10/10/2019
Please support unionized newsroom employees at The State Journal-Register on Thursday, Oct. 10, by stopping by the SJ-R to pick up a flyer during the noon hour on the NewsGuild-CWA’s Day of Action to “Preserve Our Local News” at GateHouse Media newspapers.
The SJ-R employees, who are part of the Springfield (IL) Unit of the United Media Guild, will be on the sidewalk along Ninth Street in front of the newspaper offices at Ninth and Capitol Avenue from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday to pass out flyers and greet the public. Supporters can walk to the sidewalk or honk their support while driving by.
Thursday’s event will be one of more than 50 at GateHouse papers across 14 states.
The flyers decry GateHouse Media’s aggressive program of layoffs and cost-cutting as the company prepares for a potential merger with the Gannett Corp. GateHouse says there will be up to $300 million in additional cuts and “synergies” following the merger.
“The cuts will result in massive layoffs, and they will severely damage the newspapers’ ability to function as a watchdog over local governments and institutions,” NewsGuild President Bernie Lunzer said. “They will drastically curtail the papers’ ability to tell the stories of their communities.”
Lunzer said NewsGuild members and their colleagues in the Guild’s parent union, The Communications Workers of America, will urge readers to tell Mike Reed, CEO of GateHouse’s parent company, New Media Investment Group, to “hold the line on corporate greed and put local journalism first.”
Flyers will be distributed at papers that employ workers represented by The NewsGuild and those without union representation.
In addition to the event in Springfield, NewsGuild members at the Rockford Register Star will distribute flyers at the same time outside the paper at 99 E. State St. in Rockford.
“When journalism suffers, communities suffer,” Lunzer said. “We have seen far too many newspapers savaged by GateHouse cutbacks already. We intend to stand up for quality journalism and to work with readers to do so.”
Dean Olsen, a veteran SJ-R reporter and chairman of the Springfield unit of the United Media Guild, said The State Journal-Register’s journalists in recent years have had to work harder than ever amid drastic staff reductions when GateHouse either laid off staff members or opted not to replace workers who left.
“We need the community’s support to preserve the staff that remains, and expand the staff, because everyone suffers when the press struggles to perform its role in holding local politicians, governments and institutions responsible,” Olsen said.
The public can send an email
to Mike Reed, CEO of GateHouse’s parent company, by going to bit.ly/preservelocalnews.
The public can keep up with the Preserve Our Local News campaign’s progress on Twitter at twitter.com/preservenews and under these hashtags: and . Updates also will be available on the United Media Guild Springfield Unit’s page at http://tinyurl.com/SJ-Rguild and at http://www.springfieldguild.wordpress.com.
