At the call of the NewsGuild-CWA press union, there are "more than 1,000 employees (...) of about twenty newsrooms from California to New York" who protested Monday and, for some possibly Tuesday, according to a statement from labor organizations.

Gannett's beachhead is the USA Today newspaper network.

The group, which also controls The Palm Beach Post in Florida or The Arizona Republic, was bought in November 2019 for about $ 1.2 billion by New Media Investment Group (also called GateHouse Media), to form a juggernaut of more than 250 local publications.

But since the merger, "newsrooms have been emptied, local news coverage has been reduced, and Gannett's share price has fallen nearly 70 percent, far more than among competitors like the New York Times and Lee Enterprises," NewsGuild-CWA thundered.

The trade groups denounce the "mismanagement" of Gannett CEO Mike Reed, which has "demoralized newsrooms, making it impossible for reporters to take advantage of resources to produce quality journalism."

Reed is also accused of "decimating local news coverage across the country and cutting journalists' salaries and benefits."

The latter have asked since Friday the shareholders gathered Monday at the headquarters of Gannett in Virginia, suburbs of the capital Washington, to vote no confidence against Mr. Reed.

"Under Mike Reed's leadership, Gannett became radioactive to investors. Reed doesn't care about a long-term strategy for the firm to invest in (its) journalists," NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss said in a statement Friday.

But "despite the blockages in some of our markets, there will be no disruption and we will continue to provide trustworthy information to our loyal readers," a spokesman for Gannett told AFP in an email.

While the group has reduced the payroll of its publications by 20% according to the unions, the management intends to "preserve journalism and (...) provide (his) valuable employees with fair and equitable wages and benefits."

A flourishing and extremely diverse time, the regional and local daily press in the United States has suffered terribly from successive crises, particularly resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Newsrooms in this country, which is very attached to press and freedom of expression, lost some 30,000 journalists between 2008 and 2020 (from 114,000 to 85,000 people) according to a 2021 Pew Research Center study.

© 2023 AFP