Journalists sue Chicago Tribune owner alleging pay discrimination

Chicago Tribune journalists filed a lawsuit Thursday against the newspaper’s owner, claiming it has knowingly paid them less than their White or male counterparts.

The federal lawsuit, filed as a class-action claim, seeks back pay for most Black and female reporters at the newspaper over the past five years, and to remedy salary discrepancies for those currently working at the paper.

“My beat has been about Black and Brown communities and inequities — the disparities, the wealth gap, homeownership, all of that,” said reporter Darcel Rockett, one of the seven named plaintiffs. “And to report on this routinely and then, in your own house, for it to fall on deaf ears … it’s debilitating.”

In 13 years, she told The Washington Post, she has received one raise.

The lawsuit is the latest escalation in the tensions between Alden Global Capital — which purchased the Tribune in 2021 on its rapid path to becoming one of the largest newspaper owners in the country — and the journalists who work for it. But it also represents years of frustration with past corporate owners.

An Alden representative declined to comment, saying the company has not reviewed the lawsuit.

According to the plaintiffs, an independent analysis of newsroom salaries found women are paid 10 percent less than male counterparts, and Black journalists are paid 10 percent less than White colleagues doing similar work. Black female journalists are paid 20% less than their White male counterparts.

A pay gap of tens of thousands of dollars, compounded over a decade, “means the difference between being able to buy a house or not, or being able to send your kid to college or not, or pay your medical bills,” said reporter Madeline Buckley, another Chicago Tribune reporter who is a named plaintiff. “It has a very real and detrimental impact on people’s lives.”

The lawsuit alleges that the newspaper’s owners “foster a culture of secrecy surrounding the pay and salaries of their workforce.”

While the Tribune, like other newspapers, has touted its efforts to recruit a more diverse staff, the lawsuit alleges that such programs have become “a source of cheap labor to depress the salaries of women and minority journalists.”

The Tribune journalists are represented by Michael Morrison, a Los Angeles-based attorney who in 2020 secured a $3 million settlement from the Los Angeles Times and the parent company it shared at the time with the Chicago paper, Tribune Publishing, to resolve a class-action pay discrimination lawsuit brought by a multiethnic group of journalists.

“Journalism has an exceptionally important role, still, in this society,” Morrison told The Post. “Protecting journalism starts with making sure that people that entered this profession are paid fairly, and that protected characteristics are not deciding their income level.”

Alden’s business model — buying local or regional newspapers and then aggressively cutting jobs and unloading their real estate assets to spur profits — has come under repeated scrutiny in recent years.

In some cases, employees have pushed back. In 2018, following another round of layoffs and buyouts, the staff of the Alden-owned Denver Post revolted against management and blasted the owners as “vulture capitalists” in the pages of its own newspaper. In 2021, journalists with Tribune Publishing newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun, mobilized to try to block Alden’s purchase of the company by seeking alternative buyers. (They were unsuccessful; Alden acquired the company for around $630 million.)

Rick Goldsmith, a filmmaker who last year released “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink,” a documentary about the Denver Post rebellion, bemoaned a profit motive that appears to be the only mission for media owners.

“Their goal is to make money. That’s it,” Goldsmith said. Alden, he said, has “a history of siphoning off the money that they do make and investing that elsewhere, so that further destroys the newspapers.”

In January, hundreds of workers in seven newsrooms, including the Chicago Tribune, staged a one-day strike to protest Alden’s refusal to offer cost-of-living raises and its threats to end their 401(k) matches.

The striking employees also alleged that the company had refused to address pay disparities for women and Black journalists. Still, Buckley said, management has remained “resistant” to fixing the pay issue.

“We felt that the only way to rectify it was to sue,” she said, “even though it was a painful decision to make.”

Rockett added that budget cuts, staff attrition and buyouts have made the newsroom smaller and less diverse. She emphasized the need to prioritize hiring and retaining journalists of color.

“The diversity numbers here in the newsroom are embarrassing,” she said.