Why are we unionizing?
Dispatch News Guild Mission statement
We are the journalists of The Columbus Dispatch and The Newark Advocate. We include the reporters, photojournalists, videographers, digital producers and other creators that fill our newspaper and website each day. We are forming a union.
For more than 150 years, The Dispatch has served readers in Columbus and across the state through hard-hitting, local news. We cover school board meetings and city councils. We watch over the happenings at the Statehouse. We’re on the sidelines at football games from high school stadiums to inside The Shoe. We write features about the fabric of our community and the people who move this city. We report on protests, mass shootings, tragedy and heartache. We are a staff of award-winning journalists who hold the powerful accountable and create tangible change through our reporting.
We want The Dispatch to not only survive, but thrive.
But thriving has been more challenging under the leadership of the USA TODAY Co., formerly known as Gannett.
In 2019, right before the merger between GateHouse Media and Gannett, our staff totaled more than 90 individuals across all departments. We had a robust staff of reporters, photographers, videographers, copy editors, columnists, news assistants and opinion writers.
Today, our headcount is fewer than 40 journalists in the newsroom.
As we’ve hemorrhaged talent from our newsroom over the last few years, we’ve felt little reassurance or urgency from the USA TODAY Co. to recoup our losses.
The Newark Advocate has seen even deeper cuts to its already smaller staff during the last few years. Today, there is only one full-time news reporter and two high school sports reporters covering all of Newark and Licking County for The Advocate.
Both The Dispatch and The Advocate operate out of a single newsroom and share content between the two papers. We are, as our Executive Editor Michael Shearer said in a staff meeting, “one newsroom.” It is for that reason that we intend to organize as a single united newsroom.
Stagnant salaries, layoffs, buyouts, wage inequity and high turnover weaken local journalism. Our newsroom needs a large, diverse staff to tell the stories of our community.
Our newsroom needs a seat at the table. We want to work with the USA TODAY Co. to strengthen our city and communities through local news. We believe that we are all better when we work together.
So we’re doing just that. We’re joining together as reporters, photographers, producers and columnists. We are long-serving veterans and rookies in our first jobs. Many of us are Ohio natives. Others moved here from across the country. But we all call Columbus our home.
We want The Columbus Dispatch and The Newark Advocate to stand strong for decades to come.
And as we unite, we have support from around the country.
In Ohio alone, we have the support of our sister papers at The Akron Beacon Journal, The Canton Repository, The Record-Courier and The Massillon Independent, all represented by The NewsGuild-CWA Local 1.
Dozens of newsrooms within the USA TODAY Co. and otherwise have won union recognition with support from The NewsGuild-CWA in recent years, including The Arizona Republic, The Florida Times-Union and The Courier News.
Across the USA TODAY Co., nearly 50 newspapers are unionized, including The Indianapolis Star, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and The Detroit Free Press. The Columbus Dispatch is among the largest local newspapers in the network that has yet to form a union.
USA TODAY Media President Kristin Roberts has been cooperative with unionized newsrooms in the network under her leadership. We ask the USA TODAY Co. to extend this spirit of cooperation and voluntarily recognize The Columbus Dispatch and The Newark Advocate so we can build a long and mutually beneficial relationship.
If it chooses not to, we will remain united.
We will organize. We will vote.
And we will win.
Signed, in alphabetical order:
Adam Cairns
Adam Jardy
Amani Bayo
Anna Lynn Winfrey
Bailey Gallion
Belinda M. Paschal
Bob Vitale
Brian Hedger
Brianna Mac Kay
Bryce Houston
Courtney Hergesheimer
Dan Aulbach
Danae King
Dave Weidig
David M. Purpura
Dean Narciso
Doral Chenoweth III
Frank DiRenna
Haley BeMiller
Joey Kaufman
Jordan Laird
Josué Perez
Laura Bischoff
Max Filby
Nathan Hart
Patrick Flaherty
Rob Oller
Samantha Hendrickson
Samantha Madar
Scot Kirk
Shahid Meighan
Sheridan Hendrix
Sophia Veneziano
Victor Black
