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Daily News journalists walked out on strike for 24 hours this morning in protest of “chronic cuts” at the paper by its owner, Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund that owns around 200 other publications across the country.
Members of the Daily News Union picketed starting at 10 a.m. in front of Workville, a co-working space in Midtown that newspapers’ employees have used since their newsroom closed in 2020. The editorial staff, whose union is affiliated with The NewsGuild of New York, rallied with supporters at noon. The union was certified in February 2021 and workers have been bargaining for a first contract since then.
Alden purchased the 104-year-old paper in May 2021 as part of a $633 million acquisition of Tribune Publishing — which at the time owned several other prominent newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune. A group of top editors and journalists left the Daily News soon after. Since early 2022, 27 editors and reporters have departed the paper, according to the union. Guild staff totals 54.
‘Never feels like there’s enough people’
Today’s action is the first walkout at the paper since workers held a 147-day strike in 1991. In February 2023, workers took a coordinated lunch break to protest proposed changes to workers’ 401k plans.
Max Abrams, an audience engagement editor at the newspaper told The Chief during the rally that the cuts to staffing have forced him to take on more roles and responsibilities without getting a coinciding rise in pay. “It never feels like there’s enough people doing the job and the hours are really crazy,” he said.
In late November, The NewsGuild filed an unfair labor practice charge against the newspaper to protest a change in the News’ overtime policy requiring reporters to get their supervisors’ advance approval to work extra hours. The union said in its release that this is only one of many unilateral changes made by the company since the union was formed.
At the rally on Tuesday, Ellen Moynihan, the Daily News Union’s unit chair and a metro reporter, told The Chief that it was unacceptable for management to make unilateral changes to working conditions and that bargaining had been progressing slowly over the previous two years.
“On the one hand they’re bargaining with us but on the other hand they’re trying to push through policy changes without bargaining with us,” Moynihan said. She argued that Alden Global Capital has been “divesting from the paper,” noting that the outlet has not had a metro editor since August 2022 and hasn’t replaced all of the 27 editors and reporters who have departed the paper in the last few years.
Several dozen Daily News reporters and editors picketed alongside Moynihan. They were joined by allies from other NewsGuild units at Forbes and the New York Times as well as Alec Baldwin, who stopped by the rally to show his support for the paper.
‘Really sends a big message’
The News is no longer the storied tabloid that in its heyday, and in fierce competition with the New York Post, ran bylines from Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill and Jim Dwyer. Its circulation, like that of the vast majority of newspapers, has dropped precipitously since then. Still, its coverage of city politics and crime and its centrist editorial stance has a dedicated following, if mostly now online. The paper has won 11 Pulitzer Prizes, the last one, in the Public Service category, shared with ProPublica in 2017 for their coverage of the NYPD’s abuse of an eviction law to force residents from their homes.
The Daily News Union, in 2022 social media posts, highlighted how the newspapers’ quality had diminished since its purchase, posting complaints from readers about the paper’s shrinking size, increasing spelling mistakes and frequent typos. “Alden has made the paper a worse place to work,” the union wrote in a post then.
Abrams, the audience engagement editor, said that working under Alden Global Capital was similar to flying in a passenger plane that’s in a nosedive with the pilot, management in this case, refusing to correct course.
“The company is always trying to do something behind our back and they’re the kind of company that won’t change their ways until we make them do it first,” he said. “To do something for the first time in 33 years, that sends a really big message. I wasn’t even born the last time we had a picket."
The joint release from The NewsGuild’s and the Daily News Union announcing the walkout asked readers to honor their physical and virtual picket lines. “Clicking on Daily News online content during the 24-hour work stoppage is the equivalent of crossing a picket line,” it said.
The NewsGuild’s president, Susan DeCarava, said in a statement that Alden “is taking money directly from members to line their pockets.
“Today our members are showing Daily News management and Alden Global Capital very clearly that this is wholly unacceptable.”
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