This Line Of Work Ain’t Easy, But We’re Fighting To Make It Easier

Day three of the Law360 Union ULP strike picket line outside LexisNexis HQ in Manhattan, New York on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Ben Jay | Outlaw360)

Many of us who have chosen the journalistic vocation view it as a labor of love. Particularly for those of us who came into the industry in the digital age — and even more so for those of us who entered it post-pandemic — it is one where you pay your dues under the confines of thin job security, even thinner pay and oppressive deadlines and hours, so you can work your way up to holding a job you enjoy while making only slightly above a pittance and hopefully not getting laid off too many times along the way.

The modern young reporter endures the hardships of two worlds: the old-guard newshound editors, some of whom still lurk and run local legacy publications with an iron fist (quite effectively, to their credit), and the new-world corporate overlords who have come to take over the industry and mine it for parts.

This is all to say that journalists these days are used to being pushed around a lot. If not by demanding bosses then by what the publishers call “challenging economic landscapes.” And many are more than willing to take it for any number of reasons. Maybe it’s to have a job you feel good about, maybe you feel like you're making a difference, maybe writing is all you’re good at. One needn’t look far within the modern newsroom to find someone who’s been through some or all of the ills of the contemporary media landscape, often more than once.

I feel that in my years as a professional reporter, I’ve witnessed many of these struggles personally. I graduated from college at a particularly inopportune time for journalism majors. I was elated to secure my first full-time reporter job at a newspaper in upstate New York in January 2020 before the pandemic hit and I was laid off, along with half the paper’s staff. That same year, I quit a different reporting job at another New York State-based newspaper group after two months due to the frequent and unwarranted assailments from the boss. 

Those types of needless admonishments may have been tolerable due to their prevalence at some papers in days past. But back then, one could at least make a solid livelihood out of a lifetime of newspaper reporting (not a fortune, of course, but a comfortable wage that’s become an unattainable fantasy for many reporters). Later, I worked as a reporter at a newspaper in Florida, a job which I loved but was tainted by our parent company forcing the editorial staff to take reduced hours and pay under the pretense of COVID-19-related economic challenges.

I inherited the penchant for writing from my parents, both of whom spent time as newspaper reporters. The paper where my mother spent more than two decades — which at the time she joined it was known as the Morning Union of Springfield, Massachusetts, and is now called The Republican — had a union. But in what the old-timers call the Glory Days, deals were far easier to reach, and news outlet owners, figuring strong growth could only continue, were more willing to share the wealth.

Encouragingly, unionization in the media industry is on the rise. Per a 2022 Pew Research Center study, a wave of unionization at news outlets has resulted in about one in six journalists in the U.S. joining a union. The same study showed that unions are far more likely to be formed at large media outlets, like Law360. Predictably, the data showed that the smaller the outlet, the less likely employees were to unionize.

I didn’t know much about being in a labor union when I took this job at Law360 in 2022. I certainly never thought I’d be on strike two years later. These are uncharted waters for me and, I believe, most of our unit. I share the anxiety many of us feel. It reminds me of the depressing days in the wake of my COVID-19 layoff. But I also see this as pushing back at a culture of complacency in working conditions for journalists.

The considerable financial risk each one of us is undertaking personally can serve as a catalyst to turn the tide against poor treatment of a professional class that provides a service that’s essential to the health of a democracy. The united front we’ve shown against management in our negotiations can serve as an example for journalists everywhere, regardless of career position, that it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom while working in news. 

We take enough abuse from sources and readers; we don’t need to take the same from our employers. I see now that this union I’ve been a part of for two-plus years is an advocate, a defense against the whims of the top-floor corporate bosses who make their money by moving other people’s money around and most likely don’t read the content we produce.

We’re at the precipice of a telling moment in American labor history. For a variety of reasons, there has been an uptick in labor strikes since 2023 that has not been seen in decades. This is despite overall union membership having declined significantly from its height in the 1950s. The Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild both went on strike last year as a result of technological upheaval in Hollywood and were able to secure some guardrails against their employers’ use of generative artificial intelligence. 

I hope, of course, that our ULP strike does not stretch on for months as those two did. And we don’t boast anywhere near the membership both those guilds hold. But we now have the chance to set further precedent for a fair contract that raises the bar for working in journalism.

—Editing by Kelly Duncan and Peter Rozovsky.