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WCFL: Chicago's Voice of Labor, 1926-78. By Nathan Godfried. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. xx, 390 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-252-02287-4. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-- 252-06592-1.)
Nathan Godfried's study of the rise and fall of the Chicago radio station WCFL, the "Voice of Labor," rests at the rich intersection of media business, and labor history, illuminating the complex relationship between media policies and struggles for social change. Godfried's book also provides ample evidence of the often overlooked link between the contest for selfrepresentation in the mass media and the fight for political empowerment.
During World War I, two Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) officials, John Fitzpatrick and Edward Nockels, began the work of creating a "media web" composed of a labor newspaper, a news service, and a radio station. By 1919, the newspaper and the news service were up and running, but they came...