Massachusetts AFT’s Jennifer Berkshire Wins Steinbock Media Award
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Jennifer Berkshire is the winner of the 2010 Max Steinbock Award, the highest honor given by the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA). Berkshire, who writes for the Massachusetts AFT Advocate, won for her story, “We Wanted a Voice.”
The award, named after a longtime ILCA president, honors the best labor story written in the previous year.
The ILCA’s annual Labor Media Awards this year includes a new prize category, social media, for those who ran campaigns with social networking tools. Other categories include print, Web, photo essay, electronic newsletter, blog and multimedia campaigns. The awards will be presented formally Nov. 19 at the annual ILCA Awards Luncheon in Washington, D.C. Click here for a list of this year’s winners.
Berkshire tells the story of the successful effort by teachers at Conservatory Lab Charter School in Brighton, Mass., to form a union. Nearly 2,000 teachers are currently employed by charter schools in Massachusetts. Unlike traditional public school teachers, educators at charter schools do not have rights and working conditions spelled out by a negotiated contract.
Labor Journalists Will Look Behind the Scenes Before G-20 Meets
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Two weeks before the G-20 summit rolls into Pittsburgh to discuss the global economic crisis, labor journalists from across the country will come to the Steel City to document the real economic picture for workers without the hype.
As part of its biennial convention, Sept. 10-12, the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) will create a 48-hour “media center” to serve as the nerve center of a special project about Pittsburgh’s workers, their organizing and bargaining campaigns, their victories and how their stories illustrate the deeper economic shifts affecting us all.
After a day of training and a morning of briefings by Pittsburgh activists, the journalists will form teams and fan out over the city covering workers’ stories. When they return, they will use the media center to write and post stories, blogs, photo galleries and other media.
The registration deadline is Aug. 7. Click here to register for the convention and here for more information on the convention.
