However your point is valid, Jeff, about actually DOING something about existing situations, rather than simply protesting. The concept of a strike here is a bit lame, given what’s happening to the industry as a whole. The unwillingness to face the reality that their industry is mutating is a tacit boycott of reality.

Organization is one of the keys - but not necessarily organization to protest or strike. Organization to get management to listen in terms of restructuring the business…now THAT seems a worthy goal. Organizing also to get the company to institute a retraining program would be a very constructive idea.

In the end, though, management does hold the reins of power, and you cannot force people to become intelligent. You have to teach them. If, like the American auto makers (who are now making advertisements, I understand, to try to get the America public to turn against Congress for trying to implement fuel efficiency standards for the Auto Industry) the news industries do not realize that the terra firma upon which they formerly stood is rapidly becoming a tar pit, then they deserve to become a part of the industrial fossil record. Ah, here’s a rare specimen of Journalistes Scripticus, from the late Offsetiscene Era! Note the low brow, suggesting reduced brain capacity… This was a placid herbivore, who was swept aside by the gradual environmental changes that carried the world into the later Electroniscene Era…

But last time I looked virtually all the media groups in the UK were still run by people taking home substanial six figure packages (no matter how bad the performance of their business) who spend a great deal of time telling the hacks that inflation-only pay increases are a shocking liberty which would drive the business into bankruptcy.

The NUJ is very far from perfect but a bit of solidarity and collective action in the face of owners/commissioners who will screw you at the drop of a hat is still necessary.

Incidentally the models of journalism which Jeff proposes are bascially about freelancing and in my experience it’s somewhat easier to get paid as a freelance if you have the assistance of a union.

And despite Jeff’s tiresome, cliched union baiting I think he’ll find that most NUJ members are willing to re-skill and innovate in a changing media environment.

Really makes you feel good that these guys are reporting on economic issues, doesn’t it?

I remember writing a wee while back that they could stay relevant if they thought a little differently, please see:

NUJ as advertising sales manager?
http://www.cmnw.co.uk/2006/10/nuj_as_advertis.html

old think: Stage a protest or rally
new think: Get busy solving the problem