{"id":182798,"date":"2015-06-04T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T03:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/04\/i-may-actually-start-reading-gawker-now\/"},"modified":"2015-06-04T22:28:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T03:28:00","slug":"i-may-actually-start-reading-gawker-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/04\/i-may-actually-start-reading-gawker-now\/","title":{"rendered":"I May Actually Start Reading Gawker Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Their writing staff just <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/culture\/2015\/06\/04\/3666164\/state-union-gawker-becomes-first-online-media-outlet-organize\/\">voted to unionize<\/a>, marking the first time that a digital news site has assumed the union label:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Wednesday night, Gawker Media voted to unionize. The stats: 107 of 118 eligible voters cast secret ballots, 80 of whom voted yes. Just like that, Gawker will become the first digital-only news site to have a union. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Hamilton Nolan, longtime Gawker writer, announced the editorial staff\u2019s decision to organize <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/why-weve-decided-to-organize-1698246231\">in a post<\/a> this April. At the time, he listed the motivations: that a union \u201cis the only real mechanism that exists to represent the interest of employees in a company,\u201d the continued pursuit of fair and transparent salaries, and the ability to make a little history as the first major site of its kind to organize. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">According to Gawker senior writer Sam Biddle, who answered questions via email, \u201cThe origin of the union isn\u2019t any particular grievance or crisis\u2014we all love our jobs and our workplace, and thought a union would be a great way to protect that, and make it even better for ourselves and our colleagues.\u201d In his five years at Gawker, he doesn\u2019t recall unionizing being \u201cseriously discussed.\u201d <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI think it happened now because the [Writers Guild of America, East] was so enthusiastic about making this happen for us,\u201d he said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t take very much convincing, to be honest.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One hopes that this jumps to HuffPo, which is according to some comments to a Gawker post, such a bad place to work that, <a href=\"http:\/\/tktk.gawker.com\/i-worked-there-i-ve-even-been-an-anon-source-for-gawke-1708553844\">a former assistant to Hunter S. Thompson only lasted two weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Their writing staff just voted to unionize, marking the first time that a digital news site has assumed the union label: Wednesday night, Gawker Media voted to unionize. The stats: 107 of 118 eligible voters cast secret ballots, 80 of whom voted yes. Just like that, Gawker will become the first digital-only news site to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[997,1129,1023,1022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-journalism","category-labor","category-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}