In a creeping and creepy trend that has spiked journalists in the pocketbooks, forced worker donations to big corporations are once again hurting the little guys hardest.

Reporters are professionals, when it comes to putting out product,whether it be news articles or video segments or radio broadcasts. Still, most reporters are wage workers paid by the hour and mile.

In increasingly short-staffed newsrooms, reporters go the extra mile to cover stories every day. In many, they are receiving 1980s-level reimbursements for the miles they drive to cover those stories.

At the Daily Freeman newspaper in Kingston, a Journal Register company publishing hub 90 miles north of New York City, reporters are still paid only 26 cents a mile.

When the union representing them pushed for more, company representatives offered to boost the rate.

One cent.

Even after Hurricane Katrina spiked gas prices over $3 per gallon and the IRS reimbursement rate jumped to 48.5 cents per mile, Journal Register representatives wouldn't look employee Representatives in the eye at the bargaining table, when talking about the issue.

The offer stuck at one cent.

This despite the Journal Register's public effort to raise dollars from employees to donate to Katrina victims. The company offered to "match" some of those donations, up to a limit of $20,000, or $54 and change per newspaper in the large, publicly traded chain of 365 publications.

Journalists covering local impacts of Katrina on business, the poorest of local residents, have had to pay out far greater sums to drive for work than the New Jersey-based company has offered to raise for the most hard hit of the flood victims.

In the world of business, this is called cost shifting. Shifting the price paid for doing business from the wallets of the employees.

Already most journalists "donate" to their companies by paying for vital equipment, for the job. Tape recorders have become increasingly important to the job of print reporters where accuracy is currency in this competitive field.

Working without recorders would be irresponsible when writing features calling for pure question and answer style reporting. Still, corporations like the Journal Register Company resist even these relatively small-ticket investments.

At the Freeman, a 150-year old newspaper in New York’s Hudson River Valley, a company representative offered to buy one recorder to share among reporters - That assuming the labor negotiations conclude.

Union representatives have asked journalists and labor supporters to write emails and letters of support

The publisher of the daily freeman has in the past denied supporters the right to have their letters to the editor published, but don’t let that stop you from writing.

Email the publisher, Ira Fusfeld and Journal Register Company director of human resources, Charles Sheridan. Copy the union, so they know you care about the industry. Send Email

Paper notes of support and encouragement may be Mailed to the Daily Freeman and the Kingston Newspaper Guild, 79 Hurley Ave., Kingston NY 12401.

~Jonathan Ment