In media news, the Akron Newspaper Guild, which represents about 85 employees in the newsroom of the Akron Beacon Journal, approved a strike authorization last week with only one dissenting vote. The action gives the union’s bargaining committee the authority to call a strike if it feels it is necessary.
The Beacon Journal is owned by Star-Bulletin owner David Black.
According to a union press release, the company is seeking contract concessions amounting to a 25 to 30 percent decrease in wages and benefits, “including a 16.75 percent pay cut, a pension freeze, a larger share of health care costs and a change to sick pay that would be worse than what WalMart offers”.
“The company’s lead negotiator told the Guild negotiating team that the newspaper isn’t pleading poverty but simply doesn’t want to continue paying at the current levels,” according to the Guild’s statement.
Elsewhere, it’s not all fun and camaraderie in the experiments in new journalism.
In the past week, emails to supporters disclosed a rift between two news projects, Truthout.org and ReaderSupportedNews.org, headed by one of Truthout’s co-founders.
First, a fund appeal from Reader Supported News arrived on February 15 signed by Truthout’s co-founder Marc Ash, who formed the new venture with seven other former Truthout staff.
“5 months in we have the readers, we have the growth, we have the staff, now we need a budget.”
Then came a special message from Truthout to its readers, pointedly noting the difference between:
Several readers have told us that they have started to receive email – including solicitations for money – from ReaderSupportedNews (RSN), and have asked if Truthout and RSN are connected. Truthout is not affiliated with RSN. We have never authorized Truthout’s mailing lists to be used by RSN or any other organization.
Truthout is an independent nonprofit organization. RSN is a new, for-profit site by Marc Ash, who was Truthout’s founding executive director and board chair until recently. He resigned from the board and from employment at Truthout in September 2009.
This message was signed by Arlene Ash, president of Truthout’s board of directors. I don’t know if she is related to Marc Ash.
Then there’s the kerfuffle at Atlanta Progressive News, which fired a staff writer for being too “objective”, first flagged by the Creative Loafing blog.
According to a statement from APN, cited by Creative Loafing:
At a very fundamental, core level, Springston did not share our vision for a news publication with a progressive perspective. He held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News. It just wasn’t the right fit.
A longer editorial yesterday by APN news editor Matthew Cardinale probes the idea of “objectivity” in news and looks at examples of how its progressive perspective shapes its coverage while leaving plenty of room for reporting “facts”. It makes for an interesting debate.
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fired for being too objective? what?!
wait… they fired someone for being too objective, even though they don’t believe such a thing exists, so they fired him for his thoughts about being objective?
Progressives should always seek objective news. Progress cannot be founded on bias and misunderstanding. It requires dealing effectively with facts.
I think it was Brislin at UH Journalism who told us it’s not possible to be objective. That what one might observe will always be filtered by individual perpsectives and assumptions.
However, it’s still important to provide fair and balanced reporting. And that is the point APN tries to make in its editorial.
And at least APN admits its coverage takes a particular POV or slant.
I find these questions of objectivity both fascinating and frustrating. I wonder if the reporter was actually fired for believing in objectivity, or if he came to the point where he felt he could no longer work at APN if it required that he explicitly deny objectivity? Was there a consistent pattern in his reporting which created a problem or was the argument simply at the level of abstract philosophy?
If the reporter was actually fired for insisting there is an objective reality, than the editor is clearly unhinged. Not because one need be unhinged to believe there is no objective reality (although that does SUGGEST a problem), but because the reporter should be judged on the quality of their work, not on their epistimological disagreements with an editor.
Having said that, where can we look for an “objective” media outlet? Why does the Advertiser consistently present the “homeless problem” as a problem of dirty, derelict people disturbing the vacations of tourists instead of a challenge to the ability of our economy to provide housing? Why do they not frame this as a challenge to creative social entreprenuers and policy makers to come up with solutions? Why don’t they interview these people to find out their stories for those of us too uncomfortable to do this ourselves?