New Media Unions

Organizing Digital Journalists

Nicole S. Cohen, Greig de Peuter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138327115
• eBook ISBN: 9780429830723
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Investigating the wave of unionization that has seen over 60 digital and legacy media outlets unionize since 2015, this book explores how a flash of organizing by digital-first journalists has become a full-blown movement to unionize journalism, particularly in the United States.

Through in-depth interviews with journalists and organizers, New Media Unions maps the process of labor organizing, foregrounding journalists' voices and documenting a historic and ongoing moment in the digital media industry. Cohen and de Peuter examine what motivates union drives, then follow journalists through the making of a union from scratch. They explore how journalists strategically self-organize, apply their communication skills to alternative ends, generate affective bonds of solidarity, and build power to confront anti-union campaigns and bargain first contracts, winning significant gains and drafting a new labor code for journalism in a digital age. This book demonstrates that if journalism is to have a future, it must be organized.

New Media Unions provides a counter-perspective on an industry in flux, whose protagonists—young journalists facing precarious futures—are using collective organizing to articulate a bottom-up vision for journalism's future. This is a valuable resource for academics and researchers interested in political economy, journalism studies, and labor studies.

Book website: www.newmediaunions.com

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Successful union drives and union affiliation, May 2015–November 2019
• Introduction
• 1 Motivation
• 2 Activation
• 3 Mobilization
• 4 Recognition
• 5 Negotiation
• 6 Transformation
• Bibliography
• Index