Guild members rally for respect, protections as talks begin with Pioneer Press

June 9, 2026 by

Guild members rally before bargaining at the Pioneer Press.

Union members at the Pioneer Press today opened negotiations with the newspaper’s hedge-fund ownership intent on bargaining a contract that respects their work, protects their safety and delivers wage and benefit gains.

After a brief rally outside the newspaper’s offices on Water Street, about two dozen members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild walked into bargaining together, hoping to show Alden Global Capital the faces behind the numbers on its balance sheets.

The Guild represents over 50 newsroom and advertising employees at the Pioneer Press, and they have given over 600 years of combined service to the company. That’s worth fighting for, unit vice chair Jared Kaufman said.

“This contract negotiation, this thing we do every three years or so — this is our one chance to fight for the really big stuff,” he said. “That’s why this matters. The gates are open for us all to make the changes we want to see.”

In bargaining, the Guild will look to hold the line against potential use of generative artificial intelligence in place of union members’ work.

Members also want the employer to invest in the Pioneer Press — in workers’ wages and benefits, but also in their physical safety, whether it’s protections against repetitive motion injuries for workers at video editing terminals or personal protective equipment for journalists covering civil unrest.

“We deserve a company that gives us the support and resources we need to do our jobs,” reporter Imani Cruzen said during the rally. “I hope in bargaining we can ask, what does Alden bring to the table for us?”

But since it acquired the Pioneer Press as part of a larger deal that took MediaNews Group out of bankruptcy in 2010, Alden has slashed jobs both locally and in newsrooms across the country. At the time of the sale, the St. Paul paper employed over 100 journalists.

A recent Guild survey suggests the cuts have come at a cost to workplace morale. But Kaufman, a food and features reporter, said the bargaining team is energized to fight for a contract that reflects Guild members’ value to both the company and the community.

“Look around,” he told members gathered in a circle at the rally. “We’re a catch. They should be fighting to keep us, not squeezing us until we can’t handle it anymore.”

Cruzen has seen what can happen when there’s no organized effort to fight for local media. Staffing in the newsroom where she worked before joining the Pioneer Press is down to just one reporter, who works remotely.

“I don’t want that future for us,” she said.

— Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor

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Newspaper workers demand hedge-fund owners invest or sell

May 16, 2018 by

Journalists from the Pioneer Press and other newspapers in the Digital First chain rallied together last week in New York, demanding their bosses at Alden Global Capital invest in journalism – or sell to new owners who will.

“We’ve been pushed around for too long by this hedge fund, and we’re getting tired of it,” Pioneer Press reporter Nick Ferraro said after attending the rally. “We can’t just sit back and let them write history by ruining community newspapers. We have to write a little bit of history ourselves.”

The protest channeled growing outrage among employees at Alden-owned publications across the country, sparked by reporting from Harvard University’s Nieman Lab showing Digital First had the industry’s highest profit margin last year.

The report broke down revenues and expenses at several Alden-owned publications, revealing that Pioneer Press workers delivered a tidy $10 million profit for the hedge fund in 2017. The newspaper’s profit margin is 13 percent, a number considered healthy – if not robust – for the industry.

The numbers stunned Ferraro and other members of the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, who have watched the Pioneer Press newsroom shrink from over 100 journalists to less than 50 since Alden seized its majority stake in Digital First eight years ago.

Ferraro called the report “shocking.” Capitol reporter Dave Orrick, a spokesperson for the Pioneer Press Guild unit, said the numbers show Alden is more interested in wringing short-term profits out of Digital First newspapers than in making them viable for the long haul.

“It’s a highly profitable company reducing staff at the expense of the core product,” Orrick said. “That is paradox in most business models. It is an eventual disaster in the case of a community newspaper.”

Turning up the heat

To avoid that disaster, newspaper workers are fighting on multiple fronts, including the court of public opinion.

Outside Alden’s offices last week, they carried signs demanding the hedge fund “invest or sell” and “get out of our news.” Although Alden refused to meet with the workers or receive their petition with 11,000-plus signatures, the action drew coverage from several prominent media outlets.

Alden’s top executives “were probably in their mansions somewhere or vacationing on a tropical island” during the protest, Ferraro said. “But they knew we were there. We’ve just got to keep this campaign going.”

Stronger together

Bending a global hedge fund to their will won’t be easy, but Digital First workers are finding strength in numbers – even as those numbers dwindle. Despite being spread out in newsrooms across the country, journalists are taking Alden to task with a consistent message and united voice.

That’s the power of a union, Orrick said.

Workers at 12 Alden-owned newspapers share an international union, the NewsGuild-CWA. The union creates “infrastructure,” Orrick explained, for workers across the newspaper chain to come together, strategize and amplify each other’s voice.

“We don’t have to go searching around LinkedIn for who we know, who might be a friendly face to try to create a network,” Orrick said. “That national network already exists.”

Guild members leveraged their collective strength in bargaining two years ago, forming a united front in contract talks with Digital First and winning raises for the first time in years.

They’ve also hired an investigative reporter of their own to dig into the hedge fund and Digital First’s business practices. The findings, published on dfmworkers.org and in national publications, have helped poke holes in the narrative that the Internet is killing newspapers (it’s actually Wall Street), and served as fodder for supporters relentlessly targeting Alden on social media with the hashtag #NewsMatters.

Search goes on

Still, Orrick acknowledged the Guild’s successes have been “measured” to this point. The pursuit of new ownership – locally and across the Digital First chain – continues.

“The fact is we’re trying to sell something we don’t own to some sort of entity or parties that we don’t have any standing to bargain with,” Orrick said. “So it’s a bizarre situation in that sense.”

Ferarro believes the Pioneer Press’ best hope is a new owner with local ties and, perhaps, a sense of civic responsibility, pointing to Mankato billionaire Glen Taylor’s acquisition of the Star Tribune four years ago.

“I would think a lot of business people would be happy with a $10 million annual profit,” Ferarro said. “We are still, I think, doing really well with our coverage of a lot of communities, we are still the No. 1 choice in the east metro, and we have a really loyal base of readers.

“Let’s hope someone likes the numbers, likes the good journalism we’re doing in the east metro and we can move on from this disaster.”

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