Today delegates voted to promote  – even more actively – the recruitment of internet journalists, and welcomed the completion of a new study into the digital media industries in the UK, which could be used as bases for recruitment as motion 161 was carried.

The debate also turned to the situation at PA, who undermined recent strike action at Yorkshire Post Newspapers by providing copy. The room realised the need to focus recruitment at PA, to head off any future situations where the company goes against the action of NUJ members.

More on New Media in the NUJ here

Delegates at the New Media Conference were shown the findings of a recent study – commissioned by the union – into the creative industries and how that sector could be farmed to increase membership

With 900,000 creative industries jobs in the UK, the New Media Industries Council, who were leading the conference, admitted that the NUJ has to embrace these industries.

They said the union needed to accept members from them in the same way it changed to embrace the PR division. This would mean potentially welcoming web workers and designers into the union to boost the numbers, as the traditional media declines.

Attracting New Media to the NUJ

The puzzle is how to convince these digital workers to join, with one blogger, participating online, asking what NUJ could do for them and WHY web workers should join at all.

Council member Donnacha DeLong explained there were many issues that the NUJ was already addressing, that were specific to web workers including RSI and legal issues surrounding online comments.

“It’s about keeping the channels of communication open. The door to the union has to be open. Lets tell them it’s a great honour to join the union.”

Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, focused on the jobs crisis in the media in his speech to delegates today.

Job cuts and their impact on communities

With losses affecting all aspects of the industry, the room was encouraged to appreciate campaigning already done and how a stronger union can make bigger differences.

He used the Midlands town of Long Eaton as a a case study – wich has recently lost its only local newspaper. Dear called corporate media “negligent over jobs, reckless with democracy”.

He attacked Trinity Mirror bosses, who recently called NUJ members “reckless and negligent”, for their pay packets and “failed corporate business model for news”.

He amused the room by calling them with “pigs caught with their snouts in the media trough, their heads in the sand and their arses exposed”.

Dear attacked the culture of profits, which is leaving local and national democracy unscrutinised.

Tough times for the union

He went on to highlight how the union itself is facing tough times, and decisions have to be make to ensure the continued support to members

To applause, Dear ended his speech quoting William Morris: “Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel.

“If our ideas of a new society are to be anything other than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working people; and then I say, the thing will be done.”