San Francisco newspaper strike of 1994
| San Francisco newspaper strike of 1994 | |||
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| Date | November 1--12, 1994 | ||
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The San Francisco newspaper strike of 1994 was a labor dispute called by the
Leadup to the strike
San Francisco's two major daily newspapers were longtime rivals that had been working under a joint operating agreement since 1965.[1] Employees had been working without a contract for the past year.
Wages were one major issue leading to the strike: while the unions demanded a 3.5 percent annual raise, management offered only a 2.46 percent annual raise over four years. Another point of contention was management's plan to cut the jobs of more than 150 teamster drivers over several years.[2]
The strike
The strike turned violent. Bricks were thrown through paper carriers' windshields as they drove from the newspaper distribution center, and one non-union driver was hit on the head with a lead pipe, suffering a fractured skull. One teamster driver was killed by electricity when scaling a power pole.[3]
Two online newspapers
At the beginning of the strike, The Examiner's Head of Development Chris Gulker re-launched his pilot web project called the Electric Examiner[4] as The Gate,[5] thus creating the official online version of San Francisco's two big newspapers. This news service remained "heavily dependent on wire-service stories"[6] for lack of contributing journalists and editors.
The striking journalists set up their own online newspaper, the San Francisco Free Press,[7] and competed with The Gate as "the soul of the Examiner and the Chronicle."[8] Led by the Examiner's Associate Editor Bruce Koon and former SF Weekly editor Marcelo Rodriguez,[9] they received assistance from Cynsa Bonorris, who coded the html, and Dave Winer, who pitched in helping automate the production process.[10] The team operated from a makeshift newsroom using their own hardware and a local ISP for rented server space.[11]
The Free Press scored a scoop during its first week, reporting that Senator Dianne Feinstein had been wrongly accused of hiring an undocumented worker in the early 1980s.[12]
During the strike both online newspapers were claiming a total of more than 100,000 readers a day, which was a fraction of the actual newspapers' estimated circulation of 600,000, but far beyond the 10,000 or so people in the Bay Area who had access to them.[12]
Negotiations and settlement
On November 12, 1994, after eight straight days of negotiations mediated by San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, the newspaper strike came to an end as management and a conference of eight unions announced a tentative agreement.[13]
Impact
- Examiner staff to the web. Among them was David Talbot, who founded Salon.com after the Guild's online newspaper convinced him of the "potential of the new medium."[15]
References
- ^ Farhi, Paul (September 1999). "The Death of the JOA". American Journalism Review. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^ Margolick, David (1994-11-02). "Strike Prevents Delivery of San Francisco Daily Newspapers". New York Times. Retrieved 2011-02-04.
- ISSN 0013-094X.
- ^ Gulker, Chris (1994-08-31). "News Wires". Electric Examiner. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^ a b Lewis, Peter H. (1994-11-09). "A Newspaper Labor Dispute Spawns an On-Line Rivalry". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^ King, Patricia (1994-11-21). "On Strike But Online, Too". Newsweek. p. 106.
- ^ "San Francisco Free Press". The Well. November 1994. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^ Morse, Rob (1999-11-13). "Winning the good fight". The San Francisco Free Press. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^ "SF Free Press staffbox". The Well. November 1994. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ISBN 978-0-307-45138-5.
- ^ a b c Bialik, Carl (2004-05-12). "Freeing the Press: A newspaper labor action in 1994 led to an 11-day online-news experiment [paywalled article]". The Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
- ^ a b Lewis, Peter H. (1994-11-13). "Nov. 6-12: The News, Virtually". The New York Times (New York ed.). p. 2. Retrieved 2011-02-02.
- ^ "Agreement in San Francisco Newspaper Strike". New York Times. 1994-11-12. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
- ^ Pogash, Carol (1996-06-01). "Cyberspace Journalism". American Journalism Review. Archived from the original on December 28, 1996. Retrieved 2011-07-08.
- ^ Herhold, Scott (1997-12-28). "Net magazine Salon epitomizes fate of mind over matter". San Jose Mercury News. Archived from the original on February 21, 1999. Retrieved 2011-07-07.
External links
Media related to San Francisco newspaper strike of 1994 at Wikimedia Commons
