Pew Study Shows Potential Opening for Web-Based Labor News Outlets

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press released a study this week that might not seem to be of immediate interest to the labor movement. However, reading not so far between the lines of the results of their 2008 News Consumption and Believability Study reveals some good and bad news for unions working on improving their presence on the internet. And could signal an great opportunity for labor to create more online news outlets.

The main focus of the study is to demonstrate that more and more people - especially young people - are now getting their news online. In their survey 3612 adults nationwide, they found that even as the percentage of people reading newspapers regularly in print or online has fallen precipitously from 40% to 34% in just 2 years, the proportion of Americans who get news online at least 3 days a week has increased from 31% to 37%.

This is important for unions to consider. Especially since the study makes clear that much of this online news is not coming from traditional sources. This means that labor should strongly consider bulking up its online presence - with a special emphasis on creating web-based media outlets to produce news for consumption by members and the general public. There has never been a greater opportunity for unions to compete head-to-head with the corporate-owned media. And never a greater need, given the fact that labor's side of any story so rarely gets told (and is even more rarely told well in what coverage we do get).  But it's important to act before the window for staking out more turf on the internet closes - as it could depending on what kind of telecom regulations get passed in the next several years.

The study provides further ammunition for thinking that labor devoting resources and personnel to the online news game might be a good idea given its finding that "Believability ratings for national news organizations remain very low. If anything, believability ratings for major online news outlets - including news aggregators such as Google News and AOL News - are lower than for major print, cable and broadcast outlets." This indicates that even as people get more of their news online, they trust it less. So they're looking for credible sources of information on key issues, and it stands to reason that labor news outlets can become dominant sources for economic and workplace issues online by putting forth a concerted effort to represent the position of working families in these and releated areas.

On the down side, however, the study points out that "the proportion of people younger than 25 getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998." It also mentions that "Social networking sites are very popular with young people, but they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites."

Taken together, this information indicates that unions have to think creatively and strategically to produce news that will be of interest to young people. Just as labor already has to think seriously about how to attract young people to begin with - given the shrinking number of good unionized jobs available them in most sectors.

And perhaps the one solving the news problem can help solve the organizing problem. Because if young people can see the labor movement in the news more often and more favorably, it will be possible to convince a larger and larger segment of the young that unions are their to defend their rights on (and often off) the job. Plus, just getting the labor "brand" out there more on the internet can make young people more aware of how unions are more important than ever to their future success in a weak economy.

The report has a number of other interesting findings as well (like putting numbers on the CNN/Fox News political divide); so it's well worth checking out at (in PDF format) at http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/444.pdf.