Our mission:

As reporters, photographers and editorial staff at The Journal News, Poughkeepsie Journal, and Middletown Times Herald-Record, we bear witness to our readers’ lives, hold the powerful accountable, and amplify the voices of diverse and underrepresented communities. It is a role we take seriously.

Decisions by corporate owners at Gannett in Virginia have undermined our efforts to fulfill this mission. We have formed a union with the NewsGuild of New York to advocate for ourselves, our profession, and those we serve.  

Despite dwindling resources, we have captured three groundswell moments in our communities: the global pandemic, the economic downturn, and a long-overdue reckoning on race. The Gannett CFO was given a $600,000 bonus for working through the pandemic. We were given the “collective sacrifice” of unpaid furloughs, a vanishing 401(k) match, and advice on buying bike helmets to cover protests.

We have watched our newsrooms atrophy through layoffs and corporate cuts. The wages offered for vacant positions do not reflect living in one of the nation’s most-expensive regions. Our health-care options are limited and costly. 

In Poughkeepsie and Middletown, local autonomy has vanished, along with staff, in the name of regionalization. The once-proud Rockland Journal-News, a fixture for 169 years, no longer has offices in the county it serves. 

The consolidation is not in the service of local journalism, but at the convenience of corporate cost-cutting. What is lost is the local voice, the sense of place, and what it means to live here. 

As a union:

• We stand for newsrooms as diverse as the readers they serve.

• We stand for respect and dignity for our journalists, for fair wages, well-defined minimum levels of pay, and a transparent and standardized system for promotion and pay increases. 

• We stand against unjust terminations and reductions in force, against unilateral changes and cuts to retirement plans, against unreasonable workloads and demands. 

• We stand against freelanced “pay-to-play stories” on behalf of advertisers. 

• We stand with the NewsGuild in a wave of successful union organizing in Gannett newsrooms across the country to save local news and ensure a seat at the table when decisions are made. 

There is no journalism without journalists. 

By recognizing our union now, and immediately beginning the negotiation process, Gannett can demonstrate its commitment to the power of local news. Our readers deserve no less.

 Signed the staff of The Journal News, Poughkeepsie Journal and Times Herald-Record: