Newsworkers Unite Labor, Convergence, and North American Newspapers - Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture

Over the last forty years, new technology and rapid concentration of ownership have caused fundamental changes in North American newspapers. Newsworkers' unions have struggled to protect their members and to reinvent themselves to keep up with the relentless pace of change in the workplace, and recent strikes such as that of Seattle newspaper workers highlight the ongoing challenges. This engaging and accessible book focuses on how the Newspaper Guild-the main union for reporters and editors-adopted a strategy of labor convergence, joining with other media workers in the large and diverse Communications Workers of America union. McKercher also looks at the nationalism of Canadian newsworkers who instead joined an all-Canadian union similar to CWA and explores a case study on an extreme form of labor convergence in Vancouver. She concludes that while labor convergence is a work in progress, it is a promising development for newsworkers and their unions, helping them adjust to change and perhaps expand into new areas of the communication sector.