Welcome back to Slow News Days, a now-and-then newsletter on journalism and journalism-adjacent topics in the Philippines.
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It is probably no secret — many of us have been saying as much on social media for months — that we are all tired, but it might not be common knowledge that online news workers are more tired than most.
Because they’re still figuring out how to best make money from online content, online news staff have to justify our existence to our employers by being cheap, always available and infinitely exploitable.
In the case of online newsrooms attached to legacy media, many are employed by a company separate from the main brand.
That means members of online news staff do not have the same pay scales and benefits that employees of the main brand enjoy.
They are also not eligible to join the company unions of the more established brands to push for those benefits for themselves.
This is not a situation unique to the Philippines. In fact, the International Federation of Journalists is still campaigning for its affiliate unions to include digital workers in their ranks or to organize unions for them.
In the meantime, we have situations where online reporters are expected to file at least eight stories in a work day that is eight hours long on paper but stretches to ten on most days — 12 if you factor in commutes.
We have newsrooms where reporters are on call even on their days off and editors who are expected to write news as part of the daily grind and on top of the actually separate job of editing.
On the altar of page views and lower overhead costs, we sacrifice context and analysis, our bodies, our minds and our selves. Initiatives for better journalism are treated as “passion projects” that we have to do on our own time, find funding to make happen, and get little institutional support for.
This will be my 15th year in news and around my 13th in online news and I am very tired of how we have been treated by the news industry. But there is time still to organize — possibly across online newsrooms — and demand our share of the profits that were earned with our time, our tired bones, our tears and our trauma.
Writers’ unions in the US and the Freelance Solidarity Project offer inspiration and models, as does the Philippines’ own history of labor unions.
In either case, a line applicable to both the Western and Philippine struggles: [W]hat force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one/But the union makes us strong.
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Do you work in an online newsroom or similar set up? How is work for you? How do you assert your welfare or raise issues in yours?
While we’re on the issue, the International Labour Organization’s (which uses both US and UK English in the same organization name!) high-level tripartite mission to the Philippines is later this month.
Some related stories:
Workers hopeful ILO visit will lead to better environment for labor, unions
Workers seek clear bilateral agreements, union-to-union deals for OFW welfareFrom the Neiman predictions for 2023: “Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth” : Journalists should not only demand the wages we deserve, we should ask for the lifestyle flexibility we need.
Meanwhile, the president is off to Davos for the World Economic Forum with the actual apologists and enablers that people on Twitter should be focusing on instead of random social media users regretting their votes last May.
Also, a happy ending for a Filipino teen in Singapore bullied on social media for calling a bag a luxury brand when other people said it wasn’t. I am glad the episode turned out well for her, but it is really just a bag and a lot of branding.