2011 was a year that featured big developments across the world.
From Tunisia, protests erupted across the middle east. The suggestion
of one consumer advocacy magazine launched protests across the United
States with young activists voicing dissatisfaction with the priorities
of the nation’s leaders.
2012 promises to be full of important decisions. Here at home, PNS
is reaching 24 million people a week. To put this in comparison, top
online sites are getting 24 million views a month. Before we get too
wrapped up in the new year, we would like to take a look back at all of
the work we accomplished in the last year.
We assembled this list to highlight some of the great changes that
took place in 2011 and the good work our team has done in covering the
events as they have unfolded.
It was a turbulent year in the telecomm industry. Workers for major
communications carriers fought hard to preserve jobs and we covered the
struggle between middle class workers and corporate executives.
Walmart was also in the crosshairs of workers seeking better
compensation. We followed the case brought against Walmart for failing
to promote women at the same pace as men in the organization. This,
despite the Arkansas behemoth ranking among the Top 50 companies for
executive women.
What started on the south side of Manhattan became a global
movement. Cities large and small saw protesters encamped in parks and
public spaces demanding a change to business-as-usual and our broad
network of reporters enabled us to cover many local movements. This
story covers Occupy protesters from Dayton, Ohio demanding better
solutions to the housing crisis and better protection from predatory
lending.
Wisconsinites swarmed the state capitol when Gov. Walker moved to
strip workers of collective bargaining rights and make huge cuts to the
state budget. We were on the scene speaking with local advocates about
their disagreement with the Governor and the fears they had about his
plans’ effects on Wisconsin.
Our New York producers were quick to catch this Suffolk County
attempt to violate the privacy of pre-paid cell phone users. The
boogeymen of “drug dealers” and “terrorists” was dismissed as an
unwarranted attempt to prevent a non-existent threat by incurring upon
individuals’ civil liberties.
< We were excited to begin using spot.us to allow individuals to help support our reporting. This is the first story we produced with the help of the spot.us
community. The community-funding model allowed our reporter to dig deep
into the data and uncover some alarming trends in the Florida housing
market.
The economy may have dominated the discussion, but we continued to
keep track of a wide range of issues. This was one of the most popular
stories we did on animal welfare last year. We are always looking to
keep the breadth of coverage as broad as possible and with our new individual membership drive and the help of networks like spot.us, we are increasing the variety of our coverage.
We were happy to follow Ms. Magazine ‘s very successful campaign,
which saw results within a year. In the first week of 2012, the Obama
Administration announced that they would follow Ms.’ directive and
update the definition of rape.
2011 was a big year for collaboration for us. We also joined forces
with the American Independent News Network to track the influence of
the Koch Brothers on Colorado politics. While their role in the
Wisconsin political process was made well known, we continued to follow
the trail and highlight their undue influence in Colorado.
With all of the protests and strikes going on, we want to wrap up
our review of 2011 on a positive note. A story we followed from the
beginning came to a happy ending in the form of a failed merger and the
preservation of many American jobs.
