by Steve Stallone

Guild explores, implements strategies for a new journalism 

As newsrooms shrink at many cash-strapped media organizations, pundits are pronouncing the death of traditional print sources of journalism. The 1,800-member California Media Workers Guild has responded by taking on the hard work of optimism, exploring new economic models, and pioneering projects to sustain quality jobs and quality journalism. 

In a week-long series of special reports—“New Times: New Guild”—which started Monday, Jan. 11, 2009 on the award-winning website (www.mediaworkers.org) of the California Media Workers Guild, Local 39521 of The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, Guild activists write about their experiments with innovative programs to keep themselves and their trade alive. 

“We hope to kick-start a larger conversation on the future direction and forms of journalism,” said Carl Hall, a science writer and staff representative for the California Media Workers Guild, who originated and directed the series along with editor (and ILCA president) Steve Stallone. 

Monday’s first installment of the series deals with how the industry is shedding staff reporter jobs in favor of using more free lance-generated copy. The California Guild’s response: organize the first Free Lancer Unit of any TNG local so they can’t be pitted against represented staff writers.  

Membership in the Freelance Unit is growing since it has real advantages—a professional development program, a juried press credential and help with the business of freelancing. And as it grows the unit is looking for workable bids to get members health coverage. 

Another Guild goal is to develop a voluntary Fair Freelance certification for news entities to adopt, a kind of combination “Good Housekeeping” and “Fair Trade” seal signifying the employer adheres to journalistic and ethical standards and compensates its media workers fairly. 

Tuesday’s installment chronicles how the Guild is partnering with UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism and philanthropist/investor F. Warren Hellman to create the nonprofit Bay Area News Project to experiment with new forms of labor-community, nonprofit news operations that are sustainable and continue producing quality journalism to plug the holes in the coverage corporate media is abandoning. 

Other parts of the series includes a story on how the Guild is using the language skills of its court interpreters unit, in collaboration with linguists and journalists, to find ways to help newsrooms overcome language barriers and create a more diverse, multilingual journalism that reflects our changing society and makes it more inclusive and democratic. 

Another story lays out how the Guild is forming a media training consortium with academics, Silicon Valley tech communicators, and labor and government workforce developers to prepare today’s journalists for tomorrow’s journalism technologies. 

The website includes a comment section for readers to join in on the conversation about the direction of journalism and journalists, what it should be and how we get there.  

“It’s almost impossible to predict the future of media in the U.S., but it is possible to anticipate the future of work in our industry,” said Bernie Lunzer, international president of The Newspaper Guild/CWA. “The California Media Workers Guild is doing just that—taking smart and necessary steps to organize and represent all of the workers that make our industry vital—and helping to shape the future. If we stick together and form strong communities, we’ll preserve quality journalism, and the people who make it possible.”