Guild denounces shuttering of Cascade PBS

Send a message to Cascade PBS executives in solidarity with union journalists

SEATTLE, WA (September 30, 2025) — Calling it shameful and short-sighted, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild is denouncing Cascade PBS’ decision to dismantle it’s online newsroom. Disbanding the written and investigative journalism at the outlet will result in the lay off of nine union members along with five other staff. The newsroom is slated to close October 31.

In a statement, the guild makes clear that the funding challenges facing Cascade PBS are the result of the Trump administration’s choice to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which it notes has resulted in a 10% loss of funding for the outlet. But it takes issue with executives’ approach to navigating this funding shortage.

Members of Cascade PBS union and supporters rallying during contract negotiations in April 2025. Photo: MLK Labor

“But make no mistake, the executives at Cascade PBS did not have to eliminate the newsroom and its unionized members,” reads the statement. “Faced with the loss of federal funding, not a single executive took a pay cut. CEO Rob Dunlop earned more than $500,000 in 2024 and the company paid more than $2 million to its executive team in total. Cascade PBS only eliminated five positions outside of the newsroom of its nearly 140 person staff.”

The closure comes less than six months after Cascade PBS journalists ratified a new union contract. Securing that contract took nearly a year of bargaining, with management interfering in workers’ right to discuss and share information on their union activity in non-work spaces, per a unfair labor practice filed by the union. At the time, union journalists noted that Rob Dunlop, CEO of Cascade PBS, received an annual bonus so big that it alone would have made him one of the highest-paid unit members in the newsroom.

In an editorial in the Seattle Times, a Cascade Public Media board member notes that management’s decision to shutter the newsroom was made without notice to “most of the board.”

As free speech and a free press come increasingly under attack, guild members and readers alike are especially saddened, disappointed, and angry by the decision to layoff journalists and pull a trusted source of local news from the Seattle-area community.

The guild is pushing to ensure the laid-off workers are supported, and union journalists are asking readers of Cascade PBS and union supporters to sign a petition to the company’s executives to urge sufficient severance for the abrupt loss of their jobs. A fund has also been set up to support Cascade PBS journalists.