Reporters demand higher wages, AI accountability from newspaper owners
The Bellingham Herald will see interruptions to its local coverage this week.
Staff walked out Tuesday after over a year of negotiations with McClatchy Media, owner of five Pacific Northwest newspapers participating in the strike. Washington State and Idaho News Guilds overwhelmingly voted in favor of a work stoppage.
“We’re not asking for much,” said Jack Belcher, a Bellingham Herald reporter. “We’re just hoping to make enough that we can live here and keep doing the work we love to do.”
According to Michael Lycklama of the Idaho News Guild, the unions are requesting a $53,000 salary minimum compared to McClatchy’s offer of $52,000. Strikers want a 7% sign-on bonus compared to an offer of 3% and a 1-year raise of 3% compared to the offer of 2%.
Unions are not releasing the duration of the strike at this time, Lycklama said.
“We’re not making what we deserve to make, and I’m a firm believer in unions and the power of collective action,” said Bellingham Herald reporter Hannah Edelman. “I think McClatchy needs to listen to its reporters when they say they are not making livable wages. I’m also really concerned about the company’s use of AI in news and how they want to rewrite our stories using AI and slap our names back on it like we wrote it, so we’re also trying to get protections against the use of AI, because we are doing good important work and that deserves to be recognized.”
Other reporters shared concerns about McClatchy’s investment into artificial intelligence over its journalists.
“They’re putting up some AI summarized articles of stuff we’ve written,” Belcher said. “They want to attach our names to that.”
Representatives of McClatchy Media, which is owned by New Jersey-based hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, did not respond to requests for comment.
Kristine Sherred, the Tacoma-based chair of the Washington State News Guild, said the union reached “the end of the line” recently after a full year of negotiations with McClatchy.
The previous contract expired in June 2025. In the most recent bargaining session on May 19, Sherred said McClatchy extended a counteroffer that “wasn’t really a counter because it was the exact numbers they had presented to us several weeks ago.”
“The cost of living here is not low, and making $48,000 a year or even $52,000 a year is difficult to live on, so we’ve been frustrated,” she said.
Local newspapers may be small, but they do work that no one else does, Sherred said.
“If the reporters and photographers, which are limited in numbers already, can’t afford to make it work and can’t afford to stick around, it hurts everybody,” she said.
Larger news organizations sometimes come into Bellingham and Tacoma, Sherred said, but they cannot compete with smaller outlets for local news.
“We frequently break news that other news organizations here miss,” said Robert Mittendorf, who has reported for the Bellingham Herald for nearly 25 years. “We’re constantly being chased, and I think our company should recognize that.”
Bellingham Herald reporters first picketed April 30, well before the strike.
“The price of just about everything has increased from groceries to gas to rent,” Belcher said. “It seems like everything is going up in price except for employee pay. That has remained pretty stagnant at the time. So, we’re open for enough to survive, really. I mean, we’re reporters. We can’t take this job to make money. We pick this job because we like to do what we do, and we’d like to continue doing what we do. I want to afford to be able to continue to work where I work. I love Bellingham. I love working at the Herald. I love the people I work with, and I want to keep doing it.”
–By Sam Fletcher