We bring the news to millions of readers in Southern California.
The SCNG Guild represents reporters, photographers, copy editors, page designers, digital producers and social media editors at the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers that make up the Southern California News Group. Under this unified banner, we cover communities large and small across four counties for SCNG’s 11 daily publications and more than a dozen weeklies.
Who is SCNG? We are the workers of the:
The papers attract a monthly online audience of 17.6 million unique visitors, according to the company, and have about 451,000 Sunday print subscribers.
We are a unit of the Media Guild of the West, TNG-CWA Local 39213, which represents more than 500 workers at the Los Angeles Times, the Arizona Republic and other news organizations. The NewsGuild-CWA is the largest union of media professionals in the country, representing more than 25,000 journalists and other news industry employees in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, and Canada.
Our mission
Southern California's local newspapers are essential. We document communities large and small, bringing the news to millions of readers. In some of those places, we are the only ones left ensuring someone keeps an eye on the institutions and trends that affect people's daily lives.
As the workers of the Southern California News Group, we represent journalists spread across four counties, covering the news under one unified banner. We love what we do, and we are organizing to ensure that we can continue doing it.
Readers need the services we provide more than ever. Our online traffic is surging, and our digital subscriptions are up. The public is clamoring for information that can help them and their families stay healthy and safe.
Through the work we've done in our communities, we believe we have earned a seat at the table. Our owners have repeatedly demonstrated they don’t think our voices matter.
Media News Group and Alden Global Capital have cut our newsrooms to the bone. Layoffs and turnover have devastated our workforce. We face historic staffing shortages, and the exodus of journalists with decades of experience has hollowed out our newspapers. These cuts leave us less able to provide the quality product we owe our readers.
Our goal, on the other hand, is to continue serving our communities. We want to stave off further losses while providing a framework for allowing our newspapers to thrive. And we want to build newsrooms with diverse voices reflecting the communities we cover.
Some of our newspapers have been around more than a century, and we want to continue that legacy. Our owners, however, only seem to plan for their next fiscal quarter. They are not investing in our newsrooms.
Our journalists have labored for years under increasingly difficult conditions. We intend to reverse that trend. We believe that only a union — formed with the Media Guild of the West, a local of The NewsGuild-CWA — can ensure we get the fair pay and benefits we deserve.
Many of our fellow journalists working in MNG newsrooms across the country have already organized in this way. We at SCNG want to be recognized along with them. We are asking MNG and Alden to recognize our union and to work with us to protect local journalism.