CALIFORNIA — A host of newspapers in the Southern California News Group agreed Friday to unionize. These journalists hope to fight off future layoffs and wage stagnation imposed by its hedge fund owners.
“This is a momentous day for the workers of the Southern California News Group,” said SCNG Guild spokesperson Josh Cain in a news release.
The final vote was 64-19 to form the union, representing 140 non-management editorial employees. Among the 11 newspapers in the guild are the Los Angeles Daily News, the Daily Breeze (Torrance), and SCNG's flagship newspaper, the Orange County Register.
“Some of these newspapers are unionizing for the first time. This means their staff, who have endured years of low pay as their newsrooms shrank around them, will now have a seat at the bargaining table,” said Cain, who is a Daily News reporter.
The papers are owned by Alden Global Capital, which has aggressively purchased print media properties and slashed staffs of all departments.
The SCNG Guild wants to stop future cuts. It’s just the latest to unionize so far in a busy year for media companies. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, formed a union, as did the Desert Sun, Austin American-Statesmen and New York Daily News newspapers.
Print newspapers’ primary revenue sources have come from subscriptions and advertising. Both have declined over the past several decades and media companies have struggled to adjust. Digital newsrooms like Vox Media, BuzzFeed and VICE Media Group have attracted large investments with spotty results. Those companies have also experimented with video journalism, earning them revenue from HBO and Netflix.
Related Stories
- U.S. unemployment claims fall to 376,000, sixth straight drop
- Global glitch: Swaths of internet go down after cloud outage
- Memorial Day travelers dealing with higher gas prices, crowded airports, rental car shortage
- With more cord cutting, will commercials becomes obsolete? Story-based advertising could be the way of the future
But most newspapers have struggled to decide whether to continue offering content for free versus putting up a paywall. Some papers, like the Wall Street Journal, put up a hard paywall — meaning zero or very limited free articles — immediately. That paper has been rewarded by its decision in 1996 to prevent free access to its journalism. It was among the first to do so.
The Orange County Register eschewed a paywall of any kind at the beginning of the last decade. It has since limited the number of free articles per reader each month.
Like all newspaper companies, SCNG has struggled with revenue, which has affected the company’s ability to pay living wages and all but prevented it from offering annual cost-of-living wage increases.
The guild has conscripted the advice of Media Guild West, which consists of papers including the Arizona Republic and the Los Angeles Times.
The union hopes to be in a better position now to bargain with Alden Capital. The guild plans to bargain for, among other things, wage and benefit increases.