Seattle Times: ‘Journalism doesn’t mean journalists’

The Seattle Times Union is negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, including terms to prevent workers being replaced by AI

SEATTLE, WA (May 6, 2026) — A new definition of “journalism” just dropped. Seattle Times employees are currently in negotiations for a new contract covering 170 print and digital newsroom staff, as well as workers in the marketing, circulation and operation departments. Like many newspaper workers in recent months, they’re pushing management to agree to terms that protect workers from artificial intelligence-induced layoffs. Management is apparently pushing something else: the notion that journalists aren’t actually essential for journalism.

In social media posts earlier this week, the Seattle Times Union shared that their AI layoff proposals have been rejected by management and that when discussing these proposals, the employer put forward the belief that somehow “journalism doesn’t mean journalists.”

The union’s public response is clear. “Management’s position is inexcusable,” wrote workers in an Instagram post. “We deserve a fair contract now — one with real job protections.”

Photo: Seattle Times Union via Instagram

Readers of The STAND can also tell that management’s position is not just inexcusable, but untethered from reality. The journalists and workers of the Seattle Times are what makes it the paper of record in Washington state — and valuable to working people. It is those workers who show up at picket lines and rallies, cover workers’ organizing efforts, track bills and policy proposals moving through the state legislature, and investigate state agencies and corporations whose actions impact Washington’s working families. Their coworkers in marketing, circulation, and operations make sure readers can access that work. In short, without the actual journalists working in the field, talking to other Washingtonians and running down leads, there really isn’t any journalism to read.

As members of the NewsGuild-CWA, the workers of the Seattle Times Union are part of a national push to put up guardrails on AI. That campaign, dubbed “News Not Slop,” has put forward principles to both safeguard journalists’ jobs and ensure readers can trust the journalism they see. It’s a notion with broad public support. A Reuters Institute study surveying attitudes about AI use among people in the US, UK, Japan, Argentina, Denmark, and France found that: “on average, only 12% are comfortable with news made entirely by AI; this rises to 21% with a ‘human in the loop’, 43% when a human leads with some AI help, and 62% for entirely human-made news (an increase of 4 percentage points since 2024).”

No matter what Seattle Times management may say at the bargaining table, most readers expect that journalism actually does mean journalists.

As negotiations continue, the Seattle Times union encourages readers to express their concerns about management’s position to publisher Ryan Blethen. His email is rblethen@seattletimes.com.