Members of the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) are winning the propaganda war caused by the CBC lockout and they are reinventing the way unions communicate with their members during labour disputes.

It’s no surprise that 5,500 talented and educated journalists, technicians, producers and on-air hosts would do a good job of telling us their side of the story. What is new is how the locked-out workers have created a diverse, entertaining and informative on-line community that tells their story better than a thousand purchased newspaper ads ever could.

In my search for news about the lockout, I started with the CMG website where I found a link to CBC on the line, an online magazine produced by the union. Here you can find strike news, photos and commentary. It’s a well-made, well-produced site that stacks up well with other union strike pages.

The stories of CBC reporters stranded in the Gaza Strip watching history (but not reporting it) are particularly interesting. But it’s when you start following the links that something unique happens.

The site has links to CMG locals in four cities. It also has links to CBC unplugged, a site produced by locked-out employees, and I love radio, a blog (an on-line journal that allows feedback from readers) by CBC employee and reporter Tod Maffin.

From either of these sites, there are links to over 25 blogs by CBC employees. Reporters, engineers, cameramen, office grunts and others are doing what they do best — reporting the news.

As a result, there is a conversation going on among 5,500 guild members across the country. They are swapping picket line stories, rumours, gossip and news, and commenting on each other’s posts.

They are even talking to management. One of the most interesting blogs is called “the tea maker,” a journal of someone miserably working inside CBC headquarters in Toronto.

In several cities, CBC employees are producing podcasts — one-hour radio shows that can be downloaded from the net. In Calgary and Vancouver — campus and other non-profit radio stations are airing these programs so we can all hear familiar voices tell us about their experience on the line.

You can listen to Ian Hanomansing explain what he thinks of the BBC newscasts taking his place on the supper-hour news, or Bill Richardson telling us why he is “pissed off” at the whole lockout experience.

The CMG has even decided (wisely) to credit time working on podcasts toward picket pay. So locked-out employees can put their reporting talents to the union’s advantage.

But what fascinates me more each day the lockout goes on are the blogs from ordinary CMG members — those who find themselves bewildered by events that have led them to be walking a picket line for 20 hours a week.

Their stories speak volumes about the experience. One young woman complains about how tired she is after walking a picket line for eight hours. Others debate the merits of contract work vs. long-term employment (a key issue in the dispute). Several talk about the humiliation they feel having to walk around with a sandwich board. Many wonder about the value of picketing outside empty buildings.

One thing that comes across loud and clear is the passion the CBC employees bring to their work. While many of them refer to their employer as “the corpse,” they all talk about how lucky they feel to work at CBC. They all speak about why they believe in public broadcasting. The sadness they feel at not being able to do their jobs drips off the screen.

These snippets of human experience are as compelling as a prime-time drama and twice as compelling as your average “real” TV show. Each day of a labour dispute has dozens of mini-dramas, mostly unseen by the public. Someone crosses a picket line, a group of people drop by with food, an encounter with a manager causes new rumours to be spread. Normally the public isn’t taken along for the emotional ride that picketers go through. But in the CBC lockout it’s all out there in the open.

CBC management has slick websites, expensive advertising campaigns and a national network of TV and radio stations to tell the public why they locked out their employees. But they are getting stomped in the public relations war by a handful of computers, a few digital cameras and some cheap recording equipment.

The CMG is re-writing the playbook for unions in a strike or lockout. Time will tell if it’s a success or not.