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Athens Banner-Herald Newsroom Unionizes as Other Gannett Papers Strike

"When the Athens Banner-Herald moved out of their purpose-built newsroom after 30 years, readers and the community were not informed," according to the Georgia Gannett Newsguild.

Newsroom staffers at the Athens Banner-Herald announced that they’re unionizing on Monday as colleagues at several dozen other Gannett-owned newspapers went on strike to protest recent cutbacks.

The newly formed Georgia Gannett Newsguild, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, includes seven journalists at the Savannah Morning News and three—crime reporter Wayne Ford, arts and culture reporter Andrew Shearer and photographer Joshua L. Jones—from the ABH. Both papers were sold by Augusta-based Morris Communications to GateHouse Media in 2017. GateHouse then merged with Gannett in 2019.

The guild cited six layoffs from Georgia newsrooms in 2022 among 400 company-wide, three of which came at the ABH, as well as mandatory unpaid furloughs and an indefinite hiring freeze. “These cuts come after years of unequal pay, unrealistic workloads and diminishing morale within our newsrooms,” the guild said. “This has a tangible effect on the community; less time to work on important stories and fewer resources lets basic reporting slip through the cracks.”

The staff page on the ABH’s website currently lists eight newsroom employees, four of them in sports. That’s down from more than 30 two decades ago. The organization currently lacks any non-sports editors, a full-time City Hall reporter or anyone covering topics at UGA outside of sports, among other crucial beats. The copy desk and production were outsourced years ago.

Although ABH journalists did not participate in Monday’s strike, hundreds of employees at Gannett newspapers in eight states did walk out, according to the Associated Press. The one-day strike corresponded with Gannett’s annual shareholders meeting.

Susan DeCarava, president of the The NewsGuild of New York, called the shareholder meeting “a slap in the face to the hundreds of Gannett journalists who are on strike today.”

“Gannett CEO Mike Reed didn’t have a word to say to the scores of journalists whose livelihoods he’s destroyed, nor to the communities who have lost their primary news source thanks to his mismanagement,” DeCarava said in a statement.

In legal filing, the NewsGuild said Gannett’s leadership has gutted newsrooms and cut back on coverage to service a massive debt load. Cost-cutting has also included forced furloughs and suspension of 401-K contributions.

“We want people in our local community to know what this company is doing to local news, and we want Gannett shareholders to know what Gannett is doing to local news,” said Chris Damien, a criminal justice reporter and unit guild chair the Desert Sun, which covers Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley in Southern California.

Gannett owns USA Today and about 200 other dailies, making it the largest newspaper chain in the country.

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