THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN CREATIVE CLASS

How media workers were bolstered and buffeted by unions and anti-communists for much of the 20th century.

The sweeping title of Clark’s debut book belies its relatively narrow focus: the shifting fortunes of New York employees in the broadcast, design, and journalism industries from roughly between the world wars to the Vietnam era. It’s largely the story of unionization efforts and the push back they received from management, legislators, and the culture at large. Persuading fellow journalists that organizing didn’t bias them was one battle, fought by prominent critics like Dwight Macdonald; another was winning a 1937 Supreme Court case that removed an organizing exemption for journalists. But victories during the period were often modest and pyrrhic, as the boom years following World War II were met by Red Scare rhetoric (and laws like the Taft-Hartley Act) that diminished union rolls. The subject matter will appeal more to work and labor sociologists than media junkies (let alone casual readers), and Clark’s scholarly approach does little to enliven it. However, the author does explore some engaging examples of what made the struggle worth fighting. Consumer Reports, for instance, was originally produced by communist-aligned activists determined to make consumer culture more quality-focused; in the 1940s, the short-lived afternoon paper PM made a noble effort to deliver worker-friendly journalism without advertising; the Design Laboratory attempted to use modernist aesthetics in service of practical and inclusive design rather than the planned obsolescence and tail-fin–tweaking of corporate America; the 1960s TV drama East Side/West Side served to spotlight contemporary social issues and elevate the medium above cop and hospital shows. Though none of these efforts did much in themselves to make society more equitable, Clark persuasively suggests that they created a groundswell of support for the debates over gender and pay equity to come.

A wonkish but thorough accounting of how media workers have historically gotten short shrift.