media

Tom Lehman uswa12 at Lorainccc.edu
Thu Aug 19 05:31:15 PDT 1999


There are quite a number of labor union publications. Some are pretty good and some are pretty bad. The bi-monthly publication of the USWA, Steelabor is one of the best.

Steelabor is mailed to approx. 3/4 of a million or more homes; it is also distributed from local union halls all over the USA and Canada. Non-member subscriptions are available for $12 dollars a year from the USWA Communications Department, 5 Gateway Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. Marco Trbovich-- I'm not sure which one of the Trbovichs' he is, if he 's who I think he is, we knew each other in grade school--is on the masthead.

We have a local monthly publication the Lorain Labor Leader. The Labor Leader is mailed to approx. 3,000 homes and another 500 or more copies are distributed. The Labor Leader is a nice little local effort--I've only objected to one submitted story that we have published. From a Case prof of economics of the Gingrich school.

Tom Lehman

"William S. Lear" wrote:


> On Wednesday, August 18, 1999 at 10:30:30 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
> >C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> >
> >>The publisher's blurb for McChesney's book says that he "argues that the
> >>media have become a significant anti-democratic force in the United
> >>States, and, to varying degrees, worldwide...."
> >
> >My only problem with this is the "have become," which implies that
> >they once weren't. When were they ever pro-democratic? This argument
> >often leads to another (implied and unexamined) nostalgia for the
> >days of local ownership, as opposed to today's conglomeratization.
> >Are we nostalgic for Hearst? Do we hold up small-town newspapers,
> >which usually seem like promotional sheets for local car dealers and
> >realtors, as a model?
>
> Well, depends on your historical time-scale, and what you mean by "the
> media", doesn't it? If you mean the corporate media, then "have
> become" is wrong, but if you mean the entire media, including once
> lively labor newspapers and independent radio programs, which have
> all but disappeared from mass circulation, then I don't find it
> terribly misleading. Chomsky and Herman note this deterioration at
> the beginning of their book *Manufacturing Consent*. The labor
> newspapers may have been ugly in all sorts of ways, but hey, at least
> it was the voice of (some of) the working volk, was it not, Doug?
>
> Of course, McChesney is well-known as the author of another
> outstanding book, *Telecommunications, Mass Media, & Democracy: The
> Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928--1935* (Oxford
> University Press, 1993), which looks backward quite a way for the
> undemocratic slant, so I wouldn't blame him so much as the
> book-jacket-blurb ad folks for the misleading blurb.
>
> Bill



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