Final Edition 2001-01-10 How the Internet sustained a strike By Paul Andrews Seattle Union Record A digital Joe Hill helped carry the torch for the Seattle newspaper strike. Economies of scale. Low barriers to entry. Reduced distribution costs. Creation of community. The Internet was the strike's silent partner. It was one of the best examples anywhere yet of the Net's power to unite people in a cause. With all the hoo-hah over e-commerce and dot-this 'n' that in recent times, the prodigious community-building powers of the Net had been all but obscured. The Seattle strike served notice that the Internet is a force for the common individual * one to be reckoned with in any organizational endeavor. Not only did the Net make possible the popular strike newspaper, the Seattle Union Record, it also knit the strikers together through e-mail updates, discussion lists and morale boosts. Ten, then 16, Macintoshes. Ethernet network hubs and cables. A DSL connection. A few hundred feet of office space. And a bunch of outraged newsies looking to sustain their craft. That was all it took to help get the Union Record rolling. A "To:" e-mail address field that grew to hundreds of names. That was all it took to help keep the strike spirit energized. The Union Record's name was an homage to a Seattle labor newspaper of the early 1900s, when newspapers were put together with state-of-the-art technology tools of their day * typewriters and hot lead. Today's versions are word processors, html and Web servers. But the object was the same: producing high-quality journalism to remind readers that what counts in the process is people. Within hours of the Union Record's first Web posting at 4 a.m. on Nov. 21, managing editor Chuck Taylor was besieged by hundreds of congratulatory e-mails. The community's support gave a jolt of encouragement to the fledgling effort. Readers cared! Readers appreciated the experience, insight, polish and authority that came with original, professional journalism. Taylor was immensely gratified. "I'm astonished, given our modest beginning, that so many people responded," he wrote in a staff e-mail. Gradually, as the strike endured and people sensed a need to communicate, the e-mails started circulating. First among close friends, then on small lists. Eventually it fell to Times editorial writer O. Casey Corr to be Keeper of the List. Corr proved an even-handed moderator, circulating others' missives for comment while occasionally raising an issue or two on his own. "It just seemed natural because we were all accustomed to communicating that way from e-messaging and e-bulletin boards at The Times," Corr noted. When nerves frayed or spirits flagged, someone always came up with an encouraging e-mail to pass around. The mailing list provided an instant, no-holds-barred forum for airing frustrations as well as testing membership sentiment. Strikers got to hear each other out in ways not possible even in group meetings. In the process they got to know one another better and build a communality in purpose reminiscent of the college papers where many got their start in journalism. Without the electronic maypole to rally around, the strike might have dissolved in infighting and battle fatigue. It was all an experiment in New Journalism recalling Tom Wolfe's content revolution of the 1960s. Back then the issue was to tell the truth through new forms of prose. The Web's mission is to tell the truth through new forms of production and distribution * although Web content, too, is taking on its own distinctive flavor. Taylor saw the Union Record as an opportunity to prove that a Web newspaper had value on its own merits * not just as a derivation of a print version. "Most newspaper Web sites are an afterthought," he observed. He "wanted to turn the newspaper-Web paradigm upside-down." Taylor also wanted to show how, in the Web era, a geographically distributed newsroom could work. Most staff members filed stories from home computers and used Internet connections to e-mail them in for editing and processing. A top Web news executive told me over breakfast recently, "Newspapers have the local franchise. The head counts, the production values, the community's support." International and national news may e "commoditized" by the Web, he noted, but local news would always be the local newspaper's domain. To protect the local franchise, however, will require newspapers to leverage the efficiencies of the Internet as well. That process is still being ferreted out as online advertising and subscription models evolve. But the Union Record proved, if there was any doubt, that an online journal can differentiate from a traditional print newspaper while maintaining and even amplifying the high standards of professional journalism. A full archive of the Union Record's "daily miracle" is being compiled on CD-ROM. Paul Andrews is technology columnist for The Seattle Times. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] . _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
