__________ A friend of mine, who is not bland or bought off, used to edit a sort of newspaper for the UAW, which has since folded for what he tells me was business reasons. I must have seen it, but can't recall it. Did anyone? And why doesn't labor run a newspaper--is it because it couldn't keep its hands off it? Because it lacks business sense? Because it is afraid of losing its shirt? Any ideas? --jks
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what do you mean why doesn't labor run a newspaper? do you mean why is there no national paper run by the AFL-CIO? there are quite a few independent labor papers around the country. two of the ones i read regularly are LABOR NOTES out of Detroit and THE WORKING STIFF JOURNAL out of my old home of Austin. both of these papers do exclusive labor reporting, are not "snoozers", and report from a strict rank and file reform perspective. while WSJ is mostly local, LN is international, with pretty wide distribution.
another form of labor publication that is important to note are strike papers. in Detroit, while the newspaper workers were on strike (for 6 years) they managed to publish a weekly strike paper called the Detroit Sunday Journal. it was meant to be an alternative to the scab papers, so it didn't report exclusively on labor issues and politics. in fact, a good deal of it was tv listings. but it was a hell of a paper, and was incredibly popular in Detroit. the newspaper workers on strike in Seattle also published a strike paper. i believe you can read it online, although i don't know the url offhand.
again, an example of how if we define "labor" as the AFL-CIO, we get a far different picture than if we define "labor" as the rank and file.
David Hill New York City _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com