REMEMBRANCES OF THE LOCAL

By Gary North, Gil Bailey, Lee Brown

A PERSONAL NOTE

July 2001
Long Beach, CA

In a cramped upstairs office near downtown Long Beach, a venerable, vilified and, some would say, infamous Los Angeles area institution held its final general membership meeting Wednesday, June 27, at noon -- ending 64 years of existence.

After about an hour of tying up loose ends and reminiscing, the Southern California Media Guild, also known as the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild -- the one many longtime L.A. area residents may best remember (inaccurately) as the "union that killed" the Los Angeles Herald Examiner -- quietly wrote "30" in its minutes instead of "sine die."

Thus ended a piece of Southern California labor history, even though the local continues to exist as a committee of CWA 9400 and the units will continue to be represented by the same people and within TNG, as before.

But it wasn't supposed to end this way -- it wasn't supposed to end, period -- although the TNG and CWA constitutions clearly anticipate such a possibility and lay out procedures for doing so.

And while I'm comforted that we're preserving our forebears' goals, ideals and legacies by this merger, I've often had to fight off a sense of guilt that we "killed" what others had founded and nurtured with much pain, effort and sacrifice during much of the last century.

A look at the local's history shows witchhunts and Red scares and what in retrospect some might say were Pyrrhic victories following "bitter" strikes (then again, what strike isn't bitter?), involving quite an assortment of newspapers -- most of which no longer exist: absorbed, killed, or simply evaporated because of management incompetence, greed or spite (or all three) or competition (unfair and otherwise) -- never because of guild or labor unrest.

We were founded in the barn of actor Edward Everett Horton's San Fernando Valley ranch after the Great Depression and before the Second Great War. Paid less than a livable wage, workers united, and the guild local was charted in 1937 (along with several others that year, including the San Diego chapter that essentially was combined with the L.A. local two years ago, when the latter also changed its name to the Southern California Media Guild to reflect its growth in geography and technology).

The local represented not only reporters and editors but circulation workers and customer service people and janitors and truck drivers and in some cases advertising staffers -- and occasionally "wall to wall": every non-management worker in a plant.

That's what the newly merged local aims for -- but such a feat wasn't possible for the local guild by itself toward the end, given all the media consolidations, the vastness of the Southland, the myriad new types of news outlets, and so forth.

In the midst of this continuing paradigm shift, it became apparent that while we could continue as a standalone entity, we could not thrive and expand quickly enough to meet the growing need and demand.

After a concentrated multiyear effort at rebuilding, restructuring and re-examining, all with an eye to the unique dynamics of this region, a consensus arose in August 2000 that the only real solution to best serve local media workers was to merge. And so we did: In the recent referendum, there was only vote opposed.

But as the local's last president to serve a full term -- and as the chair of the committee that looked at the various alternatives and realized merger was clearly the way to go -- I have to admit it was also a humbling, saddening and anguishing personal experience in light of the local's colorful and inspirational past.

It was in part for that very reason that we tried so hard to avoid a merger -- to honor the history, heritage, the founders, our supporters, our former and current members, and our tradition of independence and internal democracy.

But we came to the absolute conclusion that to best honor all this and continue to fight the good fight, and remain viable in order to serve media workers, merger was the only right, proper and honorable thing to do. In fact, on the contrary, to have folded our tent and called it a day would have been to dishonor those who had come before us, bringing shame to ourselves and abandonment of the cause.

And so ends the history -- much of it noble -- of the local Newspaper Guild as a standalone entity in the Los Angeles area: with a whimper (mine and a few old-timers) and a whisper (virtually no news outlet reported the merger vote), but also a crescendo and a bang: We have now joined a huge, powerful local that does not take on such partners without intending to capitalize on them.

So if you think you've heard the last of "the local newspaper union" in Southern California, you are very wrong. Only the name -- and circumstances -- changed. For the most part -- actually the overwhelming part, according to our vote and information meetings -- the current members find this merger invigorating, exciting, even electrifying. We've preserved our founders' ideals (if not the structure) and will now take on even bigger challenges in this very changed world.

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