newsmatters

WASHINGTON, April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Nearly 1,000 news workers at Digital First Media have launched a nationwide revolt against job cuts and profiteering they say are threatening local journalism at the nation’s second-largest newspaper company, The NewsGuild, TNG-CWA, announced today.

Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund that owns Digital First Media, employs a business strategy based on buying up newspapers, stripping them of their tangible assets, consolidating and outsourcing critical operations, and slashing staffing levels without regard to the harm its actions do to the newspapers, service, and the employees who make those newspapers profitable.

 

Guild members work at 13 Digital First bargaining units in cities including Denver, Colo.; San Jose, the East Bay and Long Beach, Calif.; Kingston, N.Y., and suburbs of Detroit and Philadelphia. They have joined together nationwide in a coordinated campaign, under the theme “News Matters,” to defend journalism and achieve fair labor contracts.

Tactics so far have included a petition drive that produced more than 400 signatures delivered to DFM executives. Essays, news stories and photos about the campaign are being posted online (dfmworkers.org) and social media (facebook.com/dfmworkers/ or on Twitter #NewsMatters, @dfmworkers.)