NewsGuild of New York

The NewsGuild of New York represents employees at some of the largest and most influential media outlets in the world and has been accused by some, including its own members, of leveraging those connections to promote left-of-center and pro-labor union views in news reporting and analysis. ^{3 4 5 6}

Background

The NewsGuild of New York, Local 31003 of the Communications Workers of America, is the local union in New York City for the NewsGuild-CWA, the largest union of professionals at newspapers, magazines, online news publications and other media organizations. ^{2 7}

Thanks to the concentration of media companies in New York City, the NewsGuild of New York represents reporters, editors, producers, photographers, researchers and other newsroom employees at some of the largest and most influential media outlets in the world, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and Company, the Associated Press, Reuters, Condé Nast, Forbes, Gannett, NBC News, ProPublica, Consumer Reports, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Fortune, the Daily Beast, People, Entertainment Weekly, Martha Stewart Living, The New Republic, New York Magazine, the New Yorker, and Ziff Davis. ²

The union claims that its membership grew by 28 percent between 2021 and 2024, and says it represents nearly 5,500 members. ^{7 2} In the past decade, the NewsGuild has successfully organized new York-based digital newsrooms such as Ars Technica, BuzzFeed News, Pitchfork, the Marshall Project, and Law360, as well as traditional newsrooms that had previously resisted unionization such as the New York Daily News, New York Magazine, and The New Republic. ^{7 5}

Activism

The NewsGuild of New York has taken left-of-center stances on many sociopolitical issues, including abortion, LGBT issues, racial diversity, and corporate governance. ^{8 9 10 6 11}

The union’s official position on abortion rights is that they are equivalent to “workers’ rights,” and it negotiates for health insurance coverage that includes abortion, contraception, and gender-reassignment procedures. ¹¹

A NewsGuild press release on the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol described it as an “attempted insurrection” and “a disgraceful, last-ditch effort to support an administration that defies our First Amendment rights, incites violence toward members of the media, and pushes misinformation that threatens the foundation of a free society.” ¹²

In 2023, NewsGuild members at children’s publisher Scholastic tried to use their contract negotiations, including a one-day walkout, to give more prominence to books focused on racial, gender, and sexuality issues at its book fairs for elementary and middle school students. ¹⁰

The union has criticized the use of artificial intelligence by media outlets and has attempted to negotiate limitations on the use of AI into its contracts with media corporations. ¹³

It regularly criticizes hedge fund-owned media companies for being “predatory” in their management and business practices. ^{14 15 16}

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the NewsGuild advocated government subsidies for journalism .¹⁷

In January 2022, the NewsGuild called for newsrooms in New York City to be closed out of concerns over the COVID-19 virus “until at least the summer,” and supported mandatory vaccines for all employees including “either a third shot of Moderna or Pfizer-BioNtech vaccines, an additional shot after the J&J vaccine or booster-equivalent vaccines otherwise authorized by the World Health Organization.” ¹⁸ The NewsGuild opposed efforts by employers such as the New York Times to get employees to return to in-person work in newsrooms, and made hybrid and remote work part of its contract negotiations with employers. ¹⁹

Role in Spreading Media Union Activism

In 2020, then-New York Times media columnist Ben Smith, who had previously worked as editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, identified “a new breed of union activists” who had taken over NewsGuild leadership positions in New York and elsewhere and were creating “a little-noticed but powerful generational shift that is changing the culture inside newsrooms.” ⁵ Similarly, left-wing magazine American Prospect described this trend as “when journalists became workers” and aligned themselves socially and politically with trades unions. ²⁰

In 2019, then-New York NewsGuild president Grant Glickson nominated Los Angeles Times journalist Jon Schleuss for the national NewsGuild presidency, creating the NewsGuild’s first contested presidential election in more than a decade. ²¹ Schleuss ran on a more avowedly radical and activist platform than the traditional model of focusing on member pay and benefits favored by longtime president Bernard Lunzer. ²¹ Schleuss, who had not been born when Lunzer had first joined the union, originally lost the election by 261 votes, but that result was set aside when it became clear that hundreds of union members had not received ballots. The election was re-run, with Schleuss beating incumbent Lunzer by 465 votes. ²²

The next year, Glickson himself would lose his bid for reelection to the NewsGuild of New York’s presidency to younger and more radical Susan DeCarava, who pushed to extend the union’s bargaining to issues including the business structure of media companies and “structural inequity” in newsrooms. ^{23 5}

Independence Caucus

In 2023, dozens of NewsGuild members at the New York Times formed an “independence caucus” within the union to advocate for journalistic independence and against using their positions for sociopolitical advocacy. ^{3 4} The caucus included high-profile journalists including Megan Twohey, who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse story and is broadly credited with helping launch the “#MeToo movement.” ²⁴ Other high-profile Times journalists signing onto the Independence Caucus included intelligence agency and national security journalist Julian Barnes and legal writer Emily Bazelon. ^{25 26}

Earlier that year, Bazelon’s reporting on transgender issues had been criticized in a 2023 open letter signed by some of her fellow Times colleagues as well as high-profile Hollywood celebrities and other left-leaning activists, for giving equal time to critics of gender reassignment treatment and reporting on questionable scientific justifications for medical care plans. ^{9 27}

Other New York Times journalists criticized the Times employees who signed the open letter for airing their personal disagreements with their fellow journalist’s work, and Times leadership said it “would not tolerate” its journalists engaging in protests against the paper’s journalism or publicly criticizing their colleagues. ^{28 29} NewsGuild of New York president Susan DeCarava supported critics of Bazelon’s reporting and claimed the union’s contract with the newspaper protected them from being disciplined for their actions. ²⁹