Hundreds of journalists for Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, walked off the job, accusing the company’s chief executive of decimating its local newsrooms, and demanding a change at the top.
Peter Kramer, a reporter for the USA Today Network based in Westchester County, speaks to other journalists from Gannett during a walkout in White Plains, N.Y., June 5, 2023.
The collective action is timed to coincide with Gannett’s annual shareholder meeting, which is being held Monday. The NewsGuild, which represents more than 1,000 journalists from Gannett, sent a letter to Gannett shareholders in May urging a vote of no-confidence against Mike Reed, the chief executive and chairman.In the letter, the NewsGuild criticized the company’s merger with GateHouse Media in 2019, saying it “mortgaged the future of our company” by loading it up with debt.
Kramer, who is based in Westchester County, New York, said that some Gannett reporters had to take second jobs to supplement their salaries, or they simply left the profession altogether. Gannett became the largest newspaper publisher in the United States after its merger with GateHouse, a deal that the companies said at the time would result in annual cost savings of up to $300 million and help them survive the headwinds battering the news media industry.
It has tried to service the debt with a string of widespread cost-cutting measures in the past year, including laying off about 6% of its roughly 3,440-person media division in December. According to securities filings, Gannett’s work force has almost halved since November 2019.
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