Back to fall, back to school, back to the office. From the New York Times to Hearst, media companies are summoning employees to appear in person; many executives’ acceptance of remote work, facilitated by the pandemic, has now, apparently, run out. But as Susan DeCarava, the president of the NewsGuild of New York, told Digiday, “Management cannot require employees to work in-person without the Guild’s agreement.” The NewsGuild has some six thousand members in the New York area; many don’t want to return to their desks. Elsewhere, unionized journalists are battling the encroachment of artificial intelligence, displacement, and unfavorable corporate policies. More are continuing to organize: this week, employees at a chain of Bay Area papers formed a guild; as Paul Kiel, a reporter at ProPublica, said when his newsroom announced a union, “The question is not so much, ‘why unionize,’ but ‘why not?’” The other day, workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tore another page off the calendar, having spent eleven months on strike. All this during the worst year on record for job cuts in the media business.
This season evokes a familiar feeling. In a 2018 issue of CJR focused on work, Steven Greenhouse described the journalism scene circa 1933, when newspapers were being lashed by the Great Depression. Thousands of people lost their jobs; many reporters suffered steep pay cuts. “Seeing many journalist friends get pounded financially, Heywood Broun, a member of the Algonquin Round Table and at the time one of the nation’s best-known and best-paid columnists, took it upon himself to spearhead an effort to unionize his fellow ‘hacks,’” Greenhouse wrote. In a piece for the New York World-Telegram, Broun implored writers to organize; within months, chapters of the American Newspaper Guild appeared in cities across the country. Decades later, the American Newspaper Guild became the NewsGuild. “For all of the changes in journalism since Broun’s call to arms,” Greenhouse observed, “today’s journalists are streaming into unions for many of the same reasons as reporters in the 1930s: poor wages, long hours, skimpy benefits, and worries about layoffs.”
Of course, there are plenty of differences between past and present. As Greenhouse noted, “Digital media’s contract negotiations often focus on issues that would have hardly crossed the minds of Newspaper Guild bargainers in that union’s early days.” In addition to emerging technology and return-to-office policies, there’s diversity, equity, and inclusion. Maya Binyam wrote for CJR in 2020 about union efforts “to correct the homogeneity of the industry, which has historically and systematically exercised hostility toward workers who are not white, male, and wealthy—which is to say, workers who represent the vast majority of the world.” The results have been mixed. Nearly every union organizer Binyam spoke with expressed a belief that managers “genuinely wanted to possess diversity.” But at the bargaining table, “when presented with language that would bind the company to concrete obligations, these same managers fall back on noncommittal rhetoric or vacate the conversation altogether.” That much, as Binyam noted, has historical resonance: the early labor movement was stained with white supremacy and often excluded Black workers. “Should the labor movement seem like an obvious vehicle for challenging racism,” Binyam observed, “it is only because organizers have recently made it so.”
Today, as in the thirties, journalists have shown an eagerness to link arms. “They are all but organizing themselves,” Greenhouse wrote. They are joined, too, by workers across the economy. In Hollywood, the week began with news that, after months on strike, the Writers Guild of America had reached a tentative agreement with studios; their actor-colleagues are still on the pavement. “Americans liked that story,” Sarah Jones wrote for New York magazine. She added, “This is a remarkable time for the labor movement.” In Michigan, where the United Auto Workers are on strike against the Big Three, Joe Biden and Donald Trump flew in to join the action (or attempt to). Scrolling through picket-line pictures, America’s labor fight can look rosy—fun, even. And yet: no one actually wants to plead. It’s fall, and everyone would just like to get back to work. (You can read Greenhouse’s piece from the archive here and Binyam’s piece here.)
Other notable stories:
- The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer questioned why so many members of the media reported that Trump was heading to Michigan to appeal to striking autoworkers when, in fact, he appeared at a non-union shop and has not backed the striking workers’ actual demands. “Trump is not supporting the autoworkers’ efforts to win a contract that allows them their fair share of the wealth they create,” Serwer writes. “What the Trump campaign wanted was ambiguous headlines that might suggest he was supporting workers he was not in fact supporting, so that he could get credit for something he didn’t actually do. And the political press largely obliged, repeatedly muddying the distinction between supporting union workers on strike and having a campaign rally.”
- The Washington Post’s Laura Wagner profiled More Perfect Union, a “small nonprofit labor-advocacy publication” that not only covered Biden’s trip to the autoworkers’ picket line this week, but helped broker it. In other political-media news, Ro Khanna, a progressive member of Congress, will host a four-hour livestream in DC today with political streamers from YouTube and Twitch, calling such figures “the equivalent of talk radio or cable for the new generation”; the Post’s Taylor Lorenz has more. And, per Roll Call, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reviewing how congressional reporters get their credentials—“a rare lawmaker intervention into a process long overseen by journalists.”
- Nieman Lab’s Sarah Scire reports on dual financial and identity crises at the Society of Professional Journalists. “The flow of membership and conference revenue has slowed to a trickle and the organization’s outgoing treasurer describes the financial situation as ‘dire,’” Scire writes. “Maybe more importantly, SPJ is grappling internally with its role as journalists seem drawn to more niche professional organizations, the field involved in First Amendment advocacy has grown more crowded, and a sprawling state-chapter system appears unsuited for the digital age.”
- In March, the BBC set off a firestorm when it suspended Gary Lineker, a top soccer host, for tweets criticizing government asylum policy, a perceived breach of the broadcaster’s duty to be impartial (even though Lineker is not in its news division). Afterward, bosses promised to review their social media policies. Yesterday, they unveiled new guidance barring Lineker and other high-profile entertainment hosts from weighing in on party politics while their shows are in season (though they can still comment on issues).
- And the local-news chain Gannett courted headlines (and some controversy) recently after advertising reporting jobs focused on Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Since then, the Wall Street Journal reports, it has fielded around a thousand applications—“including from Emmy-award winning journalists, an influencer whose Beverly Hills agent reached out about the job and a reporter who currently works at the White House.”
ICYMI: Failures like Rolling Stone’s do not happen in every newsroom
