In the news: This year, over 1,500 journalists joined unions, a movement that continues to gain momentum.

This was a banner year for journalists organizing. Angela Fu of Poynter.org reports that this year, 1,542 journalists from 26 different companies joined the NewsGuild. It was the culmination of 35 different organizing efforts, she says.

The move toward unionizing has only accelerated in newsrooms in the last several years. But 2021 saw particularly high numbers. Fu reports, “The NewsGuild, the largest union representing journalists ... broke its annual organizing record. This year, 1,542 journalists from 26 workplaces joined the union. (The NewsGuild also organized an additional 16 non-media workplaces, giving it a total of 2,128 new members in 2021). It set its previous record in 2019 when 1,499 workers, both media and non-media, joined the union.” Read more here.

Also Notable

Publishing Struggles in 2021

Heading in 2021, many publishers envisioned a return to normalcy after a tough pandemic year. However, even with the widespread vaccine rollout, the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants threw a wrench in those plans. Max Willens of Digiday.com notes in a recent piece that some publishers have since abandoned plans to return to work in person. In addition, publishers continue to grapple with the impending end of third-party cookies. “Publishers expect alternate identifiers will play a pivotal role in their businesses when third-party cookies are phased out of the industry’s plans,” he writes. “But thanks in part to Google’s extension of its deadline for deprecating those cookies to 2023, those identifiers are not yet part of most publishers’ ad sales deals.” Read more here.

What’s Ahead for Local Journalism

Local newspapers have long been on the decline, but that doesn’t mean local news is dead. Sarah Fischer writes in a recent Axios.com piece, “New, independent digital outlets and nonprofits have begun to fill some of the gap left by fading local newspapers.” But traditional revenue will likely present ongoing challenges: “New digital sites and legacy local newspapers alike are finding it difficult to attract sustainable, commercial investment, making philanthropic support and reader donations more important,” Fischer says. Read more here.

Hong Kong Editors Face Charges

Amid ongoing media crackdowns in Hong Kong, “two former senior editors of Hong Kong’s Stand News were charged with conspiring to publish seditious materials ... after a police raid on the pro-democracy media organization that prompted its closure,” report Clare Jim and Sara Cheng of Reuters. The arrests come as part of China’s recently imposed national security law, and others were arrested along with the two aforementioned editors. “About 200 officers raided the online publication’s office, froze its assets and arrested seven current and former senior editors and former board members on Wednesday,” Jim and Cheng report. Read more about the raid here.

AP Style Reminders: Holiday Edition

Recently, the Poynter Institute shared holiday-related AP style tips. The guide includes rules for capitalizing or lowercasing holiday references depending on usage and reminders for when to include or omit apostrophes. The guide also covers holiday food and music. Read more here.

Report on Paywalls Available

Thinking about putting some or all of your content behind a paywall? What’s New in Publishing (WNIPM) recently published a report on the various options available, including hard and soft paywalls, “timewalls,” and others. The report is available for download here.

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