At a moment of tremendous flux in journalism, unions are trending in newsrooms. In conjunction with the publication of our book New Media Unions: Organizing Digital Journalists, we have produced a timeline of the ongoing movement to unionize journalism, particularly in the United States.
While unions have a long history in print journalism, our timeline begins with Gawker’s unionization in June 2015, which kicked off a wave of labour organizing at dozens of digital outlets, magazines, and newspapers. Since 2015, thousands of media workers have joined the Writers Guild of America, East, branches of The NewsGuild (Communication Workers of America), and the Canadian Media Guild (CWA Canada).
Journalists are organizing to improve working conditions in a tumultuous sector of the media economy. Through collective bargaining, they have won better pay, job security, and benefits, making media careers more sustainable. But the union drives have also had broader aims: to expand racial and gender diversity in newsrooms, to support editorial independence, to protect local journalism, and to give workers a stronger voice in their newsrooms.
This timeline documents the outlets that have successfully unionized, by certification date.
Image credit: @jsource