Today on the podcast I've got two guests, Lucas Smolcic Larson and Stephen Fastenau. They're both reporters at the Beaufort Gazette and Hilton Head Island Packet, two newspapers in the South Carolina Lowcountry that share a newsroom. Just last week more than 80% of the reporters, photographers, and producers down there signed cards authorizing union representation by the NewsGuild labor union, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America.
I don't know how to express how happy this makes me. Local news reporters are some of my favorite people on earth, and, by and large, they deserve much better pay and working conditions than they're getting. I don't know of any other newsrooms in South Carolina that have taken this step toward unionizing, but seeing one notch a decisive victory like this makes me so, so glad. I hope it catches on.
I hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast, and I hope you find it as inspiring as I did. What they did takes a lot of courage.
If you're a working journalist interested in learning more about the unionization effort down in Beaufort, their website, again, is packetguild.org. The national union's website is newsguild.org.
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Episode 9: Good news for people who love local news