Journalists across 11 Southern California newsrooms have voted to ratify a contract proposal after authorizing a strike.
NATIONAL — The Southern California News Group Guild announced today its members have voted to approve their first contract, with 93% voting in favor of ratification. The agreement comes on the heels of the Guild’s strike authorization vote in September.
Continue reading “California journalists vote to approve contract with Alden Global Capital”
In the first authorization for an open-ended strike ever taken by journalists at a newsroom owned by the secretive Alden Global Capital, the Southern California News Group union today announced its members have voted overwhelmingly in favor of striking.
Continue reading “Southern California journalists authorize first strike against Alden Global Capital”
Yesterday afternoon, Google, California Assembly member Buffy Wicks, California Governor Gavin Newsom and many of California’s publishing lobbies announced “a first-in-the-nation partnership with the State, news publishers, major tech companies and philanthropy, unveiling a pair of multi-year initiatives to provide ongoing financial support to newsrooms across California and launch a National AI Accelerator.”
After two years of advocacy for strong antimonopoly action to start turning around the decline of local newsrooms, we are left almost without words. The publishers who claim to represent our industry are celebrating an opaque deal involving taxpayer funds, a vague AI accelerator project that could very well destroy journalism jobs, and minimal financial commitments from Google to return the wealth this monopoly has stolen from our newsrooms.
Not a single organization representing journalists and news workers agreed to this undemocratic and secretive deal with one of the businesses destroying our industry. Moments ago, the following opposition letter was filed with the California legislature:
Continue reading “America’s journalists oppose California’s backroom deal between AI companies and news bosses”