{"id":666,"date":"2007-10-25T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=666"},"modified":"2007-10-25T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-25T14:00:00","slug":"the-nuj-the-people-united-shall-never-get-their-act-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/10\/the-nuj-the-people-united-shall-never-get-their-act-together\/","title":{"rendered":"The NUJ: the people united shall never get their act together&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcaps\">W<\/span>hen I first tried to join the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">National Union of Journalists<\/span>, aged 22, I was told they were full. Really. This was because they were run by ultra-leftists who wanted to mobilise labour by keeping people out of trade unions.<\/p>\n<p>It took two years, but eventually they let me in, and by way of punishment I got sent possibly the worst periodical ever published, <span style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\">The Journalist<\/span>.<span id=\"fullpost\"><\/p>\n<p>When I went into management I gave up my membership, and witnessed at first hand how useless the union was at defending the interests of its members. On one occasion I actually had to recommend a lawyer to someone to make sure they got decent advice, so poor was their NUJ support.<\/p>\n<p>When <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">City University<\/span> ventured to advertise for a PhD studentship in citizen journalism in conjunction with <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sky News<\/span>, an NUJ newsletter headlined it \u201cWanna be a Doctor of low-cost news coverage?\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/donnachadelong.blogspot.com\/2007\/10\/journalist-article.html\">Sounds familiar<\/a>, eh?<\/p>\n<p>By all means let journalists organize themselves, but there have to be better vehicles than the NUJ for achieving those ends.<\/p>\n<p>Hats off to <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.telegraph.co.uk\/technology\/shanerichmond\/oct07\/nujs-blinkered-approach-to-online.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Shane<\/a>, <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzmachine.com\/2007\/10\/24\/the-new-collective\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> <\/span>and <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.guardian.co.uk\/greenslade\/2007\/10\/why_im_saying_farewell_to_the.html\">Roy<\/a> for telling it like it is.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first tried to join the National Union of Journalists, aged 22, I was told they were full. Really. This was because they were run by ultra-leftists who wanted to mobilise labour by keeping people out of trade unions. It took two years, but eventually they let me in, and by way of punishment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-journalists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}