The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933.
The NewsGuild-CWA's constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practices in addition to improving wages and working conditions.
The NewsGuild-CWA now represents workers in a wide range of roles including socialist and left-wing activist organizations, editorial, technology, advertising, and others at newspapers, online publications, magazines, news services, and in broadcast, as well as the staff of nonprofit organizations and spoken-language and sign-language interpreters and translators. The current president is Jon Schleuss.
History
thumb|American Newspaper Guild members in Paris
The organization's founders were Joseph Cookman an editor of the New York Post, Allen Raymond of the New York Herald Tribune and Heywood Broun of the New York World-Telegram. The inaugural chapter was based in Cleveland, Ohio, and Carl Randau was its first director from 1934 to 1940. It was originally called the American Newspaper Guild, but it simplified its name to Newspaper Guild in the 1970s to reflect the fact that it also operated outside the United States. It had expanded into Canada in the 1950s.
It became affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1936, then left to go into the new Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1937, when it expanded its membership to non-editorial departments. It merged with the Communications Workers of America in 1995.
The Guild has more than 25,000 members in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Its membership has expanded from just journalists to many other employees of newspapers and news agencies, such as clerks who take classified ads and computer support workers. It also represents workers in a number of other industries.
In 2021, the union changed its logo to reincorporate an eye motif from the original logos back to the union's founding and to modernize the look of the union for the future.
In 2024, media outlets reported that a high-profile organizer for the NewsGuild, Nastaran Mohit, wrote several posts on X that some NewsGuild members deemed anti-Semitic and violent. Mohit's comments included "Zionist butchers know how to kill" and referred to Zionists as "depraved monsters who will meet their fate one day." The Guild hired a law firm to investigate the actions as well as those of other Guild staffers who wrote criticism of the work of the journalists they represent in labor negotiations. “It’s clear that some of the people we pay to represent us hate us because … they not only attack the New York Times but journalism itself,” one longtime staffer told The New York Post.
Broun's influence
Heywood Broun was one of the most respected journalists and most popular, highly paid contributors. On August 7, 1933, Broun noted, in his New York World-Telegram column, the current economic gains of the newspaper's business. His understanding of economics distinguished him among is fellow journalists, and brought him into dialogue with newspaper management. The advocated for a trade union of journalists. Broun wrote, "the fact that newspaper editors and owners are genial folk should hardly stand in the way of organization of a newspaper writers' union. There should be [always] one." His column has influenced journalists from many states to rise up in opposition to the newspapers' authorities and organize by publishers to show the importance of the newspaper union and expanding the foundation.
Heywood launched the Guild during the Depression. During the earlier times of the Guild, there were complaints from the "rapacious" publishers about federal regulation of minimum wages and maximum hours for newsroom workers set by the National Recovery Act. The publishers wanted a tax deferral on constitutional grounds since their First Amendment rights would be compromised if the government enforced a forty-hour work week, which was considered restrictive.
Newsmen and newswomen rallied around Broun's call for labor union. The Newspaper Guild, representing journalists and other written media workers since 1933, became one of the most continuous and effective media organizations in the United States.
Status in 1942
In 1942 Henning Heldt, as a Nieman Fellow, contributed an article on the Newspaper Guild to a collection published by Nieman Fellows that year at Harvard University.
In 1934 a convention of the Guild was held in St. Paul, Minnesota. In an effort to elevate the standards of journalism, it was resolved: