When I became the editor of Racine Labor in 1979, I initially ignored the WSJ that came to our offices every day,
Then an experienced labor journalist informed me how indispensable the page one stories were. While the editorial pages expressed a remarkably vicious and short-sighted "take no prisoners" perspective on virtually every issue that displayed an almost schizophrenic split with its news coverage, the news stories were too good to be missed..
I was highly skeptical about the news stories, but started reading them anyway. Much to my amazement, I found story after story that needed much broader circulation, and based many Racine Labor stories on ideas originally found in the Journal..
The Wall Street Journal came up with story after storyl that was simply ignored by the rest of the corpororate media:
**The Journal devoted serious coverage to the movement against plant closings in the 1980’s.
**The Journal, back in the late 1980’s and even as recently as last year, has exposed majr corporations’ reluctance to hire African Amerian workers for auot plants because of their greater support for unionization.
**The Journal provided the best initial coverage of the "Reagan ranches" shanty-towns proliferating on the edge of Sunbelt towns as dislocated RustBetl workers and their families set up modern-day "Hoovervilles."
**The Journal exposed how the Nicaraguan contras were entirely a creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, from recruiting its leaders, drafting its constiution, and and guiding them each step of the way in posing as indigenous opposition to the Sandinista revolution.
**The Journal offered a great story on how Grehound buses and its owner Dial drove up its stock price by promising automated ticketing, but then experienced a wave of riots inside their stations when the equipment predictably malfunctioned.
**More recently, the Journal highlighted Prof. Alan Blinder’s warnings to white-collar workers, quoting Blinder as predicting that nearly 40 million jobs were "highly off-shorable."
But under the reign of Rupert Murdoch, there has been an exodus of some excellent journalists, , and the news pages are much more closely aligned with the paper’s insane editorial stance. This is one case where maintaining schizoprehnia would have ben healthy. Roger Bybee
I'm teaching in Labor Studies at Penn State and the University of Illinois in on-line classes. I've been continuing with my work as freelance writer, with my immediate aim to complete a book on corporate media coverage of globalization (tentatively titled The Giant Sucking Sound: How Corporate Media Swallowed the Myth of Free Trade.) I write frequently for Z, The Progressive Magazine's on-line site, The Progressive Populist, Madison's Isthmus alternative weekly, and a variety of publications including Yes!, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and several websites. I've been writing a blog on labor issues for workinginthesetimes.com, turning out over 300 pieces in the past four years.My work specializes in corporate globalization, labor, and healthcare reform... I've been a progressive activist since the age of about 17, when I became deeply affected by the anti-war and civil rights movements. I entered college at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee just days after watching the Chicago police brutalize anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Convention of 1968. I was active in a variety of "student power" and anti-war activities, highlighted by the May, 1970 strike after the Nixon's invastion of Cambodia and the massacres at Kent State and Jackson State. My senior year was capped by Nixon's bombing of Haiphong Harbor and the occupation of a university building, all in the same week I needed to finish 5-6 term papers to graduate, which I managed somehow. My wife Carolyn Winter, whom I met in the Wisconsin Alliance, and I have been together since 1975, getting officially married 10/11/81. Carolyn, a native New Yorker, has also been active for social justice since her youth (she attended the famous 1963 Civil Rights march where Dr. King gave his "I have a dream speech"). We have two grown children, Lane (with wife Elaine and 11-year-old grandson Zachary, who introduced poker to his classmates during recess) living in Chicago and Rachel (who with her husband Michael have the amazing Talia Ruth,5, who can define "surreptitious" for you) living in Asbury Park, NJ. My sister Francie lives down the block from me. I'm a native of the once-heavily unionized industrial city of Racine, Wis. (which right-wingers sneeringly labeled "Little Moscow" during the upheavals of the 1930's), and both my grandfathers were industrial workers and Socialists. On my father's side, my grandfather was fired three times for Socialist or union activity. His family lost their home at one point during the Depression. My mom's father was a long-time member of UAW Local 72 at American Motors, where he worked for more than 30 years. Coming from impoverished families, my parents met through a very low-cost form of recreation: Racine's Hiking Club.
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