Categories: OLD Media Moves

Writer's strike best-covered strike ever because of new media

David Robb, a former labor reporter for the Hollywood Reporter, writes Tuesday how the recently settled writer’s strike in California was covered better than any other labor action because of new media.

Robb wrote, “A Google search of ‘writers strike’ turns up 770,000 hits — seven times more hits than ‘steel strike,’ the next highest, and 20 times more than ‘actors strike.’ ‘Steel strike’ gets 110,000 hits, followed by ‘teachers strike’ with 92,400 hits; ‘railroad strike’ (60,500); ‘airline strike’ (36,000); ‘stagehands strike’ (32,900); ‘mine strike’ (30,100); ‘actors strike’ (29,700); ‘newspaper strike’ (25,100); ‘air traffic controllers’ strike (24,600) and ‘coal miners strike’ (24,600).

“Ironically, all this strike coverage comes at a time when labor reporters are becoming extinct at the old media.

“There was a time when nearly every major newspaper in the country had a labor reporter, but today they are a vanishing breed. According to a recent Newspaper Guild report, labor reporting is a beat facing ‘near extinction.’ Over the past 60 years, union membership nationwide has declined almost every year, from a high of 33% in 1948 to only 12.5% today. And the number of reporters who call themselves labor reporters has sunk with it.

“But in Hollywood, nearly everyone’s in a union, and thousands of industry workers are in two or more unions and guilds. And in Hollywood, labor reporting is still a valued beat.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

View Comments

  • Baloney. It was better covered because it was about writers. Other writers were interested in the topic. Unemployed writers wrote about their own experiences. Yes, they did it online, but 50 years ago they probably would have started a publication to do the same thing. Different medium, same result.

    Plus, it had a direct effect on consumers. They couldn't watch their shows.

    I'm really getting tired of these "new media" stories that are nothing more than old wine in new bottles.

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