Journalists at two dozen local newspapers across the U.S. walked off the job Monday to demand an end to painful cost-cutting measures and a change of leadership at Gannett, the country’s biggest newspaper chain.
FILE: Sections from a USA Today paper are displayed in Norwood, Mass. on August 5, 2019. Next week, journalists in the U.S. who work for Gannett – the nation’s largest newspaper chain – will be walking off the job. The mostly one-day strike, which will start Monday, June 5, 2023, aims to protest the company’s leadership and cost-cutting measures imposed since its 2019 merger with GateHouse Media.
Steven Senne / AP
The strike involves hundreds of journalists at newspapers in eight states, including the Arizona Republic, the Austin American-Statesman, the Bergen Record, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, and the Palm Beach Post, according to the NewsGuild, which represents workers at more than 50 Gannett newsrooms. Gannett said that there will be no interruption in its news coverage. The strike is expected to last two days for two newspapers, and one day for all the others.
The walkouts coincided with Gannett’s annual shareholder meeting, during which the company’s board was duly elected despite the NewsGuild-CWA union urging shareholders to withhold their votes from CEO and board chairman Mike Reed as an expression of no confidence in his leadership. Reed has been in charge of the company’s operations since the 2019 GateHouse Media merger, which has seen layoffs and newsroom closures. Gannett shares are down more than 60 percent since the merger.
Susan DeCarava, president of The NewsGuild of New York, called the shareholder meeting “a slap in the face to the hundreds of Gannett journalists who are on strike today.”
“Gannett CEO Mike Reed didn’t have a word to say to the scores of journalists whose livelihoods he’s destroyed, nor to the communities who have lost their primary news source thanks to his mismanagement,” DeCarava said in a statement.
The NewsGuild claimed in a legal filing that Gannett’s management has gutted the newsrooms, and reduced coverage to pay off a huge debt burden. The cost-cutting measures also include forced furloughs, suspension of 401K contributions and suspensions.
“We want people in our local community to know what this company is doing to local news, and we want Gannett shareholders to know what Gannett is doing to local news,” said Chris Damien, a criminal justice reporter and unit guild chair the Desert Sun, which covers Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley in Southern California.
Gannett Chief Communications Officer Lark-Marie Anton said the company disagreed with the union’s recommendation to vote against Reed.
“During a very challenging time for our industry and economy, Gannett strives to provide competitive wages, benefits, and meaningful opportunities for all our valued employees,” Anton said in a statement.
The Gannett strike was held in conjunction with a strike by 250 U.S. unionized employees of Insider Inc., an international company that publishes Business Insider. The Insider Union members, who formed in April 2021, and are represented by The NewsGuild of New York, went on strike when they failed to reach an agreement for the first time with the company.
Gannett’s striking journalists are negotiating new contracts. They claim that the company is being slow to respond, but Anton insists the company continues its fair negotiations.
One of the demands in the contract is a base salary of $60,000 annually. The median pay for Gannett employees in 2022 was $51,035, according to the company’s proxy filing. Reed’s total annual compensation was valued at nearly $3.4 million, down from $7.7 million in 2021.
NewsGuild/CWA President Jon Schleuss stated that the union had proposed to lower Gannett’s median ratio of CEOs-to-employees from 66:1 down to 20:1. Schleuss claimed that Reed was not available to answer questions and the meeting only lasted eight minutes. In a series of tweets, Schleuss called the meeting a “complete joke.”
Gannett, the company that owns USA Today as well as more than 200 daily newspapers in the United States with print editions announced in August last year that it was laying off staff from its newsroom to cut costs. The company is struggling with a decline of revenue due to a drop in advertising sales and customer subscribtions.
Newspapers have been struggling with these challenges for many years, as readers are turning away from local papers for information and entertainment online. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have large digital audiences because they cover broad topics. However, regional and local newspapers have not been able to duplicate that success.
Gannett reported that its digital subscriptions grew 15% over the past year and revenues from digital circulation increased 20%. The company posted a profit of $10.3 million compared to a loss of $3 million in the same quarter last year. However, revenue dropped by 10.6%. The company reported that it had also repaid $37 million of debt.
According to NewsGuild’s estimates, Gannett has lost 47% of its workforce in the last three year due to attrition and layoffs. The union reported that the number of employees at some newspapers has dropped by up to 90%.
NewsGuild stated that, for instance, The Arizona Republic went from 140 employees in its newsroom to 89 workers this year. The Austin American-Statesman’s newsroom decreased from 110 to 41 employees during this time period.
The union claimed that some newspapers had abandoned coverage of local business or sports. The union said that reporters have been forced to cover several different beats. Some publications have shifted their focus from local news to regional news.
Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute’s media business analyst said the strike showed that the union has gained momentum, even though it isn’t strong enough to stop layoffs.
Schleuss reported that 18 Gannett Newsrooms have been unionized within the last five year. Two additional newsrooms, the Athens Banner-Herald in Georgia and the Savannah Morning News in South Carolina, voted to unionize on Monday.