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[Geckoman]

The world's first ever blog strike has been a success!

The Honolulu Advertiser unions have just held the first ever blog strike!

After 3 days of the blog strike, management has agreed to come back to the negotiation table.

Because this is the world's first known blog strike, thus an historical event, it made national news.

See this New York Times article about it at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/business/media/25byline.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin or see below.

Go unions!



A Byline Strike in Honolulu Extends to Newspaper�s Blogs
By BRIAN STELTER

Writers sometimes take breaks from the daily demands of posting to a blog, but they rarely, if ever, stop posting in the name of a protest.

Then again, most bloggers don�t work under labor union contracts. Reporters at The Honolulu Advertiser, the largest newspaper in Hawaii, do have such a contract, and last week they held a three-day blog strike to show opposition to proposed changes to it.

Byline strikes � when reporters insist that their names be removed from their articles � are a common union tactic at newspapers, used to show the solidarity of editorial workers against the paper�s management. But blog strikes are something new, a symbol perhaps of the shift to digital publishing in newsrooms.

Officials at the Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, a media union with more than 34,000 members, said they were not aware of any previous blog strike. The closest action to it, said Linda Foley, the president of the guild, came in 2003 when journalists at The Wall Street Journal refused to appear on CNBC during a contract dispute.

The Honolulu Advertiser started to publish blogs nearly two years ago. Several of its blogs are written by editors and freelancers, and those continued to be published last week. But the blogs written by reporters had no new posts, other than an explanation of the temporary hiatus, which drew comments of support from readers.

Mark Platte, the paper�s editor, said that the blog blackout was within the reporters� rights. They �have to write for print � that�s part of their jobs � but blogs are voluntary,� he said.

The blog strike received the full support of the union members of the newspaper, reporters said. The same members also withheld their names from their articles in the print paper and from news videos on the paper�s Web site.

Mike Leidemann, a reporter at The Advertiser and the president of the Hawaii Newspaper Guild, said the staff�s contract expired last summer. In late January, after months without negotiations, the newspaper�s owner, the Gannett Company, delivered what Mr. Leidemann characterized as a �last and final offer,� catching union members by surprise.

The newspaper�s reporters and photographers agreed to withhold their bylines to show opposition to the contract, and blogs were a natural next step, Mr. Leidemann said. �You can�t write a blog without your name attached, so it was really part of the byline strike,� he said.

On Friday, the final day of the labor action, Gannett agreed to return to the bargaining table. Some reporters wasted no time in returning to their blogs; The Advertiser�s college sports writer posted at 12:13 a.m. Saturday. BRIAN STELTER

Source: The New York Times; February 25, 2008; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/business/media/25byline.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin