When you see journalists on picket lines, they’re typically snapping photos, scribbling in notepads, or pulling a protester or striking worker aside for an interview. But in Texas, increasingly, journalists have found themselves adopting a less familiar role: holding signs, leading chants, giving the interviews themselves—all in a bid to improve their own deteriorating work conditions and, thus, save local media institutions that form part of the bedrock of American democracy.
On Monday, about 20 unionized journalists from the Austin American-Statesman—the 152-year-old daily covering Texas’ fast-growing capital metro—took to the city’s iconic Congress Avenue bridge holding signs reading “Save our Statesman” and “Journalists are worth more.” As a few passing cars honked, they chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, corporate greed has got to go.” The paper’s name was still emblazoned on a building in the background, the outlet’s former headquarters before the Statesman relocated to a less-central location. Not simply protesting, these media workers were engaging in a one-day strike—alongside hundreds of others from two dozen newsrooms nationwide—against Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain with more than 200 daily publications including the Statesman.
“We love this community; we want to be able to cover this community, but we cannot do it under the current conditions,” said Nicole Villalpando, a health editor and vice chair of the Austin NewsGuild, the union formed by Statesman workers in early 2021. “Today we are on strike, and we are here to save our Statesman.”
