Labor Makes the News: Newspapers, Journalism, and Organized Labor, 1933–1955

Abstract

Labor Makes the Newsexamines newspaper coverage of organized labor during the burst of union activity that began in the early 1930s. For activists and sympathizers, it was an article of faith that newspapers were deliberately unfair. However, publishers and their employees responded to the labor movement with great diversity, in part because publishers recognized that many readers were union members. For reporters, covering labor tested the boundary between personal and political interests and the professional ideal of neutrality on news pages. While publicly condemning the press, labor officials used newspapers to establish their legitimacy and wage war against enemies. Examining the treatment of organized labor provides a window for viewing the interplay among the sociopolitical, economic, and occupational goals of the publisher, the editorial worker, and the labor leader.

Unionization in the American Newsroom, 1930 to 1960

“…The impact of unionization on those relationships changed news workers’ lived experiences. The history of the ANG and the legal maneuverings of publishers regarding white‐collar regulation have been explored before by other scholars (Glende, ; Leab, ; Linder, ). But as Bonnie Brennen has pointed out, the actual day‐to‐day lives of news workers during and after unionization has remained under‐examined in traditional media histories (Brennen, 1995, 197‐209).…”

“…These include, notably, Bonnie Brennen, Daniel Leab, Sam Kuczun, Benjamin Scott, Marianne Salcetti and Phillip Glende. Most of these researchers have been focused on early period of unionization up to World War Two, including the initial creation of a class consciousness within American journalism under Guild influence (Brennen, ), coverage of the ANG in the mainstream press and the role of the labor reporter during the Great Depression (Glende, ), how the Guild became a more traditional “trade union” versus a professionalization‐oriented society (Kuczun, ) and how the Guild was forged in the fire of publisher opposition and government aloofness (Leab, ). Another helpful, and recent, perspective situates the labor movement in journalism within the context of the federal policies driving the New Deal and the development of First Amendment media law (Scott, 2010).…”

“…Gradually gaining force in the early‐to‐mid 1930s, by the late 1950s unionization was the norm and not the exception in newsrooms. This paralleled a broader development, one in which unions of all kinds reached an apex of popularity and influence during the decade (Glende, ).…”