Two vying for presidency of NewsGuild-CWA in spring election

President Bernie Lunzer chaired the NewsGuild’s 80th Sector Conference held in Florida at the end of January.

An activist with a new Local has emerged as challenger for leadership of The NewsGuild (TNG) that will be decided in a spring election in which all members of CWA Canada are eligible to vote.

Jon Schleuss, 31, is running against President Bernie Lunzer, 61, who has held the position since 2008. 

TNG, a sector of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), is affiliated with, but has no involvement in governance of the autonomous Canadian union. (However, CWA Canada President Martin O’Hanlon is a voting member of the TNG executive board.)

Each CWA Canada Local will determine whether ballots are cast in person on location or by mail during the April 10-15 election period.

The two candidates were nominated at TNG’s 80th Sector Conference held in Florida at the end of January. Attending as a guest, Schleuss became a TNG member in good standing immediately prior to the start of the conference.

Jon Schleuss, 31, is running against President Bernie Lunzer, 61

Schleuss was a key player in the successful 2017 campaign to organize editorial employees at the famously anti-union Los Angeles Times, where he has worked as a data and graphics reporter since 2013. 

Lunzer — who worked at the St. Paul Pioneer Press for 10 years, then as administrative officer of the Minnesota Guild from 1989 to 1995, when he became TNG’s secretary-treasurer — is counting on that lengthy experience in his bid for re-election.

On his campaign website (BuildingTheGuild.org), Lunzer says that he and his team have “propelled the Guild to the highest level of organizing in years and have bargained strong contracts for new members.” 

In a speech at the sector conference, Lunzer said he would continue to fight within CWA for resources to double organizing efforts, which have resulted in adding more than 2,700 members in 51 workplaces since 2015.

Speaking at the same conference, Schleuss acknowledged that “I clearly have a lot to learn, but I think that’s healthy. When we started the movement in Los Angeles two years ago, we had a lot to learn.”

According to his campaign website (JonForPresident.com), Schleuss is running for TNG’s top office “because we need a modern, energized and more democratic union that will protect our members, strengthen our contracts and grow our numbers — even as we meet the challenges of the rapidly changing media landscape.”

Schleuss, who became online editor at the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2009, later worked part-time as a reporter and weekend host at an NPR station. In addition to his current work at the Times, he serves as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

CWA Canada members who want more information or have questions about the election process should speak with their Local’s executive.

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candidates were nominated

Contested race emerges in election of TNG-CWA president

organize editorial employees at the famously anti-union Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times newsroom votes to go union amid growing corporate tumult

BuildingTheGuild.org

JonForPresident.com

LUNZER: WHAT’S IN A NAME? WHY IT’S PAST TIME FOR ‘NEWSGUILD’

December 23, 2014
In 1995, when only 14 percent of Americans had internet access, I purchased the web domain name “NewsGuild.org.”

I was convinced that local Guild leaders would vote to drop “paper” from our name at our next meeting. I was wrong. Delegates had strong and passionate feelings about “newspapers,” almost as if bracing against the tidal wave of change headed toward their industry and careers.

Twenty years later, it is past time. It is inevitable. We are media. We are content producers. Ink may be in our blood but it is no longer essential to our survival. That is why a resolution to change our name to “NewsGuild” will be offered at our sector conference in January. Based on reactions at regional conferences this fall, I expect it to pass.

We are rightfully proud to be long associated with newspapers and their investments in and commitments to quality journalism. Yes, hedge funds and other distant owners have hurt those investments and commitments, but it is still true that most news stories and investigative journalism originate with newspapers.

Most stories—but not all—as this year’s Heywood Broun awards illustrate. The top Broun award was shared by the online Center for Public Integrity and ABC News for a phenomenal joint investigation into a coal industry conspiracy to deprive sick miners of medical benefits.

ABC’s Brian Ross accepted the award saying how honored he and the producing team were to receive the award from The Newspaper Guild — even though “we don’t think of ourselves as newspaper people.”

But “In this day and age in journalism, we’re all really one,” he added, all of us sharing the latest technology “to tell important and big stories.”

Members of the Guild’s Executive Council were struck by Ross’ words. They may have never heard anyone say that our name limited journalists from identifying with the Guild.

Our goal isn’t to preserve print — as hard as it is for many baby boomers to imagine a day starting without coffee and the morning paper, emphasis on paper.                     Our mission is to preserve quality journalism and good jobs. On the best of days, this is a challenge. It is even more difficult if we are limited by our name.

Our new name will continue to be linked, proudly, with the Communications Workers of America. CWA is a good case study for us. Our parent union began as the National Federation of Telephone Workers but reorganized in 1947 as the Communications Workers. The name didn’t limit CWA to telephone and telecommunication work. Instead, a forward-thinking organization was born that 50 years later was a natural fit for newspaper and broadcast workers, interpreters and all kinds of customer service representatives.

As the fight for a reliable business model continues for news organizations, the upheaval and uncertainty for workers brings evermore urgency to our work. It’s critical that journalists and other media workers looking for help don’t come across “The Newspaper Guild” and be discouraged by our name. We believe “NewsGuild-CWA” will make a difference.

Unfortunately, journalists are far from the only newspaper workers being hurt as technology forever changes, or kills, jobs. A brazen misassumption in the early years of the internet was that the web would have little effect on newspaper advertising.

No one predicted Craigslist, let along Google, Facebook, and the myriad other high-tech means of separating revenue from content. Google is particularly infuriating to me, so far removed from its “Don’t Be Evil” beginnings. Today, it is a multi-billionaire parasite, using its wealth and power to gain more wealth and power while fighting against compensating the content creators they exploit.

“Tell us to stop searching your sites,” they tell news organizations that complain. I think it’s time for publishers to call their bluff. Some in the media have fantasized about a separate search engine or portal, where visitors would either pay for content up front or advertising revenue would be returned to the content creators. I’m not sure why no one is seriously talking about this yet. Like our name change, it’s past time.

The irony is that even Google needs us to succeed in our fight to save paid journalists and journalism. Well researched, accurately reported, reliable information is the common denominator, whether we’re talking about a search engine’s profits or our democracy’s survival.

NewsGuild-CWA plans to be part of those conversations for many years to come.