The state of the Statesman

Journalists from the Austin American-Statesman, the Texas Tribune and ProPublica picketed in front of the offices of the Tribune on Congress Ave and Hearst on 10th Street yesterday.

Employees of all three organizations have voted to unionize in recent years but have been struggling to secure contracts with management.

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The Tribune and ProPublica are nonprofits. They are certainly capable of making bad decisions or mistreating employees, but they answer to mission-driven donors, not impatient shareholders or bottom-feeding private equity firms.

Today I'm choosing to focus on the Statesman reporters because their situation is by far the most dire. The newsroom was slashed to a shell of its former self by former owner Gannett (formerly GateHouse), whose parasitic business model is to strip a newspaper down to its bones so that it can squeeze as much profit out of the elderly subscribers before they die.

Nicole Villalpando, president of the Statesman guild, recalls there were more than 250 newsroom employees when she started at the paper in 1999. Now there are 38 guild-represented reporters and photographers. There are 15 management positions.

The paper's acquisition last year by Hearst, owner of the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, brought hope. Unlike Gannett, Hearst is a family-owned business that has shown some interest in preserving and/or investing in journalism.

"We were really excited, actually," Villalpando recalls. "We actually thought about writing Hearst and asking them to buy us. We thought this was going to be great."