A White-Collar Union.

A union of newspaper reporters and editors, the American Newspaper Guild (ANG) was founded in 1933 as a result of the Depression; by 1936 it had affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. One of the nation's first white-collar unions in the United States, it protected the job security of members and agitated for higher wages and better working conditions. The rise of the guild was highly controversial and was accompanied by conservative charges that the ANG was a communist agency seeking to take over the nation's press. The growth of the union was nonetheless striking, and by the end of the decade the ANG had become a permanent feature of the news business.

Romance and Reality.

Although newspaper work was often romanticized during the 1930s, with movies and novels portraying the reporter's life as adventurous and exciting, the...