Everett NewsGuild secures first contract

Three years since winning their union, the journalists and photographers of the Daily Herald in Everett have ratified a first contract

EVERETT, WA (September 22, 2025) — For months, the Everett NewsGuild has made a simple argument at the bargaining table: good journalism requires good working conditions. Now, the workers of the Daily Herald have won a first union contract to secure those working conditions, improving wages and resisting damaging story quotas.

Workers at the Everett Daily Herald first started to organize in 2019, officially forming a union in 2022. Since then, the newsroom has seen rapid turnover.

“I remember when the push to unionize started pre-COVID in 2019 with people that are no longer at the Herald. I was looking back at the list names of everyone in the newsroom, twenty-two to be exact, that signed our official announcement about forming a union in 2022. I am the only one left in the newsroom that was on that original list,” said Olivia Vanni, a Herald photographer who’s worked at the paper for seven years.

Members of the Everett NewsGuild and supporters picketing in downtown Everett earlier this month.

Carpenter Media Group acquired the Daily Herald in 2024, and soon after handed down layoff notices to nearly half of the newsroom staff, including 10 of 18 union workers. Against that backdrop, workers continued to push for a contract that would preserve the quality journalism that readers rely on and protect jobs.

This contract finally secures newsroom workers that job security, per the union.

The contract sets a wage floor of $20.50, with increases for each year of experience and annual raises of 2%. Significantly, the contract does not impose story quotas on the workers. Defeating the employer proposal to tie wage increases to story quotas — which encourage churning out content rather than engaging in the kind of in-depth local journalism the community relies on — was one of the journalists’ top priorities. While management could still try to implement quotas, the union notes that workers now have just cause protections and are better able to push back should management take that step.

“It took a lot of hard work from all the people that have since left to get this done and from the current group to push this across the finish line,” said Vanni. “This means more job stability for all of us after a rocky few years and I am beyond excited.”

The Daily Herald’s journalists and photographers held their union together though mass layoffs, a strike, and years of bargaining. And throughout their contract fight, workers were supported by the local community as well as union siblings from across the region.

“We’re so glad to finally get this contract over the finish line,” said Will Geschke, a Herald reporter. “We couldn’t have done it without the help of the community and the Herald journalists who came before us.”