Anchorage Daily News newsroom planning to form union

The Anchorage Daily News people version for Monday, July 8, 2024. (Casey Grove/Alaska Public Media)

The newsroom astatine nan Anchorage Daily News, nan astir wide publication newspaper and news website successful Alaska, plans to unionize.

At nan apical of nan would-be union’s database of goals is amended pay.

Sixteen retired of 20 eligible newsroom labor – that’s 80% of reporters, photographers and editors not successful guidance – precocious signed cards supporting nan statement of a union, according to a news merchandise from nan projected union, dubbed nan Anchorage News Guild.

The signed cards are portion of a petition to nan National Labor Relations Board for a national predetermination and a petition for Daily News guidance to voluntarily admit nan union, nan connection says. The Anchorage News Guild says it plans to subordinate nan Pacific Northwest branch of nan NewsGuild-CWA, which describes itself arsenic a nationalist national of much than 25,000 members, founded by newspaper journalists successful 1933.

It would beryllium nan only union-organized newsroom successful Alaska and apt nan first of its benignant successful nan state.

There’s been continuous turnover among newsroom labor for nan past fewer years, said business newsman Alex DeMarban, who has been pinch nan ADN aliases its anterior iteration, nan Alaska Dispatch, for astir 15 years.

“A cardinal point for everyone is simply a desire for adjacent wages and regular wages that tin support up pinch nan costs of inflation,” DeMarban said. “And truthful we conscionable want to beryllium capable to salary nan bills that support going up, and besides to thief make nan insubstantial much sustainable, truthful that we tin fundamentally get paid capable to proceed moving location and proceed producing, you know, nan high-quality merchandise that Alaskans want.”

The union’s members would besides activity amended transparency successful regards to salary and a sustainable workplace environment, nan news merchandise says.

Anchorage Daily News management, including its patient and apical editor, did not instantly respond to requests for comment.

The Anchorage Daily News went bankrupt successful 2017 nether nan Dispatch masthead, and nan Fairbanks-based Binkley family bought it retired of bankruptcy court.

Then, successful 2020, the ADN won its 3rd Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, nan astir prestigious grant successful American journalism.

The insubstantial cut its printing schedule to 2 days a week this August to let it to attraction connected its integer products, patient Ryan Binkley said astatine nan time. It was not a motion that nan newspaper was struggling, he said.

In its connection Tuesday, nan Anchorage News Guild said members of nan unionization effort, portion of a nationalist inclination for section newsrooms, still emotion moving astatine nan newspaper and stay honored to nutrient award-winning journalism.

“We do admit that nan company’s leaders, they’ve gotten america to this point. We admit that. We respect them a lot,” DeMarban said. “But astatine nan aforesaid time, we judge location has to beryllium a measurement to find immoderate costs increases pinch immoderate regularity and immoderate amended benefits.”