Over the last decade, journalists have unionized their newsrooms in record numbers. Since 2016, nearly 8,000 media workers from 146 companies have unionized with The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America alone.
To get a better sense of what union organizing in journalism looks and feels like for women, researchers Ever Josue Figueroa (University of Colorado, Boulder), Gino Canella (Emerson College), and Annalise Baines (University of Zurich) set out to answer two questions:
- How does union organizing in journalism affect women journalists’ work routines and professional identities?
- How does union organizing in journalism affect the relationships among women journalists, the public, and members of the labor movement?
Their paper, “Organizing solidarity: Newsroom unions, gendered labor, and professional identity,” was published in Journalism Practice earlier this month. The study’s authors interviewed 24 women journalists in the United States who were involved with their newsroom union’s organizing committees. Their ages ranged from 24 to 63 and six of the 24 sources identified as non-white.
The researchers found that, while journalists often unionize as a result of industry-wide financial challenges and to address pay disparities, sources said that along the way developed more empathy for their communities and fellow media workers and started to question journalistic norms.
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