Update, June 10:  With our contract set to expire in November, the BANG-East Bay bargaining committee is already preparing for upcoming negotiations. That means we need to hear what your goals and priorities are for our next agreement with the company.

You may have already received a copy of a bargaining survey from your shop steward. If not, your steward will be approaching you in the coming days to fill out a copy of this short, anonymous survey. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to complete and return this to your steward, and help our unit get ready for negotiations.

Also in this update:

• Online filing
• Membership clarification
• San Francisco Chronicle bargaining update
• Sacramento Bee tentative agreement
• Hawaii Newspaper Guild merger

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Journalists packed City College of San Francisco on April 24 for our first “Spring Training for Journalists,” a daylong workshop we hope will become an annual tradition for news staffers, freelancers and students throughout our region.

This year’s offering, “Reinventing Your Career,” covered the job and technology skills demanded by a fast-changing news profession. Top-flight instructors ran seminars on topics such as entry-level multimedia, audio production basics and working with interpreters to report on underserved communities.

Admission was free to all dues-paying Guild members, including those working at BANG newspapers and members of our freelance unit.

Journalists packed the session “Driving Web Traffic,” led by Wired.com Science Editor Betsy Mason and Knight Digital Media Center Webmaster and Scot Hacker, which outlined how social networking and HTML coding can be used to help build an online audience.

They raved about the concise and funny instruction of former Chronicle staffer Kim Komenich, a longtime photojournalist who now teaches multimedia at San Jose State. Komenich gave a whirlwind introduction to producing “Multimedia on the Cheap,” showing how journalists can experiment with new forms of storytelling, even if they or their newsrooms lack the funds to make a major investment in equipment and software.

And they took notes as keynote speaker Davia Nelson, half of the award-winning NPR documentary duo, “the Kitchen Sisters,” showed how lowering a microphone down to chest level can help put an interview subject at ease.

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Update, Feb. 23: Last Friday, MediaNews Group’s holding company announced that it is out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Here’s a short item on this from E&P.

Meanwhile, life marches on for our newsroom Guild unit, where we’re preparing to enter contract bargaining later this year. Our next general membership meeting will be:

7 p.m. Monday, April 5

at the CWA Hall

1831 Park Blvd., Oakland

Since we’ll begin negotiating for our next contract in late summer-early fall, we need your help and ideas now to shape our next agreement with management. Come by the meeting and let us know what your priorities are in the next contract, and how you think we should go about getting those things. You can also send us an e-mail or share your thoughts with a shop steward.

At our next meeting, we’ll also be assembling the bargaining committee that will be negotiating with management. If you’re interested in helping out that way, please attend next month or send us a note.

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Update, March 4: A judge today approved a restructuring plan that will allow Affiliated Media Inc., the parent company of MediaNews, to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The decision came despite a handful of last-minute objections from creditors.

The deal cuts the company’s debt from $930 million to $165 million, according to a press release issued on PR Newswire earlier this morning.

“We knew we had a good plan going in, and it had been approved by the lenders before it was filed,” CEO Dean Singleton said in the statement. “We are pleased that it won confirmation, and that our company is now well-positioned for the changing days ahead.”

A Bloomberg story provides more details.

Corporate officers have repeatedly said the debt restructuring will not affect daily newspaper operations or employees. Nonetheless, officials up to the highest level of The Newspaper Guild have been following the situation closely. We will continue to share details about the bankruptcy, and its aftermath, as they emerge.

As always, please don’t hesitate to bring any questions or concerns to your unit officers or shop stewards.