How can LabourStart's news feeds be improved?
As most visitors to this site are no doubt aware, the single best source of breaking news about the union movement in the US originates from England! I'm referring of course to LabourStart's US news feed.
The US feed is one of many provided by LabourStart (and its proprieter, online labor activist Eric Lee) - LS makes feeds available in 20 different languages, and for a number of countries and regions. Visitors to the LabourStart site can also check out worldwide listings of union jobs, participate in forums and online campaigns, and check out their online bookstore, among other services.
I'll be focusing on the US newswire in this posting, but I'd encourage any readers that haven't done so to visit the LabourStart site and get a sense of the full range of information services provided to the union movement.
Production
Input to the LS newswires is provided by a group of volunteer correspondents. I'd encourage folks on this site to join this group by filling out the online application. Once credentialed, correspondents can add links that will be automatically added to the appropriate feeds.
In checking out recent postings, it was interesting to discover that many (if not the majority!) of US links are currently provided by a single correspondent - AFT staffer Tim Evanson. I'd like to be the first(?) to publicly thank Brother Evanson for these efforts on behalf of the online labor community - and I'm hoping he'll be able to find some time (in addition to his LS work and his real job!) to participate in the discussion on this site.
Tim identifies possible links for inclusion in the news feed by means of a Google search. Submitting the links to the feed requires logging in at the LabourStart site and filling out an online form with information on each link, including title, URL, country and source.
Distribution
LabourStart's online directory indicates that 182 web sites now display headlines from the US newswire, approximately half of them official union sites. It's worth noting, however, that the feed is also automatically imported into many union sites built on Unions-America's UnionActive platform, which no doubt brings the total to well over 200.
The feed is available both as JavaScript and in RSS format; however, since most union sites are not currently configured to input RSS feeds, most of them employ the JavaScript code in order to access the links.
Improvements?
Here's where things get interesting. What suggestions do folks have for improving/enhancing the LabourStart feed? I have a few modest suggestions:
- Most of the links to union stories identified by Google originate from "mass media sources" - particularly online editions of mainstream newspapers. I for one would love to see more links to stories generated by unions themselves.
Of course, the quantity and quality of online union information out there isn't everything we'd like it to be. Most stories posted on local sites ("Don't Miss the Annual Golf Tournament") are of little interest to union members outside the local that posts them. And unions usually tend to paint a pretty rosy picture - it's seldom, for example, that any contract settlement is described as less than a major victory for the union involved. (Of course, in these times getting the boss to agree to any union contract at all is often something of a victory.)
So in some ways the mainstream (and non-mainstream!) press tends to be a more "objective" source of news about unions than are the locals directly involved in the stories. Still, we need to take every opportunity we can get to to establish and promote our own alternative media.
- It would be useful if the information submitted along with each link included the state from which the story originated and the union/industry involved. In turn, this info could be used to tailor the headlines displayed on each subscribing site. For example, the SMWIA 17 site here in Boston could display headlines from stories occurring in Massachusetts and/or involving sheet metal workers.
- It would also be useful if LabourStart used information from a correspondent's last posting to insert default values in some of the fields used on their form. I'm thinking particularly of the "country" field, which is filled in via a pulldown menu. Since countries are listed alphabetically, selecting the United States involves scrolling down through virtually the entire list. A small complaint, perhaps, but anything that can be done to make the process of submitting links more user-friendly is likely to result in more correspondents posting more stories.
- While the task of "harvesting" links from Google on a daily basis would seem to be best performed by a single person, I'm sure Tim would appreciate any offers of backup in the event that he's on vacation or otherwise indisposed - or would just like to take a day off once in awhile! I'd certainly be willing to contribute an hour towards this effort on occasion, and perhaps some of you would too.
- Finally, I'd like to see it become part of the job description of every communication director for an international, large local or other labor body to submit links to any story posted on their site that would be of interest to the labor movement as a whole.
Well, that's about it on this subject for now. Looking forward to hearing other people's reactions and suggestions!
- Bill Bumpus's blog
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Thanks for the info, Bill
Thanks for the research and work that went into putting this piece together. Good stuff. I'm going to be making a proposal for how to do a new and improved newsfeed that will solve many of the problems you mention. Look for it in the coming few days.
You mentioned to me once before about how there was sometimes a conflict between the news that comes over a news feed and the interests of the union that subscribes to the news feed. I had this happen recently myself. One building trades union (Trades A) in our area was concerned about a news feed headline that showed another building trades union (Trades B) making significant contract gains. Trades A was worried their members would not be happy with their package because it wasn't as good of a package as Trades' B. I had to pull down the whole news feed from Trade A's site until the headline "fell off" the bottom.
Technology is great but it does often bump up against political realities.
Thanks to Bill for starting this conversation
I've invited LabourStart correspondents to join in as well.
Some quick comments:
I agree that we need more labour news from labour sources, but that's a job for the correspondents to find such news -- and for the unions to generate it.
I like the idea of including a state for US news stories. And province for Canadian stories? And state for Australian ones? Maybe separate UK stories out by Scotland, Wales, etc.? It's a very big task -- remember that India and Germany have states too. And so long as LabourStart is run as a entirely volunteer operation, big changes to our database design always take a while to get done.
We already have a prototype system in place for correspondents who really only post from one country and in one language and will be launching this shortly, after it has been thoroughly tested. One problem with the current system is it leaves room for error -- yesterday we had two news stories from Greenland, except that they weren't from Greenland at all. (Too bad!)
Tim Evanson is an incredibly prolific correspondent -- one of our top two or three -- and I agree that he and the other super-correspondents do need backup when they're away.
Finally, you're absolutely right about unions taking on the responsibility of ensuring that their news appears on LabourStart on a regular basis by assigning correspondents. Not nearly enough unions currently do so.
Your posting coincided with a major redesign of our front page in English, which you can see at http://www.labourstart.org An explanation of what the changes are and why we did them is here:
http://www.labourstart.org/docs/en/000142.html
Again, thanks for starting this discussion, Bill. I look forward to reading other comments and welcoming other collaborators on board.
Welcome Eric
I am excited to have you stop by, maybe you can check out other stuff as time permits.
Checking out other stuff
I am doing so -- this is an attractive, well-designed and interesting site. Good luck with it.
Thanks Eric
Always wondered what you looked like! Cool to have you stop in. This is off-topic, but I'm wondering if you are planning to move LabourStart to a social software platform like Drupal. If you haven't considered it, please do. If you need help, I'm sure there's be a lot of folks, myself included, willing to help you out with the technical aspects of getting the site set up.
Moving platforms
I don't see any reason to move platforms right now. The issues raised by Bill are generally not technical ones but editorial ones and would not be more easily addressed were we to move what is an elaborate and complex website over to a different system. Right now we are using a whole range of open source tools including a Linux server running Apache. All our code is written in Perl and most of it is custom code for our site. We are using RSS and JavaScript intensively as well. We do face a number of problems, but I'm not convinced that a massive technical overhaul would solve any of them. But of course I'm willing to listen to any ideas you might have.
Not the place for this discussion
This isn't the place for such an involved discussion. Let me just say for now that moving to Drupal wouldn't be quite the technical feat you might imagine. I've been using Drupal for almost two years and I can tell you it is extremely flexible. I am convinced, along with many others, that social software like Drupal it is the future of web development. I recommend taking a very long look at it and doing some research for yourself. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask them here. I've set up a forum here for people looking for help and advice. Start a new thread there with any questions.
Good to get broader discussion going about LabourStart
Yep Bill gotta say Tim Evanson is fantastic.
He has really turned around the output LabourStart gets from USA.
All praise to him.
I've been working as a volunteer for LabourStart now for more years than I can remember - six, seven or eight I can't remember maybe Eric'll correct me.
What I can't understand is why the AFL-CIO, the ICFTU, the ACTU ( our AFL-CIO in Australia), the CLC etc don't help people like Tim out.
They should delegate one staff person to daily post stories from their own sites ( so get the ' official line' out to a wider audience) and then wander around a few other union sites in their country - and post what they consider is the most important.
I have pleaded with the ACTU over several years in Australia. No success.
I know we've asked the ICFTU.
The ICFTU and the other GUFs should be posting their material onto LabourStart every day - and not just their English language versions, but their Spanish, French, German etc etc
Eric's re-design of the front page - as of today - I hope will be widely applauded.
The huge long scroll you had to go thru to get past Australia ( mea culpa), then Canada, then India, then New Zealand, then South Africa, then the UK till you got to the USA was a real pain in the butt. And I only named the major countries which regularly have a dozen-plus news items up on screen every day.
I wanna hear other suggestions of what we should be doing to make LabourStart more valuable.
Recently we started the OHS wire...which is brilliant.
But it'd be great if we could create newswires for specific union purposes - for example spitting out only 'education unions' stories; or hotel worker stories; or emergency services stories(ie firefighters, cops and paramedics).
The problem is we rely on volunteers. If we ask them to fill out too many fields we might lose their enthusiasm.
As it is we often find stories accidently placed in wrong countries.
( Our volunteers often do this stuff late at nite, after work, or very early in the morning, before they go off to work - when they are tired or in a rush)
Then LabourStart Senior Correspondents try to come in behind and clean up the little mistakes...but even Senior Correspondents stuff up regularly.
That's my pennysworth for the moment.
Thanks for starting this discussion to grab a wider audience.
Whoever is reading this should decide to lobby their union to get someone regularly posting items from their union site...and to ensure their union site takes a newsfeed from LabourStart.
Thanks for joining the discussion
Hi, Andrew,
Hate to sound like a broken record, but I have an idea for the labor feed that will solve the problems you cite. I will have it up soon. It takes some explaining and will be rather lengthy. Please check back to the site soon.
Let me pre-empt this discussion
If the idea is one of some kind of automation of news feeds (for example, reading RSS news feeds from unions) that is something which is already on our to-do list. But I wouldn't want to move entirely in that direction. After all, if one wanted an entirely automated system, why have a network of correspondents at all? Why not just point people to Google or some RSS aggregator? I think that there's a tremendous value in having individual human correspondents add content to LabourStart's news database, even if they sometimes get it wrong. I also think that we can use tools like an RSS-based feed to add some content to our system, and we have some RSS feeds that we will be playing around with to do just that.
Let me pre-empt your pre-emption
No, not where I'm headed at all. Correspondents would very much be a part of the process and play the same important role they do now.
Let me pre-empt your pre-emption and his too
I (a LSer from Canada) would stress to political role the correspondents play. LS is about more than keeping a bunch of union webheads amused (though it does that rather well if my experience is anything to go by). It's about trying to make international solidarity a casual worker-to-worker (well...worker-to-media-describing-actions-of-other-workers) experience.
Daily.
Easily
So the organizing work correspondents do within in their own unions to build readership is an important even crucial part of what we do. I can see LS changing their role, but automating entirely...nope.
Along the same lines, the initial comment regarding the need to get more news off of union websites is well taken. As blogs like this spread the word about LS our profile has risen and I know there are unions now (in Canada at least) who court us, looking to get their stories on the site and lobbying to have the stories upgraded to high priority when they feel it's deserved.
Can actually be a pain at times as the demands can be pretty intense. I think sometimes people lose track of the fact that I have a day job! :-)
And I can think of at least three unions (there are probably more) here which have assigned one or more staff to post stories from their sites to LS.
Then there are the folks who just keep sending me all their media releases....ugh!
:-)
Unions-America
I just noticed that Unions-America has been using our newswire without crediting LabourStart. I've sent them this message via their online form (they don't publicize any email addresses on their website):
It has been pointed out to me that Unions-America is using LabourStart's RSS newsfeed having stripped away the link to our service. I have seen this in action on at least one of your sites. Can I ask why you have done this? Shouldn't you give credit where credit is due?
Eric Lee
I'll let you know if I get any reply from them.
Unions-America: An update
Well done -- they responded immediately to my request and have fixed the news feed on all their sites.
Unions-America
So this discussion has already added some important value to LabourStart - 'cause we are getting that little bit extra credit among a wider union audience.
Thanks Bill for starting this off - and helping us win this little inch.
"state-only" flag?
If at some point the feeds are broken down by states/provinces, it might makes sense to add a little "state/province feed only" checkbox. As I mentioned, I maintain a modest feed of statewide labor news for Massachusetts - some of the links that get posted there (for example, the state fed's weekly calendar) would probably only be of interest to locals in Mass...
Who is to decide who willbe interested
Yes I am sure that there will be some issues which are of value to a small group in say Mass.
But the problem is with a world-wide audience who is to decide that a particular issue is of interest to only a small isolated group in that part of the belly of the monster.
I'm not interested in steel worker stories; nor nurses stories; nor schoolies stories.
But I am sure as hell interested in hotel worker stories - and I don't care whether they come from Sydney, Kathmandu or Cambridge, Mass.
Even if the Cambridge, Mass. story is only about a local meeting to look at an organising effort in a boutique hotel.
My concern is that if you tag too small a grouplet - you may turn off a wider group.
Am I making sense?
My solution would solve this problem
I begin to answer this issue in the first part of my proposal at http://www.communicateordie.com/node/69. The complete answer on how to tackle this problem will be in Part II (coming soon).
Tag Clouds
Andrew, your comment "My concern is that if you tag too small a grouplet - you may turn off a wider group." made me think of tag clouds, like Flickr and delicious use.
Basically - user submitted data can be taged any way that a person thinks is useful. So something could be tagged HERE, Michigan, Hotel.
Right now I only am familiar with the person submitting the content being able to tag. But have heard that readers being able to tag content is on its way.
My proposal for improving LabourStart's headlines
Please see http://www.communicateordie.com/node/69 for full explanation and discussion.