Local News Unions and Ownership
Some have suggested that volatility around ownership, such as an ownership change or potential takeover bid, may influence the decision of newsroom workers to unionize, so we examined the ownership patterns of these in the year before, the year of and in the current year. Of newsrooms where workers organized a union, 14% changed hands in the year before unionizing while another 26% changed owners after unionizing; another two percent of newsrooms changed hands both before and after they unionized. In other words, 42% of newsrooms where a union was organized saw an ownership change around the time of union organizing.
We then examined the types of ownership changes that happened during this time period overall, starting by looking at the change in how many newsrooms where workers organized were owned by investment firms, public companies, private companies, and nonprofit organizations over the past five years. Over the past five years, the proportion of these newsrooms owned by investment companies doubled between the year before unionization and the current year.
We then further examined the specific ownership patterns of the newsrooms that changed hands over the past five years. Of those 51 newsrooms that saw an ownership change around the time of unionization, 39 were acquired by an investment firm. Seventeen of those newsrooms acquired by an investment firm were acquired by Alden Global Capital while 14 were acquired by Chatham Asset Management. Another eight were acquired by Gatehouse through its merger with Gannett. One was acquired by Apollo Global Management9.
Outcomes and Ownership
We also looked at a newsroom’s type of owner at the time of unionization and their success at gaining representation. Of the 44 newsrooms owned by an investment firm when they unionized, 40 were successful in gaining representation. Similarly, 44 of 48 newsrooms owned by a publicly traded company when they unionized successfully gained representation while 10 of 14 newsrooms owned by private companies and 14 of 15 nonprofit newsrooms were successful in their bids to gain representation.