The beleaguered Anchorage Daily News, facing declining circulation and reader apathy, now faces a problem from within — the staff is unionizing.
The news release 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.
Finally, some transparency. Marxists supporting Marxism.
Good maybe the cost of union help will be the dagger to put this leftist rag in its grave.
Lord willing…..we should all pray for some old testament wrath for the ADN
Socialists // Communists UNITE!!!
… “Give us the child for 8-years and it will be a Bolshevik for life!”
… “Education is a weapon whose effects depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
Quotes by whom(?) … Beltrami, Stalin, and/or Lenin???
I’m gonna miss the obituaries.
Go for it. It’ll just speed up the demise.
If it can’t make money it’s not sustainable, even if unionized. The Anchorage Daily News is going the way of the buggy whip.
Havent bought this paper in many years. I subscribe to EPOCH TIMES (both printed copy and digital) and The New American.
A big step closer to bankruptcy.
adn
only good thing about it is used as a bird cage liner!
but the birds hate it too!
When will we finally get the news that ADN is going out of business? They’re a propaganda rag for the Marxist Democrats in this state.
A union to run a two-time-per-week newspaper is pretty dumb, even for a registered Marxist like me. I didn’t have a vote at ADN when the Binkley’s fired me.
I can’t vote anymore either, Dermutt.
Well, this will be the end of the ADN.
I for one appreciate them boldly stepping up to destroy this rag of a newspaper.
The ADN has not been a reliable source of news for MANY years.
Glad to see the paper getting its own agenda used against the owners.
Both employees, or just one????
Please do. It will be very helpful to adn.
They always eventually eat their own.
Surely this will solve the ADN’s profitability problem. Everything a union touches in our modern society turns to ca-ca. All they have to run on is “we brought America the five-day work week, eight-hour workday!” The union members that brought that are all dead. Organized labor’s ability to do anything positive for workers without damaging the company that provides them their employment is also dead. And, hopefully, we’ll soon see the Anchorage Daily News’ death rattle. Good riddance.
Also, unfortunately for the members, most if not all union hierarchy are corrupt and profit obscenely on the backs of the members.
All have said it well. But maybe the employees can turn the paper around by ensuring that articles appearing show all sides of an issue. Anything is possible.
A few years from now a boy will ask his father: What’s a newspaper Dad?
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