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Journalists at Star-News, 10 Other Southern California Daily Newspapers Announce Plans to Unionize

Published on Wednesday, February 24, 2021 | 2:29 pm
 

Journalists with the Southern California News Group, which owns the Pasadena Star-News, announced Wednesday their plan to unionize at 11 daily newspapers and more than a dozen weekly publications.

Nearly three-fourths of the newspapers’ non-management editorial employees — including reporters, photographers, designers, copy editors and online editors — have signed authorization cards that will be submitted to the National Labor Relations Board in a petition for a union election.

The journalists’ union, the SCNG Guild, will be a unit of the Media Guild of the West, a local of The NewsGuild-CWA. MGW represents hundreds of journalists at the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic and other news outlets.

The journalists of the SCNG Guild are eager to better serve their communities across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Most newsrooms have endured pay cuts, with some employees going a decade or more without raises. SCNG newsrooms are stretched thin through layoffs and attrition.

“Our journalists have labored for years under increasingly difficult conditions. We intend to reverse that trend,” the guild said in its mission statement.

“Readers need the services we provide more than ever,” the statement reads. “Our online traffic is surging, and our digital subscriptions are up. The public is clamoring for information that can help them and their families stay healthy and safe.”

The news group includes the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Torrance Daily Breeze, the San Bernardino Sun, the Pasadena Star-News, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Whittier Daily News and the Redlands Daily Facts.

The papers attract an online audience of 17.6 million monthly unique visitors, according to the company, and some 451,000 Sunday print subscribers.

The company is owned by Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group. The New York-based hedge fund is known for slashing newsroom budgets to the bone. Last week, Alden Global announced a $630 million deal to buy Tribune Publishing newspapers, even as it refuses to invest in its own newsrooms.

“The Southern California News Group likes to say that ‘Local. News. Matters,’” said reporter Josh Cain, SCNG Guild organizing committee member. “But hollowing out our newsrooms with layoffs and attrition does not improve our ability to cover the news. Buying up every local paper in Southern California, cutting its staff to the bone and covering the same number of communities with even fewer resources does not help our readers. We want to save local news, and organizing will help us do that.”

Ten of SCNG’s daily newspapers and some of its weekly editions are more than a century old. (the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the youngster of the group, was established in 1955.) By unionizing, journalists are looking to stave off further cuts, “while providing a framework for allowing our newspapers to thrive,” according to their mission statement.

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