Chicago Tribune reporters, newsroom staff strike for first time in newspaper’s 180-year history: ‘This is Chicago, we don’t back down’

For the first time in the newspaper’s history, the Chicago Tribune’s reporters, photographers and other unionized newsroom employees walked off the job Thursday under a 24-hour strike as negotiations for a contract enter their fifth year.

Staff members gathered outside the Freedom Center — the Tribune’s printing press since 1981 — alongside Scabby the Rat inflatables, chanting “fair contract now” and other rallying cries.

They were joined by journalists and production workers at seven newsrooms across the country who also took part in the 24-hour strike to demand that management pay fair wages and not eliminate 401(k) match benefits, which have already been cut for nonunion employees, according to the NewsGuild-CWA, which represents the employees.

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The union said much of the staff has gone without pay raises since Alden Global Capital took over in 2021, in addition to facing significant buyouts and cuts, with the newsroom losing 35 positions since 2021. The company also allowed Bally’s to buy out Tribune Publishing’s lease at the Freedom Center, paving the way for Bally’s to build a casino on the land.

The union said it was offered two $1,500 bonuses in exchange for pay raises and the removal of their 401(k) match, which they said amounted to a pay cut. A bargaining session is set for mid-February.

“None of us got into journalism for the money, but we can’t do it for free,” said Joe Mahr, a Tribune reporter who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2004. “There are countless people who aren’t on this picket line because they had to leave.”

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

The union cited a pay study it conducted in June that found women were paid 10% less than their male counterparts in the same roles, and employees of color were paid 10% less than their white counterparts in comparable jobs. For Black women at the paper, that meant making 20% less than white men doing the same work.

Representatives for Alden have not responded to requests for comment.

Darcel Rockett, a features writer for the Tribune, said Alden has passed the buck on correcting race and gender-based pay disparities by saying that was how it was before the hedge fund bought the paper.

“It shouldn’t be this way,” Rockett said. “They should be embarrassed by it ... I really hope the needle moves today.”

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

She said the pay disparities also had the potential to scare away a more diverse set of journalists from applying to work at the paper — damaging its ability to give context and history to its coverage.

“[A diverse newsroom] brings a nuance that’s not typically there,” Rockett said. “The more people we have that look like people we’re reporting on, it’s a right step toward making that happen.”

Rick Kogan — a Chicago media giant who has worked for the Tribune, Sun-Times, Chicago Daily News and WGN — said he worried about the paper’s future, specifically its ability to draw in new journalists as the old guard attempts to retire in the face of potential 401(k) cuts.

“I look at all these younger people, and I think of the incredible career I’ve had, and I worry they will not be able to experience, on any sort of level, that kind of run,” Kogan said. “I know most of these kids and they’re committed.”

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Jake Sheridan, a Tribune reporter hired two years ago, says he sees a similar fate for other young reporters, but that was why the union was fighting.

“I really want to be here at the Tribune for the rest of my career. I love the work I do,” Sheridan, a member of the contract action team, said. “But Alden’s ownership and their total disregard for us as workers makes it really hard to imagine a long-term future here.”

The strike comes as the media industry faces economic and labor struggles. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been on strike for more than a year, and employees of the Los Angeles Times, San Antonio Report, several publications under Condé Nast and the Alden-owned New York Daily News have all staged walkouts over the past month in response to job cuts.

Chicago has long been a competitive newspaper city with a strong labor movement. But newspaper strikes have been rare.

In 1961, about 80 editorial and commercial employees at the Chicago Defender who were represented by the Chicago Newspaper Guild waged what turned into a 19-month strike.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, three production unions struck the Tribune in 1985. The walkout by roughly 1,000 members of the Typographical Union, the Mailers Union and the Web Printing Pressmen’s Union initially forced the newspaper to reduce the number of editions and their size.

That bitter dispute — which included “Lou Grant” actor Ed Asner taking a stint on the picket line — dragged on for more than four-and-a-half years.

But Thursday’s walkout at the Tribune marked the first time editorial workers at any of city’s largest circulation dailies, including the Sun-Times and the now-defunct Chicago Daily News — both represented by what’s now called the Chicago News Guild —- have gone on strike.

“This is Chicago, we don’t back down. They’re a bunch of punks from New York and we’re not scared of those guys,” said Ray Long, a Tribune investigative reporter.

“If they don’t have a desire to negotiate with us fairly, they will feel our wrath and wish that they never saw this day come alive.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated since publication to provide corrected information about Alden Global Capital selling Tribune Publishing’s lease at the Freedom Center.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times