OPINION
Support ProPublica Guild, ready to strike for AI safeguards
As an avid news reader and editor of The STAND, here’s why ProPublica newsroom staff’s fight for AI protections matters
by SARAH TUCKER
(April 7, 2026) — Every morning, I trawl through local and national news for stories that matter to working people. It’s my responsibility (some would say a blessing; others, a curse) to read dozens of publications, selecting articles for The STAND’s News Roundup that are both relevant and fact-based. As artificial intelligence slop content becomes more common, knowing that the news I share with readers was written, fact-checked, and edited by human journalists is essential. That’s why the work of ProPublica newsroom staff shows up so frequently in this publication’s daily news downloads; because I can trust these journalists have done the legwork.
But for 27 months, the 150 journalists, videographers, development professionals, copy editors and other workers that make up the ProPublica Guild have been locked in negotiations with management over safeguards around AI use in their newsroom. After more than two years at the table, management still refuses worker proposals for restrictions on replacing newsroom jobs with AI.
To be clear, workers aren’t refusing AI use in the newsroom altogether. (In fact, journalists from over a dozen nonprofit newsrooms, including ProPublica Guild members, created a set of principles to guide how AI could be used to assist their work). As NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss wrote to ProPublica management:
“There are many recent examples of how AI can be helpful in reporting, when used ethically. For example, ProPublica journalists published the “Deleting DEI” story, which chronicled how nonprofit organizations have removed language connected to diversity, equity and inclusion. Reporters used AI to help find DEI related scrubs from nonprofit statements. In “Gutted: How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies,” reporters used AI to help categorize job types into groups. And then reporters manually checked them all.
ProPublica journalists, represented by the Guild, have shown how AI can be used ethically, and they deserve newsroom leadership who agrees with its ethical use.”
ProPublica newsroom staff are simply insisting that AI augments — rather than replaces — human journalism. But if management won’t commit to job protections as AI use is explored, it begs the question: will the credible reporting ProPublica is known for one day be trusted to algorithms, not people?
What does that mean for the deeply-researched investigative journalism that I believe is ProPublica’s essential value to readers? In my view, nothing good.
With little movement from management, guild members took a strike vote in late March; 92% voted to authorize a strike, with 99% of the bargaining unit casting votes. If the workers are pushed to walk out, it would be the first newsroom strike over AI in the U.S.
If workers strike, ProPublica articles won’t be shared with the thousands of readers who get The STAND in their inboxes every weekday — there’s no way I’ll cross a digital picket line and undercut my labor siblings as they fight for the future of journalism.
That’s the message I’ve shared with ProPublica President Robin Sparkman, supporting the Guild’s push for emails to management expressing solidarity with workers.
If you share my concern about AI supplanting journalism we can trust, I encourage you to support the workers in their fight: send an email to management, sign their petition, and donate to their strike fund if you have a few dollars to spare.
