Newspapers and Labor

Getting back to the Los Angeles Times' four-day series on the United Farm Workers, here's some more reaction to the stories from Times readers. The UFW points out that the paper's claim that the union fails to organize California farm workers "is directly contradicted by reporting ... from no less than 22 Los Angeles Times reporters and two columnists."

In addition, a California professor wonders why the LAT doesn't devote more resources to covering day-to-day labor issues:

Up until the 1980s, most major newspapers, including the Times, had a regular labor reporter. Today, few papers, the Times among them, have even one reporter exclusively assigned to cover labor.

Which leads me to this point: There are some compelling stories out there. In fact, The Monitor ran a great series last fall on migrant workers from South Texas.

In the weeklong P'al Norte series, Monitor reporter Victoria Hirschberg and photographer Joel Martinez accompanied a migrant family from the Valley on their annual trek north to Wisconsin.