Bad news from the Hawaii Newspaper Guild.
The local guild’s latest report to the U.S. Department of Labor, filed last month, discloses membership fell to just 192 at the end of 2010, a 56% drop following the sale of the Honolulu Advertiser and its merger with its smaller rival, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
Guild membership statewide now stands at just one-third of what it was in 2006, according to the union’s annual LM-2 report.
Membership figures for the past decade show a precipitous decline.
![[text]](http://kaaawa.net/temp/members.jpg)
The guild’s net assets at the end of 2010 were $181,641, down 45.5% since the end of 2009.
During the year, the union spent $268,081 on representational activities. Overall, it ended 2010 with a small budget deficit, spending $12,107 more than it took in during the year.
Guild members are currently voting on a proposed merger with the California Media Workers to create a 2,000-member local to be called the Pacific Media Workers Guild, according to the guild’s web site.
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Maybe serious bloggers could be enticed to join such a professional organization? Y’all are working hard to make up for the limp monopoly. Or is nobody to be paid, health cared and represented by unions anymore in the new frontier? Perhaps a guild doesn’t do any of that anyway… But the sector should be redefined to include the new scope of media. And there should be a community plan to assist improving quality and promoting the wellbeing of the nu journalists. Without the local bloggers I wouldn’t know about nothin!
Not coincidently, the lute makers guild has folded also.
Ian, you missed the real story here, which is that outgoing Guild officer Wayne Cahill got a $23,000 raise (!) at the very same time the union was hemorrhaging members and money. Take a look again at the LM-2.