Anchorage Daily News staff to unionize, workers say

The beleaguered Anchorage Daily News, facing declining circulation and reader apathy, now faces a problem from within — the staff is unionizing.

The news released from the Anchorage News Guild says organizers filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board and have requested voluntary recognition from leadership at ADN.

“By forming the Anchorage News Guild, the newsroom staff at ADN aim to advocate for fair wages, increased transparency and a sustainable workplace environment,” the news release says. The newsroom at the newspaper has a staff of about 30, including those in management, such as editors.

The guild says about 80% of the newsroom staff at Alaska’s largest newspaper “are publicly in support of joining The NewsGuild-CWA, which represents more than 25,000 media professionals from publications including The Seattle Times, The New York Times, The Associated Press and many others. The Anchorage unit is joining the NewsGuild-CWA’s Pacific Northwest local.”

This move means the ADN will be the only newsroom in the state to be unionized, the group said.

“Collectively, members of ADN’s unionization effort say they love working for the paper and feel honored to produce the award-winning journalism Anchorage deserves. They say they are unionizing to ensure they can continue to tell the stories of their community for decades to come,” the guild says.

The guild asks the readers and community to show their support for the newsroom’s efforts by signing a petition at https://bit.ly/supportANG to urge leadership to grant voluntary recognition.

The ADN was owned by the McClatchy Company for many years before being sold to Alice Rogoff in 2014, through her online publication the now-defunct Alaska Dispatch News. She renamed the Anchorage Daily News the Alaska Dispatch News.

Rogoff ran the paper poorly and it went into a financial tailspin. She filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017, at which time Johne Binkley of Fairbanks organized The Binkley Company to buy the newspaper for $1 million — far less than the nearly $34 million Rogoff had paid to McClatchy three years earlier.

This year, the newspaper has reduced publication of its print edition to two per week to cut costs.