There is power in (considering forming) the journalism union
I've learned to dread calls from my editor at Austin Weekly News. Used to be that he'd only call me to either do some fact-checking (which means that chances are pretty good that I messed something up) or to berate me from the way I wrote something, which often involved cursing me out. These days, he does occasionally call for other reasons, but when I get a call from him, I still brace myself for the rebuke or swearing.
So when he called me on a Saturday evening, while I was at the CVS, I was already dreading it. And when he said that he wanted to tell me something going on with the company, my dread only increased. I figured he was going to say that there were budget cuts and I was about to lose my gig.
So when he told me that Wednesday Journal Inc/Growing Community Media staff were thinking about forming a labor union, my first reaction was relief.
My editor explained that they believed that this was the only way to get the higher-ups to meet their demands - a sales floor all employees, paid retroactively, regular salary increases and better benefits. I had some inkling that the staff pay was low, even if not by how much, and I knew some reporters, especially some of the recent hires, were straining under the workload and felt like they weren't necessarily being heard,
Now, for a further bit of context, in the fall of 2019, Wednesday Journal Inc. announced that it will transition into the nonprofit Growing Community Media. The transition happened gradually over the next few months. It got a board of directors and started doing some fundraising, the papers that did election endorsements could no longer do them, but other than that, it didn't really feel all that different.
At the onset of the pandemic, as advertising cratered, Growing Community Media cut back on distribution and laid some people off. But it was able to get the Paycheck Protection Program loans and some grant funding. In the summer of 2021, the board agreed to raise pay for staff members.
Dan Haley, Wednesday Journal founder and the company publisher and EIC, has always struck me as someone who would try to take care of the employees - but only to a point. He gave everybody involved in Chicago Journal the heads up about the paper's shutdown almost three months ahead of time, but the stringers were pretty much left on their own. When I stopped writing for the Bugle after them not paying me for months, he agreed to a slight rate increase - but only slight, because there wasn't money for much more. Basically, I think Haley does care about journalism a great deal and he does care about people, but he is always conscious of the fact that those things cost money and, if he felt they weren't affordable, he would just plain say so.
I could see him hearing the reporters out, even genuinely sympathizing with their demands, but saying that there wasn't much he could do because the money wasn't there. But i didn't tell my editor any of that because, honestly, people have surprised me. I did say that I supported the staff's efforts to form the union, but I wasn't sure how that would benefit me, since I was a freelancer and thus wouldn't be a part of the union.
On Monday one of the reporters shared a Google Doc of the letter that didn't mention forming a union, but did request a contract which reflected a lot of demands my editor mentioned - a salary floor, retroactive salary increases and a "more robust benefits package to address the physical, emotional and psychological tolls our commitment to local reporting in a pandemic has had on our personal lives, among other vital needs." They requested a meeting on Wednesday.
The meeting, which took place over Zoom, went smoother than I expected. Haley said that he would propose the salary floor and retroactive increases to the board, which would take effect next year if approved. He also was willing to hear out some of the other concerns, including making the board meetings more transparent, and he said that he was wiling to discuss potentially reimbursing reporters for gas (something reporters have been asking for years, and, as I found out during Wednesday's meeting, our one staff photographer got at some point). A meeting to talk about freelancer compensation and maybe even benefits has been scheduled for January 19. But, true to form, after we talked about all of this, Haley said that GCM has been losing money - while advertising revenue has been decent, he said, fundraising hasn't brought in as much as they hoped, and the company had higher expenses due to rising employee-related costs (he framed that as, to paraphrase, "I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but that's just the way things are.") This got comments from reporters that they would appreciate hearing more about how the company is doing - which, Haley quickly agreed, was a good idea.
What will come of all of this? We'll see. The board still has to approve those raises, and there may yet be some unexpected complications down the road. But there is something to be said for, if not forming a union, than at least moving in that general direction.
So when he called me on a Saturday evening, while I was at the CVS, I was already dreading it. And when he said that he wanted to tell me something going on with the company, my dread only increased. I figured he was going to say that there were budget cuts and I was about to lose my gig.
So when he told me that Wednesday Journal Inc/Growing Community Media staff were thinking about forming a labor union, my first reaction was relief.
My editor explained that they believed that this was the only way to get the higher-ups to meet their demands - a sales floor all employees, paid retroactively, regular salary increases and better benefits. I had some inkling that the staff pay was low, even if not by how much, and I knew some reporters, especially some of the recent hires, were straining under the workload and felt like they weren't necessarily being heard,
Now, for a further bit of context, in the fall of 2019, Wednesday Journal Inc. announced that it will transition into the nonprofit Growing Community Media. The transition happened gradually over the next few months. It got a board of directors and started doing some fundraising, the papers that did election endorsements could no longer do them, but other than that, it didn't really feel all that different.
At the onset of the pandemic, as advertising cratered, Growing Community Media cut back on distribution and laid some people off. But it was able to get the Paycheck Protection Program loans and some grant funding. In the summer of 2021, the board agreed to raise pay for staff members.
Dan Haley, Wednesday Journal founder and the company publisher and EIC, has always struck me as someone who would try to take care of the employees - but only to a point. He gave everybody involved in Chicago Journal the heads up about the paper's shutdown almost three months ahead of time, but the stringers were pretty much left on their own. When I stopped writing for the Bugle after them not paying me for months, he agreed to a slight rate increase - but only slight, because there wasn't money for much more. Basically, I think Haley does care about journalism a great deal and he does care about people, but he is always conscious of the fact that those things cost money and, if he felt they weren't affordable, he would just plain say so.
I could see him hearing the reporters out, even genuinely sympathizing with their demands, but saying that there wasn't much he could do because the money wasn't there. But i didn't tell my editor any of that because, honestly, people have surprised me. I did say that I supported the staff's efforts to form the union, but I wasn't sure how that would benefit me, since I was a freelancer and thus wouldn't be a part of the union.
On Monday one of the reporters shared a Google Doc of the letter that didn't mention forming a union, but did request a contract which reflected a lot of demands my editor mentioned - a salary floor, retroactive salary increases and a "more robust benefits package to address the physical, emotional and psychological tolls our commitment to local reporting in a pandemic has had on our personal lives, among other vital needs." They requested a meeting on Wednesday.
The meeting, which took place over Zoom, went smoother than I expected. Haley said that he would propose the salary floor and retroactive increases to the board, which would take effect next year if approved. He also was willing to hear out some of the other concerns, including making the board meetings more transparent, and he said that he was wiling to discuss potentially reimbursing reporters for gas (something reporters have been asking for years, and, as I found out during Wednesday's meeting, our one staff photographer got at some point). A meeting to talk about freelancer compensation and maybe even benefits has been scheduled for January 19. But, true to form, after we talked about all of this, Haley said that GCM has been losing money - while advertising revenue has been decent, he said, fundraising hasn't brought in as much as they hoped, and the company had higher expenses due to rising employee-related costs (he framed that as, to paraphrase, "I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but that's just the way things are.") This got comments from reporters that they would appreciate hearing more about how the company is doing - which, Haley quickly agreed, was a good idea.
What will come of all of this? We'll see. The board still has to approve those raises, and there may yet be some unexpected complications down the road. But there is something to be said for, if not forming a union, than at least moving in that general direction.