From the senior editor
8,700.
That’s roughly the combined number of journalists who have joined either The NewsGuild or the Writers Guild of America, East, in the past five years or so.
I have to admit that that number surprised me. I had seen stories here and there about newsrooms organizing; I didn’t realize there were so many. But, as Steve Greenhouse — the longtime labor reporter for The New York Times — pieces together in his latest feature package for Nieman Reports, more than 100 newsrooms have unionized since 2015 as journalists have sought better benefits and raises, protections from layoffs, and a seat at the table as management set guidelines for working through the pandemic.
The wave of unionization has hit nearly every type of media outlet from magazines like The New Yorker to public radio stations like WBUR in Boston and dozens of newspapers in between. And, for those newsrooms that have been able to ratify contracts, the gains have been significant — setting minimum salaries, establishing grievance procedures, and extracting clauses designed to diversify applicant pools.
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