Journalists at 11 Southern California daily newspapers announce plans to unionize
Journalists with the Southern California News Group announced Wednesday their plan to unionize at 11 daily newspapers and more than a dozen weekly publications.
Nearly three-fourths of the newspapers’ non-management editorial employees — including reporters, photographers, designers, copy editors and online editors — have signed authorization cards that will be submitted to the National Labor Relations Board in a petition for a union election.
The journalists’ union, the SCNG Guild, will be a unit of the Media Guild of the West, a local of The NewsGuild-CWA. MGW represents hundreds of journalists at the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic and other news outlets.
The journalists of the SCNG Guild are eager to better serve their communities across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Most newsrooms have endured pay cuts, with some employees going a decade or more without raises. SCNG newsrooms are stretched thin through layoffs and attrition.
“Our journalists have labored for years under increasingly difficult conditions. We intend to reverse that trend,” the Guild said in its mission statement.
“Readers need the services we provide more than ever,” the statement reads. “Our online traffic is surging, and our digital subscriptions are up. The public is clamoring for information that can help them and their families stay healthy and safe.”
The news group includes the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, (Long Beach) Press-Telegram, (Torrance) Daily Breeze, San Bernardino Sun, Pasadena Star-News, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News and the Redlands Daily Facts. The papers attract an online audience of 17.6 million monthly unique visitors, according to the company, and some 451,000 Sunday print subscribers.
The company is owned by Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group. The New York-based hedge fund is known for slashing newsroom budgets to the bone. Last week, Alden Global announced a $630 million deal to buy Tribune Publishing newspapers, even as it refuses to invest in its own newsrooms.
"The Southern California News Group likes to say that 'Local. News. Matters,'" said reporter Josh Cain, SCNG Guild organizing committee member. "But hollowing out our newsrooms with layoffs and attrition does not improve our ability to cover the news. Buying up every local paper in Southern California, cutting its staff to the bone and covering the same number of communities with even fewer resources does not help our readers. We want to save local news, and organizing will help us do that."
Ten of SCNG’s daily newspapers and some of its weekly editions are more than a century old. (The San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the youngster of the group, was established in 1955.) By unionizing, journalists are looking to stave off further cuts, “while providing a framework for allowing our newspapers to thrive,” according to their mission statement.
Jonah Valdez, crime and safety reporter: “Amid a summer of protests for racial justice, a small group of staffers of color led an effort to diversify SCNG staff and coverage to better reflect the diversity of the communities we cover. Management is listening, but much work is left. As a union, we can more effectively continue our collective fight for equity.”
Adam Grosbard, sports reporter: “I grew up in Pasadena, and know how a paper like the Star-News can be an institution in communities. But local news can't survive when newsrooms are gutted, employees are asked to do several people's jobs and reporters don't have a seat at the table to demand accountability from management, just as we as an institution demand accountability from those we cover.”
Teri Sforza, government watchdog reporter: “I've worked at the Orange County Register for more than two decades, through knuckle-busting news wars. Of course the business has radically changed, but what Alden has done to my newspaper breaks my heart. We have only a few dozen reporters now — a fraction of what we had when Alden acquired us in 2016. It was always hard to do all that needs to be done, and now it feels impossible. Mind you, the editors in our organization are great journalists committed to producing the best product we possibly can. The owners of our organization appear not to care, so long as the money is rolling in.”
Stephanie Stutzman, news reporter: “I joined the SCNG team in January 2017, and in just four years, I’ve seen my team dwindle due to layoffs and budget cuts. My editor and publisher have done everything they can to mitigate what we’ve lost by working insane hours and helping the reporters under them find the support we need to cover as many stories as we can. If MediaNews Group management truly cared for its boots-on-the-ground employees, we would know it because we would not have spent time out of our already busy days to pursue this unionizing effort. We understand that the newspaper world is changing — and will continue to change — but having a hedge fund decide how it changes is far from what we expected to witness.”
Ryan Hagen, local government reporter: “Our communities depend on good journalism, and good journalism depends on good journalists. Every year we have less of both, but we can fix that together. Unionized, we can ensure that our co-workers keep their jobs, our stories get the time they deserve, and our communities get the journalism they deserve. I support a union because a union supports good journalism.”
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The Media Guild of the West, TNG-CWA Local 39213, represents more than 500 workers, including at The Los Angeles Times and The Arizona Republic. The NewsGuild-CWA represents more than 25,000 journalists and other news industry employees in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
