CEO of the Anchorage Daily News Ryan Binkley was admonished by the chair of the Seattle Times workers union to swiftly finalize a “first contract” with the new union forming at Alaska’s largest news organization. The new Anchorage union is taking a vote on whether to become a unit of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild. The union organizers say 80% of the newsroom staff wants to join a union.
“Media organization unions have quickly become an industry standard in recent years,” said Anna Patrick, the chair of the union at the Seattle Times. “As the largest newspaper in Alaska, we know that journalists at the Anchorage Daily News play a critical role in informing readers and uncovering injustices,” Patrick said in a grammatically challenging sentence. “It’s imperative that your journalists are able to afford to live in the city they cover and we support their fight for establishing pay equity, cost-of-living raises and an actual severance package.”
Patrick seemed oblivious to the realities of the news industry, believing that a contract with workers will be a financial help to the owners, the Binkley Company, which bought the newspaper out of bankruptcy for a mere $1 million, after former owner Alice Rogoff had purchased it for about $34 million from McClatchy, and then proceeded to run it into an insolvent position.
“If the Anchorage Daily News wants to remain a high-standard newspaper in an industry ravaged by poor financial decisions and bad management, its wisest choice is to work quicky with bargaining leaders to establish a fair and equitable contract,” she wrote.
Sources say that as the Anchorage Daily News was preparing to lay off staff, the reporters quickly announced they are unionizing. Such an announcement prevented, by regulation, the newspaper from making the layoffs, as labor actions are protected by the National Labor Relations Board.
Last December, 750 members of the Washington Post Guild staged a one-day strike to let the public know that they didn’t think that the newspaper, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon, was bargaining with them in good faith. As part of the protest, several of the disgruntled reporters withheld their bylines from their stories over a couple of days, something that was probably not noticed by readers.
Meanwhile, Bezos operates The Washington Post at a loss of what was about $100 million last year alone. Whether the Binkley Company is willing to continue running the Anchorage Daily News at a loss remains the question. The newspaper has shrunk daily print to just two days a week as it slowly makes the transition to an online-only publication, one that is supported by nonprofit foundations that pay for the reporters who, according to sources, are adamant that they must be allowed to work from home.
