For the first time in over thirty years, journalists at The New York Daily News left their jobs on Thursday.
The Daily News Union was founded in 2021, and its newsroom employees are now negotiating their first contract. To protest staffing layoffs and a new policy requiring workers to obtain advance clearance for overtime, the union called for a one-day work stoppage.
When it was first established in 1919, The Daily News had one of the highest circulations of any daily in the nation. But as it battled with steadily dropping readership and diminishing revenue, the publication has been more undermined in recent years by workforce reductions and ownership changes.
Tribune Publishing, the company’s parent, was acquired by Alden Global Capital in 2021. The investment group has a history of slashing newsroom expenses after acquiring hundreds of newspapers nationwide.
Since spring 2022, around one-third of union members have departed The Daily News; as of right now, the union claims 54 members. A union steward and reporter for the Daily News named Michael Gartland stated in a statement, “In truth, we’re being crushed for cash. As a result, we have fewer employees, which reduces our capacity to serve the city.
A request for comment from a representative of Alden Global Capital was not immediately answered. The Daily News last had a five-month strike in 1990 and 1991. Journalists with Daily News want to picket outside the co-working facility that now houses their makeshift workplace on Thursday. 2020 saw the Daily News’ Lower Manhattan newsroom permanently shut.
Employees at Forbes and New York Daily News quit amid job losses in US media.
Employees at Forbes and the New York Daily News went on strike on Thursday, adding to the anxiety that has been building in the US newspaper business since the Los Angeles Times dismissed more than 100 writers last week.
Mike Gartland, a city hall reporter and union steward for Daily News, took aim at the paper’s owner Alden Global Capital by referencing one of the publication’s most well-known headlines, Ford to City: Drop Dead, which was published in 1975 in response to President Gerald Ford’s denial of providing financial assistance to New York. Alden to News: Drop Dead, wrote Gartland. Keep the Daily News Alive! The newspaper, which formerly employed illustrious reporters like Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, has completely disappeared.
The union said that The Daily News “previously boasted the ‘biggest circulation in America’ and was home to 4,000 employees.” However, “circulation fell by nearly half by the year 2000, and the journal saw many rounds of severe job losses.” There are currently 54 employees at the [News] Guild after 27 employees departed in the spring of 2022.
Staffers planned a 24-hour operation, using changes to the overtime policy and “chronic cutbacks” as justification for the first Daily News strike since 1991, the year the daily was acquired by British press tycoon Robert Maxwell. After the newspaper closed its Manhattan newsroom in 2020, protestors gathered in front of the Broadway building where it now occupies a co-working space.
The next year, Alden, a “vulture” group that was infamous for cutting newspaper budgets in an attempt to maximise profits, acquired the Daily News’s parent business. Gartland stated, “Alden wants to pretend like we’re not being sculpted. We’re not going to act in such a dishonest manner. In actuality, money is crushing us. Staff is reduced as a result, which reduces our capacity to cover the city. We think this is detrimental to New York.
Everyone I work with loves so deeply about this paper and this city, but Alden just cares about extracting money instead of investing in us,” said metropolitan desk reporter Ellen Moynihan. Newspaper reporting and production are not jobs that neatly fit into an eight-hour workday; tales go unreported if we are prohibited from reporting the news as it happens.
Alden was silent for a while.
Two years after organising a union, workers at Forbes, a financial news organisation headquartered in Jersey City across the Hudson River but controlled by a Hong Kong-based investment corporation, went on strike for the first time in protest of the lack of progress in negotiations.
According to Bloomberg, bosses were “dragging their feet and slow-walking this whole process,” according to writer and Forbes union head Andrea Murphy. We hope that [the strike] demonstrates to them our seriousness.
Three days were scheduled for the strike. Forbes stated that while it acknowledged the union’s right to a strike, it was “working closely” with them and was “disappointed by the choice to organise a walkout.”
With Donald Trump certain to secure the Republican presidential nomination once more, national and local US newspapers are facing significant personnel reductions and increased employee dissatisfaction as election season intensifies.
According to Bloomberg, bosses were “dragging their feet and slow-walking this whole process,” according to writer and Forbes union head Andrea Murphy. We hope that [the strike] demonstrates to them our seriousness. Three days were scheduled for the strike. Forbes stated that while it acknowledged the union’s right to a strike, it was “working closely” with them and was “disappointed by the choice to organise a walkout.
With Donald Trump certain to secure the Republican presidential nomination once more, national and local US newspapers are facing significant personnel reductions and increased employee dissatisfaction as election season intensifies. Workers at Sports Illustrated were notified by email last week that many of them will be let off soon. Employees at the Los Angeles Times were informed on Tuesday that at least 115 individuals, or nearly 25% of the organisation, will be laid off.
Even though the Washington Post is owned by one of the richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos, it claimed in December that it had achieved its goal of 240 voluntary job layoffs. Condé Nast had stated a month earlier in November that it would be cutting off a staggering 5 percent of its workforce, or about 270 individuals.
