Daily News journalists vow to forge ahead despite contract fight

The other night at KGB Bar in the East Village, the novelist, screenwriter and former Daily News columnist Denis Hamilll recounted how his father’s experiences as a unionized factory worker shaped him as he was growing up.

Hamilll also reminisced about the Daily News, recalling how people used to line up at newsstands every night for “the Bulldog edition,” the paper’s first of the coming day. He talked about watching his newspaper colleagues form friendships, argue about politics, fall in love and, of course, debate the relative merits of the Dodgers and Yankees.

“The Daily News was a catalyst for that, it was the common denominator of the common man,” said Hamilll. 

Hamilll spent 24 years at the Daily News. It had been his dream job for years, as he bounced among other city publications, among them The Village Voice and New York Magazine. But he also spoke about the lack of union benefits he received while at the Daily News. “In those 24 years, I never had union pay, never got any kind of union pension. Forty years in the business, I never got attention,” said Hamill.

Hamill was riffing on the Daily News’ past, but also on its present incarnation, as a holding of hedge fund giant Alden Global Capital, aka “the destroyer of newspapers,” also based in New York City. Alden owns some 200 other newspapers and is the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher, after Gannett. It is notorious for cutting newsrooms to bare bones, prioritizing profits over newsgathering. 

The former newspaper columnist was among dozens who gathered at the East Fourth Street watering hole last Thursday both to reminisce, but also to reinforce their commitment to the storied tabloid. The event, “Defend NY's Hometown Paper: An Evening with The Daily News Union,” was hosted by the Daily News Union, a 63-member group representing journalists at the paper and website, and held in conjunction with The NewsGuild of New York. 

“Our message to Alden Global Capital is that you can take your penny pinching, you can take your stripping of resources, because we are keeping this paper alive,” the guild’s president, Susan DeCarava, told the gathering. 

‘Because it’s important’

Since 2022, a year after Alden’s purchase of Tribune Publishing, which in addition to the Daily News also netted the hedge fund the Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun among other major metro dailies, 37 staffers have either left the Daily News or been laid off, according to the union. Just 15 have been replaced. 

Yet, the paper’s budget keeps shrinking. Union members have been at the bargaining table for three years, fighting for a contract that includes better wages, job security and benefits such as paid parental leave. Under Alden's current proposals, management would have the power to shift full-time employees to part-time status and recall staff from vacation to work, the union said. 

“We are without a newsroom. We haven’t had a metro editor in two and half years. We don’t have a politics editor,” said Ellen Moynihan, the Daily News Union’s unit chair and a metro reporter at the paper. 

The remaining staff is left to cover an overwhelming amount of news during one of the headiest periods in the city’s recent history, making it unsustainable to provide New Yorkers with the coverage they need to stay informed. Key news sectors lack coverage, among them the governor’s office, state lawmakers at the Capitol, the migrant crisis, courthouses in Queens and the Bronx, and sports teams like the NHL’s Rangers.

“We basically have no support. We have each other’s backs,” Moynihan said. “We’re working together every day. We’re fighting together, and we’re calling on you guys to fight with us.”

Hamilll was followed by another former Daily News journalist, investigative reporter Tom Robbins. Robbins spent over a dozen years reporting for the Daily News and participated in a five-and-a-half-month strike in 1991 against Tribune management. 

“It was a great, inspiring event, and I can only say don’t do it again,” Robbins remarked.

Robbins highlighted the Daily News’ reporting, including how it documented New York’s asthma epidemic, assigning reporters to cover the crisis in schools across the South Bronx and Brooklyn.

Robbins and Hamilll were followed by other Daily News editorial staff. One speaker talked about going on strike while pregnant, another about his 45-year tenure at the paper and another about his father, a Daily News reporter during the 90s strike, who had to drive cabs to make ends meet.

At the end of last year, union members filed an unfair labor practice charge against Alden Global Capital, accusing the hedge fund of trying to change the union members’ health care plans without union input. An agreement was reached at the end of December and staffers are now enrolled in a plan from United Furniture Workers Insurance (UFW) fund, which is part of the larger Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) insurance network. The plan is in place through 2026. 

This memorandum of agreement will be incorporated into a contract once it’s approved. A next bargaining session is scheduled for February 20.

Alden representatives could not be reached for comment. 

Moynihan, at the Daily News since 2015, is holding out hope that the union and Alden officials can arrive at an agreement and that the paper can  again thrive.

“Despite all the signs I shouldn’t be, I am still hopeful. The people that work at this paper do it because they love it… they don't do it because they’re paid large sums of money,” Moynihan said. “We do it because we think it's important.”

Richard Khavkine contributed.