Latest News

Not Hopeless, Just Hard

Aug. 3, 2010 -- "The current situation for our union is serious and urgent," Cohen explained. "The U.S. labor movement remains locked in a downward spiral....with falling membership, nearly all defense in bargaining, organizing rights near the bottom of the 20 largest world economies, falling real wages in the U.S. for nearly 40 years, and a political system at the federal level that is all but paralyzed, despite the 2008 election results," he said in his keynote address on July 26 in Washington.

By contrast, he added, "Corporate power measured in every way is at an all-time high. The wage gap between management and front-line workers in the U.S. is up to 500 times and accepted by most. The political power of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable has never been greater, with total control on economic issues in the Republican Party and huge influence among nearly all Democrats as well."

And while Cohen contended "there remains a significant difference, well worth voting for," between the two political parties, he admitted labor is on often its own, without help from politicians. "There is no path right now for any relief in bargaining and organizing rights and economic reform has been minimal," he said. | More

Contract Ratification

The IAPE membership has approved the new Collective Bargaining Agreement with Dow Jones, voting to ratify the agreement by a vote margin of 90.63% in favor and 9.37% opposed. - More

The Times' PayWall

Aug. 17, 2010 -- -- As posted at Thinq.co.uk -- Rivals have been crowing about a decline in traffic to The Times newspaper's website since parent company News Corp introduced a paywall -- but if anything, figures released today by US market research company comScore represent a triumph for Rupert Murdoch's pay-to-read project. According to comScore, the number of unique visitors to The Times Online fell from 2.2 million in June to 1.61 million in July -- a drop of 27 per cent. Compulsory registration introduced at the beginning of June had seen site traffic fall from 2.79 million unique users the month before, when The Times and its sister paper, The Sunday Times were split into separate sites. But at 43 per cent, even that total decline is nothing like the 90-odd per cent slide being predicted by doomsayers. | More

National Digital Newspaper

Aug. 13, 2010 -- Media magnate Rupert Murdoch says News Corp. plans to produce a national digital newspaper that will be distributed exclusively on iPads, mobile phones and other tablet computers, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Times reports that the paid-content venture would likely begin by the end of the year and operate out of the the company's New York Post facilities under the supervision of the tabloid's managing editor. It would feature short, snappy, easily digestible items aimed at a general readership. | More

News Corp Earnings Up

Aug. 5, 2010 -- --As posted at DailyFinance.com --For an octogenarian with ink in his veins, Rupert Murdoch sounds awfully enthusiastic -- downright giddy, even -- about the digital future of newspapers. As he's done elsewhere recently, the News Corp. chairman waxed rhapsodic about the possibilities of Apple's iPad on his company's quarterly earnings call Wednesday. News Corp.'s results, although not uniformly positive, contained ample reasons for optimism. For the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, the global media conglomerate swung back into profit, recording earnings of $875 million, or 33 cents a share. Revenue grew 5.7%, and operating income was up for its cable, television and newspaper divisions, although down for filmed entertainment, its second-biggest unit after cable. | More

Hinton: Paywalls Inevitable

Jun. 15, 2010 -- -- As posted at The Japan Times Online --Newspapers around the world will soon have no choice but to start charging for Web content, according to Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton, who called it "madness" to give away "expensive and valuable journalism for nothing." Media organizations like the Wall Street Journal, the leading U.S. business daily published by Dow Jones & Co., spend "millions and millions of dollars" each week so thousands of journalists can cover the news worldwide, Hinton said at a lecture last Monday organized by Keizai Koho Center in Tokyo. The WSJ's decision to charge for online content in the mid-1990s "established in people's minds that what we do has value," he said, emphasizing the need for media organizations to persuade people to pay for their hard-earned content. | More

More Recent News