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