Guild Concerned about Post Replacing Professional Journalists with Unpaid Bloggers
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)A Newspaper Guild official representing Washington Post employees expressed
concern earlier this month about the paper potentially moving away from using
professional journalists. "The Post very clearly is trying to make it much
easier to lay people off and pay them less severance or even re-classify jobs
and by reclassifying jobs, paying you less, at their total discretion. That is
what we are really fighting against," said Fredrick Kunkle, co-chair of the
Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild and a Post reporter. The Guild's last
two-year contract with the Post expired on June 7; the Guild staged a picketline
on June 22 (click here for photos).
"What does bother us and what seems from our view clear in these contract talks
is that the Post clearly wants to shrink further, wants to make it easier to
eliminate positions and what we worry about is that they will replace
experienced professional journalists with unpaid bloggers, underpaid bloggers,
contract writers, community journalists and inexperienced writers. That's how
they will try to continue providing content under the brand of The Washington
Post. That is what concerns us,” said Kunkle. The Post Guild unit represents
more than 900 newsroom and non-newsroom employees, most of whom have not had a
raise since 2008.
- excerpted from Joe Strupp’s Media
Matters post