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Newspaper Guild of New York Records

Call Number

WAG.125

Date

1935-1998, inclusive

Creator

Newspaper Guild of New York
Newspaper Guild of New York (Role: Donor)

Extent

552 Linear Feet in 552 record cartons
17 websites in 17 archived websites.

Language of Materials

Materials are in English.

Abstract

The Newspaper Guild of New York (The Newspaper Guild, Local 3) represents journalists, sales staff and technical workers in the print/online media in the New York metropolitan area. Among its members are reporters, photographers, editors, typographers, commercial artists, technicians, accountants, mail-room and circulation staff, independent translators, and staff members of non-profit organizations. The Guild has been active in campaigns to defeat racial and sex discrimination, to promote worker safety, and to provide job security in an industry that experienced rapid automation and other technical/structural changes. The Collection includes administrative and general files of the NGNY (including material on its parent union, The Newspaper Guild), and extensive files on individual "shops" or branches (generally associated with a specific employer or publication). Shop files document bargaining, contracts, grievances and arbitrations, social and political activities of shops, elections, the work of officers and staff, and changing technology, working conditions and industry trends.

Historical Note

The Newspaper Guild of New York (The Newspaper Guild, Local 3) represents journalists, sales staff, and technical workers in the print and online media industry in the New York metropolitan area. Among its members are reporters, photographers, editors, typographers, commercial artists, technicians, accountants, mail-room and circulation staff, independent translators, and staff members of non-profit organizations. The Guild has been active in campaigns to defeat racial and sex discrimination, to promote worker safety, and to provide job security in an industry that experienced rapid automation and other technical and structural changes.

The Newspaper Guild of New York (NGNY) was chartered in 1933 by a group of journalists led by Heywood Broun, columnist at the New York World Telegram. In December of the same year, representatives of disparate groups of journalists from across the country met in Washington, D.C. and formed the American Newspaper Guild (ANG). The driving forces behind creation of the Guild were Broun and Jonathan Eddy of the New York Times, both from the NYNG. There was considerable opposition within the fledgling Guild to operating as a trade union rather than as a professional association. In that internal struggle, the NYNG strongly supported the trade-union model. The bitter Newark Ledger strike of 1934-1935 proved to be a testing ground for conflicting visions of the Guild's role. While the strike settlement yielded little in the way of concrete gains for the strikers, the Guild emerged from it with an enhanced sense of national solidarity and confirmation of its ability to lead and bargain for its members.

At its founding, the American Newspaper Guild was open only to journalists, broadly defined. However, in 1937 it expanded its jurisdiction to include commercial departments, and added the goals of improved journalistic and ethical standards, and equal employment and advancement opportunities in the newspaper industry to its mission statement. The Guild affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1936, but soon abandoned the AFL for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

The ensuing years saw increased international expansion as the Canadian region was established in the 1950s. In 1970, the ANG changed its name to The Newspaper Guild (TNG). Against the backdrop of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, the Guild and its locals heightened their opposition to race and gender discrimination in news industry hiring and promotion practices during the 1960s and 1970s.

The charismatic, energetic Broun, whose politics were forged in the Socialist Party, served as president of the New York Guild for its first six years. Early organizing campaigns enjoyed considerable success. In 1935, the New York Post became the first New York newspaper to unionize, followed by the Daily News in 1936, and the New York Times in 1941. The first magazine to unionize was Time in 1937.

The NGNY has carried out lengthy strikes against several major New York newspapers, including the 16-week Brooklyn Eagle strike of 1937, the 11-week World-Telegram and Sun strike of 1950, and the five-month Daily News strike of 1990-1991.

In 1995, the The Newspaper Guild merged with Communication Workers of America (CWA), and in 1997 it became a sector of the CWA. As of 2011, TNG-CWA represents 34,000 members. The Newspaper Guild of New York represents employees of major dailies, weeklies, many publications of the City's ethnic communities, magazines and other publications of non-profit organizations such as Consumers Union, and news and data services.

In spring 2015, the Guild voted to change its name from the Newspaper Guild of New York to the NewsGuild of New York to better represent digital-based news organizations.

Arrangement

The files are organized into seven series:

Series I: Early Records: General Files, 1935-1950
Series II: Early Records: Shop Files, 1935-1950
Series III: General Files, 1951-1998
Series IV: Minutes, 1951-1991
Series V: Shop Files, 1951-1998
Series V:A: General Shop Files, 1951-1998
Series V:B: New York Daily News Shop Files
Series V:C: New York Times Shop Files
Series VI: Unprocessed Materials
Series VII: Photographs, 1940-1950
Series VIII: Archived Websites

Folders are arranged alphabetically.

Scope and Content Note

The Newspaper Guild of New York Records includes administrative and general files of the NGNY (including material on its parent union, The Newspaper Guild), and extensive files on individual "shops" or branches, which are generally associated with a specific employer or publication. Shop files document bargaining, contract negotiations, grievances and arbitrations, social and political activities of shops, elections, the work of officers and staff, and changing technology, working conditions, and industry trends.

The collection is divided into Early Records (Series I-II), dating from the 1930s to 1950; and more recent records (Series III-V), dating from 1951 to the 1990s. Photographs contained in Series VII date from 1940-1950.

Conditions Governing Access

The processed portion of the collection is open for research without restrictions; donor permission is required for boxes 235-551.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection, created by the Newspaper Guild of New York was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date; Newspaper Guild of New York Records; WAG 125; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

To cite the archived website in this collection: Identification of item, date; Newspaper Guild of New York Records; WAG 125; Wayback URL; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Location of Materials

Materials are stored offsite and advance notice is required for use. Please contact special.collections@nyu.edu at least two business days prior to research visit.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Given to Tamiment Library on deposit by the Newspaper Guild of New York in 1996. The accession numbers associated with these materials are 1986.019 and 1986.020. Additional materials were transferred in approximately 1998.

The accession numbers NPA.1999.016, NPA.2002.008, NPA.2002.011, NPA.2003.078 and NPA.2008.020 are also associated with this collection.

https://www.nyguild.org/ was selected by curators and captured through the use of The California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service in 2009 as part of the Tamiment-Wagner: Labor Unions and Organizations (U.S.) Web Archive. In 2015, these websites were migrated to Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. In 2021, http://www.justcausenoexceptions.com/ was added to the web archives. The accession number associated with this website is 2021.073. In November 2021, http://www.nyguilddigital.org/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2022.029. In December 2022, https://twitter.com/NYTimesGuild/, https://www.nydnunion.com/, https://www.insiderunion.org/, https://www.wirecutterunion.com/, https://www.forbesunion.org/, https://www.condeunion.org/, https://p4kunion.tumblr.com/, https://www.newyorkerunion.com/, https://www.buzzfeednewsunion.com/, https://www.nbcnewsguild.com/, https://www.therecordguild.com/, https://hudsonvalleynewsguild.org/, https://nytimesguild.org/, and https://appmcjguild.com/ were added. The accession number associated with these websites are 2023.003.

Take Down Policy

Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.

If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.

If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the special.collections@nyu.edu.

Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.

Related Material at the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Newspaper Guild of New York Film Collection (FILM 009)
Newspaper Guild of New York: Betsy Wade Files (WAG 045)
Newspaper Guild Printed Ephemera Collection (PE 002)
Newsmen's Commission to Investigate the Murder of George Polk Records (TAM 159)
New Yorkers at Work Oral History Collection (OH 001)

Collection processed by

Finding aid prepared by Janet Greene, circa 1999; Hillel Arnold, Elizabeth Du Rocher, and Susan Tofte, 2007-2008; Daniel Michelson, 2011. Edited by Mary Corcoran for compliance with DACS and Tamiment Required Elements for Archival Description; updated to include materials integrated from accession 1986.019, 2013.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-11-10 16:37:17 -0500.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Description is in English

Processing Information note

Photographs and other graphic materials were separated from this collection during initial processing and were established as a separate collection, the Newspaper Guild of New York Photographs (PHOTOS 106). In 2013, the photograph collection was reincorporated into the Newspaper Guild of New York Records (WAG 125).

In 2014, the archived website was added as Series VIII. Series V and VI were reformatted from a Word document to EAD in 2014.

Some graphic materials were reintegrated March 2018 into Series VI.

In 2021-2022, additional websites were added to the finding aid and additional descriptive information was also included.

Revisions to this Guide

January 2023: Edited by Nicole Greenhouse to add additional archived websites and updated administrative information

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012