other than that, I’m with them. But in 2020 we are still arguing about exceptions to the rule. Are there any?
Who are “them” with whom you are with?
This story out of Cleveland addresses the folly of unionization: The last four journalists at the Cleveland Plain Dealer were laid off, dissolving the once-great newpaper’s union chapter.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/05/clevelandcom-to-produce-all-content-for-the-plain-dealer-and-im-moving-on-tim-warsinskey.html
Delaware News Guild
@DeNewsGuild
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3h
🚨🚨MAJOR NEWS🚨🚨 The guild learned today that the NLRB ruled in our favor to schedule a mail in election! We look forward to winning a seat at the table and fighting to preserve local journalism 🎉🎉🎉
BFD, they can have an election. They may very well get a seat at the table, but they won’t be holding any chips. After six months of “bargaining,” they’ll realize they could have spent their time more productively by playing solitaire.