The New York Daily News will lay off 28% of its unionized staff, including more than half of its national desk, according to the paper’s union.
The NewsGuild of New York and the Daily News Union said it found out in an email from the newspaper’s owner, the investment firm Alden Global Capital. The cuts will see six of the paper’s 10 staffers on its national desk exit, and it will also severely impact the print production team, according to the union.
The Daily News’ executive editor Andrew Julien wrote in an X thread that the paper would remain committed to New York “against the backdrop of a highly competitive media landscape.” He said the changes would include “the elimination of a number of positions across the organization including de-emphasizing breaking crime news coverage outside of the NYC area.” The cuts would not affect the metro or sports departments, he wrote.
“This latest move by Alden Global Capital to gut the staff of the New York Daily News, our city’s hometown newspaper, is another sad reminder that the hedge fund and its owners have no interest in investing in local journalism, but instead want only to squeeze the paper and its staff dry in order to enrich themselves,” Michael Sheridan, the unit chair for the Daily News Union, said in a statement. “The dedicated reporters, photographers and editors at the 107-year-old institution deserve better, and so does New York City.”
The cuts came three months after the paper reached its first union contract with Alden, which ended a three-year fight between both parties that included a spree of mass layoffs, a vote of no confidence in its executive editor and a 24-hour walkout. Alden, an investment firm known for steep cost-cutting at its newspapers, bought Tribune out in 2021.
“Alden and Daily News management have consistently, throughout our existence as a union, tried to ignore the fact that they have a unionized work force,” the Daily News Union said in its statement. “We’re not going away.”
