2020

Staffers at four renowned media brands — Entertainment Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, Shape Magazine and PeopleTV — announced today that they have formed a union with The NewsGuild of New York. Read their mission statements. 

From CJR | Media companies haven’t made newsrooms inclusive. Can unions?

The NewsGuild of New York, representing nearly 4,000 media professionals and journalists, stands with our colleagues at The NewsGuild-CWA, and at news organizations and journalism advocacy groups across the world in opposition to the proposal by the United States’ Department of Homeland Security to limit the duration of “I Visas” to 240 days.

We, the staff of The Markup, are happy to announce that we have unionized with The NewsGuild of New York. Management responded to our request for voluntary recognition with an immediate and decisive yes, and full support for our union.

Today, after a marathon bargaining session over the weekend ending this afternoon, NewsGuild of New York members of The New Yorker reached a tentative agreement on just cause for the union’s first contract. Members achieved true just cause without an editorial exception — a loophole that Condé Nast and other media companies have been using in an attempt to undermine a decades-long standard in unionized newsrooms. 

The NewsGuild of New York is incredibly appreciative of the support that our New Yorker Union members have received this week from Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and former Attorney General Eric Holder—all of whom have decided that, in solidarity with the union’s fight for just cause, they will not be participating in scheduled New Yorker Festival events until New Yorker management agrees to grant this fundamental labor protection to their employees. Our thanks, too, to the countless New Yorker subscribers and fellow union members who have stepped up to show their support.

Today The New Yorker Union announced a digital picket on the evening Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren were set to speak at The New Yorker Festival. Both congresswomen have agreed to decline their invitations to the festival in support of the union's fight for crucial Just Cause protections. The members of the editorial unions from Ars Technica, BuzzFeed News, New York Magazine, Pitchfork, Quartz, Wirecutter, and Ziff Davis stand in solidarity with the congresswomen and with the New Yorker Union.

From The New York Times | Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have pulled out of next week’s New Yorker Festival, the star-studded annual event held by The New Yorker magazine, in solidarity with unionized editorial staff members, who are planning a digital picket line.

There will be a nomination meeting held for the position of NewsGuild of New York Local Chairperson and three Executive Committee positions open to all members in good standing of the NewsGuild of New York. The meeting will be conducted via virtual Zoom meeting on September 23, 2020, from 2 p.m. until  2:30 p.m. ET.

The racial, economic, and gender diversity of each of our workplaces has long been a priority for our members. It was, and remains, one of the most important reasons we organized in the first place: to have a voice in the growth and evolution of our work, we need true equity and inclusion. And negotiating over NewsGuild Diversity and Hiring proposals at Conde Nast has been a long process, beginning in early 2019, when the New Yorker Union first presented its Diversity and Inclusion proposal to David Remnick's bargaining team and Conde Nast representatives. 

We have fought tirelessly over the last year to secure the future of our proud publication, while continuing to produce the quality journalism for which Sports Illustrated is known. During that time, Maven has gutted our staff and implemented an exploitative contributor model, undermining our editorial values and threatening our ability to uphold our high standard of work.

From In These Times, In The Gap Podcast | It’s hard to demand fair pay when you don’t actually know you’re being underpaid. Data engineer Megan shares her eye-opening and humbling experience with the practice of pay transparency on the job and explains how it ultimately empowered her at the negotiation table. Newly elected New York Guild President Susan DeCarava speaks on the importance of taking collective action against pay discrimination, and how pay transparency benefits everyone in the workplace, especially Black women.

We represent employees from every facet of The New York Times, from editorial to business, from specific departments to ERGs. We come to this meeting with a mandate for sustained change and urgency to engage in a very necessary and long-overdue discussion about how to improve the working experience of Black, Indigenous and people of color at the Times, BIPOC@NYT.

Vox Media announced today it will be laying off members of the New York Magazine Union, despite cost-saving alternatives that would have saved jobs across the company. This includes a number of members who had already been furloughed or were working reduced hours for the last three months.

Today, the New Yorker Union is undertaking a half-day work stoppage. From 9 A.M. to 1 P.M., union members will not participate in the production or the promotion of content for the print magazine or the Web site. We are withholding our labor to demand just cause in our contract, and in protest of management’s resistance to our proposal and refusal to provide us with information necessary for bargaining. If we do not receive a sufficient response from management on our just-cause proposal, we will be forced to take further action.

At our Summer Membership Meeting on June 24, 2020, Dan Neuburger of People Magazine will be honored with the 2020 Thomas M. Keenan NewsGuild of New York Service Award. The Guild’s annual honor is presented to a long-serving member who has performed above and beyond in service to our union and who best exemplifies the ideals of a true labor leader.

From The Daily Beast | Employees at the music and culture site Pitchfork are staging a work stoppage in protest of what they say are anti-union initiatives taken by the publication and its parent company, magazine publisher Condé Nast.

The NewsGuild of New York issues the following statement in response to a clear threat to the health and safety of journalists we represent. New York Times employees will send a letter directly to Times management about their concerns.

From The Daily Beast | BuzzFeed News staff are taking a paycut and agreeing to share the workload in a deal to offset most of the potential employee furloughs the company planned for its editorial employees. 

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his production team were unjustly arrested this morning while reporting on police brutality protests in Minneapolis. They were taken into custody during a live broadcast while they were simply doing their jobs.

Today, our Guild siblings are calling on all of us to help elevate the message that we must save the news. Across Twitter, our union and nonunion colleagues are talking about what happens “without local news,” sharing impactful stories, and highlighting why news outlets provide an essential service and are a necessary watchdog for democracy. 

We are pleased that Maven has voluntarily recognized the SI Union. As the print, digital and video employees who make up this proud media brand, we look forward to building a strong and successful future for Sports Illustrated through a collaborative working relationship.

The pandemic has caused massive disruptions in our industry, which was already experiencing upheaval, but our work—across Condé Nast—is more essential than ever. Our staff has worked hard to keep the public informed about a generation-defining global crisis.

The digital editorial employees of People Magazine are seeking voluntary recognition as a union from parent company Meredith Corporation. These journalists are joining  their print colleagues as NewsGuild of New York-represented employees — breaking down the “digital divide” and accessing the same robust negotiated benefits and protections their peers have fought for and gained over the years. 

From The Hill | As COVID-19 wreaks havoc on the finances of newsrooms that were already struggling to stay afloat, some have argued that they are beyond saving and should be allowed to drown. It doesn’t have to be this way. It will take vision and focused effort, but we can protect local news and the critical role it plays in communities across the nation.

From The New York Times | Cheered on by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, a new generation is making gains on everything from layoff protections to gender-neutral pronouns. Can they help save the industry?

The NewsGuild of New York is pleased to announce nominations are open for the 2020 Keenan Service Award, named in honor of the late Tom Keenan, a stalwart Guild activist.

Staffers at tech magazine and website WIRED announced today that they have formed a union with the NewsGuild of New York, joining The New Yorker, Ars Technica, and Pitchfork in the ranks of unionized publications at Condé Nast.

The members of The New Yorker Union, Ars Technica Union, and Pitchfork Union are pleased to welcome the editorial staff of WIRED to the NewsGuild family, which includes such esteemed publications as The New York Times, Reuters, New York Magazine, BuzzFeed News, and many more. 

Due to the industry-wide impact of the coronavirus, Vox Media announced today that it will be imposing furloughs, reduced work hours, and pay cuts that impact the New York Magazine Union members.

Tomorrow, our Executive Committee will host a Guild-wide Town Hall meeting at 7 p.m. to discuss the NewsGuild-CWA (our parent union) resolution calling on congress for stimulus relief for media companies across the nation experiencing financial duress as a result of this pandemic. We will also talk about how our Local is negotiating and mobilizing around COVID-19-related issues that arise in our workplaces. 

This week, The NewsGuild of New York's Executive Committee took an historic vote of solidarity to stand with NewsGuild members across the nation. 

NewsGuild members across the U.S. and Canada have been working tirelessly to provide accurate information to our communities about the coronavirus pandemic. This kind of important journalism is needed more than ever right now.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti today announced plans to reduce salaries across the company in anticipation of the industry-wide financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The NewsGuild of New York is working to ensure that you and your colleagues are safe and up to date on any changes in policies and procedures at your workplace. We’re here to advocate for your concerns, to work with management on meeting  the challenges to come, and to support each other through this pandemic. 

While the spread of coronavirus widens and the cases of COVID-19 increase, we’re focused on how this affects your physical safety and working conditions.

Today the American Arbitration Association conducted a vote count for the NBC News Digital Unit Chair election. Ballots were sent to 131 eligible voters, and 84 ballots were received by the deadline.

NewsGuild of New York members have made it clear that they will not stand by while companies shield harassers at the expense of worker safety. The Guild is committed to abolishing the use of non-disclosure agreements in the media industry and is proud of our members for leading this effort in our newsrooms.

Last night at our Winter Membership Meeting the Guild’s Diversity Committee introduced our first-ever union-wide diversity and inclusion census. It is a brief and anonymous demographic survey designed to collect the data necessary to help make our newsrooms and our workplaces better reflect our communities. Most importantly, it will provide us with a broad baseline against which to measure the results of employer efforts to hire, retain and promote traditionally underrepresented groups in our workplaces. 

BuzzFeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith announced today that he'll be leaving BuzzFeed in March. 

The Deadline Club's journalism competition, one of the most prestigious in New York, draws hundreds of entries each year. The 2020 contest covers work that was published or broadcast in 2019 by news organizations in the New York metropolitan area. 

We, the editorial staff of Sports Illustrated, are uniting to fight for the future of the publication that has stood for the best in sports journalism for more than 60 years.