Chicago Reader staff joins the Chicago Newspaper Guild
Earlier today, I saw the Chicago Newspaper Guild put up a Facebook status update that I honestly would've never expected to see.
Post by Chicago Newspaper Guild.
For those who haven't read any of my previous posts about CNG, the guild is a labor union of reporters, photographers and other editorial employees in newspapers throughout Chicagoland. That includes staff of Chicago Sun-Times, Shaw Media-owned Joliet Herald-News and now-Tribune-owned Southtown Star, Northwest Indiana Post Tribune and Pioneer Press. And, back in November, the Guild did something unprecedented and created a unit for freelancers.
Chicago Reader joining is just as unprecedented. Even though you'd think that left-leaning alt-weeklies and labor unions would go together like bread and butter, none of the alt-weeklies in United States ever had their staff join one. Until now.
The Reader article about the move explains, in broad strokes, why the alt-weekly staff decided to break precedent
Over the years, the idea of joining a union was raised occasionally at the 43-year-old Reader without gaining any traction. Serious discussions among the staff began after the paper was purchased by Wrapports in 2012 and moved from the building it once owned at 11 E. Illinois into the Sun-Times Media suite at 350 N. Orleans. Some of the Sun-Times editorial employees they share space with already belong to the Newspaper Guild.
..
One Reader writer said employees hope that in difficult times for the newspaper industry, Guild affiliation will give them a louder voice in the much larger company for which they now work.
I suspect that the "one Reader writer" is Michael Miner, the paper's long-time media columnist. We haven't really seen in him write about Sun-Times Media for over a year, but when he did, it was clear that he supported the Guild when it tried to negotiate its latest contract. And his dislike for Sun-Times Media in general and the current Wrapports management in particular is pretty well-recorded.
Aside from it being unprecedented, the move is interesting for several reasons. Since Wrapports bought the Reader and put it to the Sun-Times Media umbrella, the conventional wisdom was that the alt-weekly was one of the few profitable parts of the company. Yet Wrapports never really invested in the Reader, or did anything to grow it. What's more, the recent months saw the iconic paper cutting back on long-running features and pages. Which, to me, suggests that if it is still profitable, Wrapports is determined to squeeze as much profit out of it as it can. Which does not bode well for the staff writers' job security. We've seen how, when other alt-weeklies tried to cut expenses, one of the first things they did is fire reporters and either replace them with freelancers or hire them back on as freelancers. And there is logic in that. Freelancers are cheaper, and they don't get health insurance and other benefits. But knowing that is cold comfort to writers whose jobs may be on the line.
What's more, the move comes as we've seen more and more newspapers join journalist unions as they try to gain some kind of leverage in negotiations over salaries and firing decisions. Gatehouse Media, which owns thousands of newspapers in smaller municipalities throughout the country, has become an especially fertile breeding ground for journalistic labor unions. And for at least one of those newly formed unions, the new leverage seems to be bearing fruit (though time will tell how this actually pens out).
Wrapports expects put out a carefully neutral statement, with the CEO saying that “We appreciate that staff exercised their right to vote and acknowledge the decision.”
It would be interesting to see how this pens out. I have to wonder whether we're going to see staff of other newspapers from other media companies will join the Guild. Shaw Media and 22nd Century Media, two Chicagoland media companies that have been growing and expanding over the last few years, seem like particularly ripe territory for expansion. Especially since the few reporters from Shaw Media
newspapers I spoke to didn't have too many nice things to say about their corporate overlords.
If the meager staff of 22nd Century Media, which is run by former GOP Senate candidate Jack Ryan, and which ran entire pages worth of ads for Bruce Rauner, winds up unionizing, I would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Speaking of irony... It occurs to me that, before Wrapports sold Sun-Times Media's suburban newspapers to Tribune Publishing, 3 our of its 8 newspapers (if you count Pioneer Press as as a single newspaper) were unionized. After the sale, 1 out of 2 of its newspapers were unionized. And now, all of its newspapers were unionized.
Yeah... Things are definitely going to get interesting
Post by Chicago Newspaper Guild.
For those who haven't read any of my previous posts about CNG, the guild is a labor union of reporters, photographers and other editorial employees in newspapers throughout Chicagoland. That includes staff of Chicago Sun-Times, Shaw Media-owned Joliet Herald-News and now-Tribune-owned Southtown Star, Northwest Indiana Post Tribune and Pioneer Press. And, back in November, the Guild did something unprecedented and created a unit for freelancers.
Chicago Reader joining is just as unprecedented. Even though you'd think that left-leaning alt-weeklies and labor unions would go together like bread and butter, none of the alt-weeklies in United States ever had their staff join one. Until now.
The Reader article about the move explains, in broad strokes, why the alt-weekly staff decided to break precedent
Over the years, the idea of joining a union was raised occasionally at the 43-year-old Reader without gaining any traction. Serious discussions among the staff began after the paper was purchased by Wrapports in 2012 and moved from the building it once owned at 11 E. Illinois into the Sun-Times Media suite at 350 N. Orleans. Some of the Sun-Times editorial employees they share space with already belong to the Newspaper Guild.
..
One Reader writer said employees hope that in difficult times for the newspaper industry, Guild affiliation will give them a louder voice in the much larger company for which they now work.
I suspect that the "one Reader writer" is Michael Miner, the paper's long-time media columnist. We haven't really seen in him write about Sun-Times Media for over a year, but when he did, it was clear that he supported the Guild when it tried to negotiate its latest contract. And his dislike for Sun-Times Media in general and the current Wrapports management in particular is pretty well-recorded.
Aside from it being unprecedented, the move is interesting for several reasons. Since Wrapports bought the Reader and put it to the Sun-Times Media umbrella, the conventional wisdom was that the alt-weekly was one of the few profitable parts of the company. Yet Wrapports never really invested in the Reader, or did anything to grow it. What's more, the recent months saw the iconic paper cutting back on long-running features and pages. Which, to me, suggests that if it is still profitable, Wrapports is determined to squeeze as much profit out of it as it can. Which does not bode well for the staff writers' job security. We've seen how, when other alt-weeklies tried to cut expenses, one of the first things they did is fire reporters and either replace them with freelancers or hire them back on as freelancers. And there is logic in that. Freelancers are cheaper, and they don't get health insurance and other benefits. But knowing that is cold comfort to writers whose jobs may be on the line.
What's more, the move comes as we've seen more and more newspapers join journalist unions as they try to gain some kind of leverage in negotiations over salaries and firing decisions. Gatehouse Media, which owns thousands of newspapers in smaller municipalities throughout the country, has become an especially fertile breeding ground for journalistic labor unions. And for at least one of those newly formed unions, the new leverage seems to be bearing fruit (though time will tell how this actually pens out).
Wrapports expects put out a carefully neutral statement, with the CEO saying that “We appreciate that staff exercised their right to vote and acknowledge the decision.”
It would be interesting to see how this pens out. I have to wonder whether we're going to see staff of other newspapers from other media companies will join the Guild. Shaw Media and 22nd Century Media, two Chicagoland media companies that have been growing and expanding over the last few years, seem like particularly ripe territory for expansion. Especially since the few reporters from Shaw Media
newspapers I spoke to didn't have too many nice things to say about their corporate overlords.
If the meager staff of 22nd Century Media, which is run by former GOP Senate candidate Jack Ryan, and which ran entire pages worth of ads for Bruce Rauner, winds up unionizing, I would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Speaking of irony... It occurs to me that, before Wrapports sold Sun-Times Media's suburban newspapers to Tribune Publishing, 3 our of its 8 newspapers (if you count Pioneer Press as as a single newspaper) were unionized. After the sale, 1 out of 2 of its newspapers were unionized. And now, all of its newspapers were unionized.
Yeah... Things are definitely going to get interesting