Labour Newswire – Lessons from the UK
More than a decade has past since we launched the Labour Newswire. As union websites told us they added the newswire, we added them to our global directory. The problem is, we don’t know when those sites remove the newswires or if the sites themselves disappear, and we don’t always know when new sites start using the newswire. Which is why we need to go through the directory from time to time and clean it up.
I’ve just completed the clean-up of the UK section, which has dropped from 124 to 35 sites. If this is true for most countries, then the actual number of websites using our newswires is closer to 200 than to 700.
The good news is some very large and important sites continue to use our newsire in the UK, such as the UNISON national and Scotland regional sites, and the national websites of PCS, TSSA and USDAW. (Napo has temporarily taken the newswire down from its national site, but the General Secretary assures me that it will soon go back up.) The popular TUC’s UnionReps.org.uk site continues to use it. The health and safety newswire is particularly successful.
My next task is to start visiting UK union websites which do not use our newswire and get them to do so. If any of you can do the same with your countries, it would be appreciated. (I know that Stuart is working on the USA.)
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Paul Tulloch and I will soon be doing the same in Canada.
I would willingly do so but the damn thing is still plagued with garbled characters. RSS feed’s no better, half the titles don’t show in the list, just the country name.