NJ Reporters Walk Off Job Amid Nationwide Gannett Newsroom Strike

NEW JERSEY — Who reports the news when reporters go on strike? That was the rallying call from hundreds of protesting journalists across the nation on Friday as they launched a one-day strike against one of the largest media corporations in the United States.

More than 200 reporters in 14 Gannett-owned newsrooms across the nation, including New Jersey, said they walked off the job to protest austerity measures and staff cuts that are “devastating local news around the country.” The workers are affiliated with the NewsGuild union, a division of the Communications Workers of America.

According to NewsGuild, the striking workers include a “supermajority” of journalists from The Desert Sun, Arizona Republic, and 12 newsrooms in New Jersey and New York, including The Record, the Asbury Park Press and The Journal News.

In addition to the striking journalists, hundreds more across other Gannett newsrooms in Austin, Florida, Ohio, Milwaukee and elsewhere are taking a “coordinated lunch-time walkout” or staging picket lines in their city in solidarity with their colleagues, NewsGuild stated.

Here’s why the wordsmiths are up in arms, their union said:

“This action is in response to the company laying off 400 employees and cutting another 400 open positions in August, which represented 3% of staff, followed by additional cost-cutting austerity measures announced in October which included furloughs and cuts to the 401k plan. These devastating cuts to local newsrooms come on the heels of Gannett announcing a $100M stock buyback program for shareholders in February, directing critical funding away from local newsrooms and to rich shareholders. Last month, the Economic Policy Institute reported that CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978 and the average CEO is paid hundreds of times as much as a typical worker in 2021. Gannett is no exception. Gannett CEO Mike Reed receives an $8 million annual salary—160 times the median salary of a Gannett worker. All the while, Gannett has been stalling on bargaining at various tables across the unionized newsrooms, and not bargaining in good faith around demands for family-wage salaries, adequate staffing, and diverse newsrooms.”

Many reporters with Gannett have “struggled to afford even the most basic of needs” due to the company’s history of low wages, their union alleges.

Reached for comment about the strike, a Gannett spokesperson provided the following statement to Patch:

“Our goal is to preserve journalism and serve our communities across the country. Despite the anticipated work stoppage in some of our markets, we will not cease delivering trusted news to our loyal readers. In addition, we continue to bargain in good faith to finalize contracts that provide equitable wages and benefits for our valued employees.”

Gannett’s portfolio of media assets includes USA Today, local media organizations in 45 states in the U.S., and Newsquest, a wholly owned subsidiary operating in the United Kingdom with more than 150 local news media brands.

Friday’s work stoppage comes a day after the company released its third-quarter 2022 financial results, which declared that Gannett “continues to respond decisively to the ongoing macroeconomic volatility and inflationary pressures.”

“The earnings report issued by Gannett yesterday once again shows that Mike Reed’s solutions to the problems facing the company revolve around punishing employees: cutting jobs and cutting compensation is not the pathway to sustainable journalism,” said Tony Daley, an economist with the Communications Workers of America.

Friday’s strike is the biggest coordinated action from union employees after Gannett laid off 3 percent of its staff in August, the NewsGuild said.

According to the union, workers taking part in the one-day walkout will be publishing news on Gannett Union Press (gannettunions.org), a strike paper created to continue coverage of important community events. Other Gannett media workers have launched a GoFundMe campaign to support reporters facing financial hardship due to the strike.

When staff at the Bergen Record, the Daily Record and the NJ Herald, as well as NorthJersey.com, first announced they planned to form a union affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York in 2021, they saw support from several elected officials, including Gov. Phil Murphy and both of New Jersey’s U.S. senators, Robert Menendez and Cory Booker.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. also supported the unionization drive, saying that he “loudly opposed” the sale of the Gannett chain to GateHouse Media in 2019, which he called a “hedge fund that has a history of firing reporters and imposing pay cuts.”

• See related article: NJ Newspapers Try To Unionize; Reporters Have Demands For Gannett
• See related article: Gannett Purchases North Jersey Media Group Publications
• See related article: Massive Newspaper Merger Puts NJ Jobs At Risk, Senators Say

Send news tips and correction requests to eric.kiefer@patch.com. Learn more about advertising on Patch here. Find out how to post announcements or events to your local Patch site.