Pew Study Shows Potential Opening for Web-Based Labor News Outlets
The Pew Research Center for People and the Press released a study this week that might not seem to be of immediate interest to the labor movement. However, reading not so far between the lines of the results of their 2008 News Consumption and Believability Study reveals some good and bad news for unions working on improving their presence on the internet. And could signal an great opportunity for labor to create more online news outlets.
The main focus of the study is to demonstrate that more and more people - especially young people - are now getting their news online. In their survey 3612 adults nationwide, they found that even as the percentage of people reading newspapers regularly in print or online has fallen precipitously from 40% to 34% in just 2 years, the proportion of Americans who get news online at least 3 days a week has increased from 31% to 37%.
This is important for unions to consider. Especially since the study makes clear that much of this online news is not coming from traditional sources. This means that labor should strongly consider bulking up its online presence - with a special emphasis on creating web-based media outlets to produce news for consumption by members and the general public. There has never been a greater opportunity for unions to compete head-to-head with the corporate-owned media. And never a greater need, given the fact that labor's side of any story so rarely gets told (and is even more rarely told well in what coverage we do get). But it's important to act before the window for staking out more turf on the internet closes - as it could depending on what kind of telecom regulations get passed in the next several years.
The study provides further ammunition for thinking that labor devoting resources and personnel to the online news game might be a good idea given its finding that "Believability ratings for national news organizations remain very low. If anything, believability ratings for major online news outlets - including news aggregators such as Google News and AOL News - are lower than for major print, cable and broadcast outlets." This indicates that even as people get more of their news online, they trust it less. So they're looking for credible sources of information on key issues, and it stands to reason that labor news outlets can become dominant sources for economic and workplace issues online by putting forth a concerted effort to represent the position of working families in these and releated areas.
On the down side, however, the study points out that "the proportion of people younger than 25 getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998." It also mentions that "Social networking sites are very popular with young people, but they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites."
Taken together, this information indicates that unions have to think creatively and strategically to produce news that will be of interest to young people. Just as labor already has to think seriously about how to attract young people to begin with - given the shrinking number of good unionized jobs available them in most sectors.
And perhaps the one solving the news problem can help solve the organizing problem. Because if young people can see the labor movement in the news more often and more favorably, it will be possible to convince a larger and larger segment of the young that unions are their to defend their rights on (and often off) the job. Plus, just getting the labor "brand" out there more on the internet can make young people more aware of how unions are more important than ever to their future success in a weak economy.
The report has a number of other interesting findings as well (like putting numbers on the CNN/Fox News political divide); so it's well worth checking out at (in PDF format) at http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/444.pdf.
- Jason Pramas's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- 582 reads
A critical need
I completely agree that a labor-oriented news source is really a critical need as part of a long-term movement-building approach to unionism. It's quite astonishing to consider that for decades, there were labor newspapers in many cities, despite the fact that the cost of producing a communications organ was much greater at that time then it is now.
A key issue, though, is that this would need to be more than a recapitulation of press releases issued by unions, and there's really shrinkingly little labor content produced in the country that's not in this cheerleading spirit.
So what would it take to set up a network of regional and national labor-oriented newspapers? Not much in terms of $, I suspect, but it would certainly take time & energy & writers. Peronally -- not speaking as an employee of any org. -- I would love to see this get built and would be willing to volunteer some time in on the tech side as well as the content side. Let's not just think about how great this would be and instead make a plan to start this up and build it out. Any others in the Northwest who'd be in on trying to bootstrap a regional site?
agreed
Welcome, Sage. And obviously, I agree. I already run an independent news site for the Boston area, and we are in no way shape or form interested in just recycling press releases - although if people want to do that in our opinion section, they are generally free to do so.
Anyhow, I am certainly willing to talk to people about how we got things going here. I think we can serve as a good model for regional news outlets - and we are willing to franchise to other areas. Check out our Open Media Boston site for more info on what we're up to.
I'd love it if labor would fund independent progressive pro-labor media outlets, but accept that the editorial policy is not always going to go the way any particular union or labor leader wants it to at any given moment. Not sure if that's realistic, but I think it would help the labor movement tremendously to let a bunch of labor journalists loose with a wad of cash and a mandate to go to war with the corporate news media on issues of moment to working families.
However, any new effort cannot be primarily print based in this day and age. If you look at the Pew study you'll see that only a minority of (mostly older) people get their news that way on a regular basis. I would recommend starting with web-based media and "reverse publishing" to print where market research and common sense indicate that it's useful to do so.
At least one national cable channel would also be nice, and maybe a satellite radio channel or two. But staking out major web turf is a key first step in an age where the new technologies are shaking out - and buying TV and radio properties might be an iffy proposition. Maybe buying more air time would be a better way to go.
But let's hear more from other folks ...