Arizona Daily Star reporters form union, seek recognition from new owners USA Today Co

Newsroom staff at the Arizona Daily Star voted to form a union this week, joining a larger media guild in an effort to increase wages, improve living conditions and limit how so-called “artificial intelligence” is used at the Tucson newspaper.

The union will cover 20 reporters, copy editors and photographers as a unit of the Media Guild of the West, a local of the NewsGuild, the nation’s largest union for journalists and other media workers.

Last month, newspaper chain Lee Enterprises sold its share of the Arizona Daily Star to the media behemoth USA Today Co., putting the newspaper fully in the hands of the company that owns the Arizona Republic, and other publications operated by the international publishing behemoth. Formerly known as Gannett, the company rebranded under the name of its flagship national newspaper in 2025 to to distance itself from the negative connotations associated with Gannett’s newsroom layoffs and newspaper closures. Gannett had long owned a 50 percent share in the Tucson newspaper operation.

With the new ownership in place, the Star’s reporters, photographers and copy editors asked the new parent company to “demonstrate its stated commitment to local journalism by respecting employees’ collective voice and voluntarily recognizing their union.”

95 percent of the eligible reporters, copy editors and photographers at the Star signed cards asking to be represented by the News Guild-CWA, they said.

Newsroom staff at the Arizona Republic joined the guild in 2019.

The union represents more than 25,000 journalists and others across 200 newsrooms in the United States and Canada. The NewsGuild is an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, an AFL-CIO union.

Under federal law, the Star’s corporate owners can opt to recognize the new union. If USA Today does not do so, the employees can ask the National Labor Relations Board to oversee a formal vote.

“We respect the right of employees of the Arizona Daily Star to make a fully informed choice for themselves whether to unionize or not unionize,” said Amy Garrard, the company’s vice president of labor relations, in a statement emailed to the Sentinel by an unidentified public relations staffer.

Company officials provided no other information, and didn’t clearly indicate if they would voluntarily recognize the union organizing effort, or force a formal vote. The PR staffer did not respond to a request to clarify that position, choosing to only reiterate the corporate VP’s statement while correcting their earlier typo in her title.

“We’re asking for a seat at the table,” said Emily Bregel, the Star’s border reporter and one of two reporters selected for the Arizona Press Club’s 2025 Virg Hill Journalist of the Year. Bregel has been on staff or worked as a freelancer at the Star since 2013.

“We care deeply about our community and the sustainability of Tucson’s daily newspaper. That’s why we’re fighting to have a say in the future of our newsroom,” Bregel said.

The Arizona Daily Star has a 149-year history in Tucson, and is “a vital source of information to the community,” said newsroom staff on Wednesday. They said they are advocating for “better working conditions, a livable wage, and the resources necessary to provide Tucson and Southern Arizona with the level of coverage our readers deserve.”

“While the Star is locally profitable, averaging $8.5 million in annual net income over the past decade, our staff has suffered from stagnant or declining wages and repeated layoffs that have shrunk our newsroom to a skeleton crew,” they said, leaving around 20 staff to cover a region that has more than 1 million people.

“We are advocating for a living wage and cost-of-living raises; an end to indiscriminate layoffs; clear evidence of local financial distress to justify any proposed staff reductions; affordable health insurance; protection of the resources necessary for news gathering, such as travel budgets and equipment; and assurances that Star journalists won’t be forced to use AI and will have a say in our newsroom AI policy.”

Last month, the NewsGuild demanded USA Today sever a recent partnership with Palantir, which has come under fire for providing tech to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the military of Israel. Palantir’s co-founder, Peter Thiel was the billionaire investor who financed Hulk Hogan’s defamation lawsuit that bankrupted the publication Gawker.

In an interview in September, Thiel told an interviewer that being “evil” is better than being “bad.”

“… What is the antonym of good? And the moral antonym is evil. The functional antonym is bad,” said Thiel, a mentor for Blake Masters, the Tucson resident who was COO of the billionaire’s investment firm and a failed Republican candidate for office in Arizona.

“And so if you’re evil, you’re at least competent. And if you’re evil, you’re not bad. And therefore maybe you’re actually kind of good because you’re at least getting something done,” Thiel said.

“Every visit, every session, and every moment of attention creates a signal, and when we connect those signals, they become actionable intelligence that allows us to engage users more effectively and monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value,” USA Today Co. Chairman Mike Reed said of the company’s application of Palantir’s AI platform to extracting “intelligence” from data about readers.

Guild members said they were shocked to learn about the deal, and argued it undermines trust in the outlet and “raises serious questions” about data security for readers.

“Not only does partnering with Palantir, a major player in the news we cover, create an inherent conflict of interest, but it fails the journalists who have been assaulted and falsely arrested while covering immigration enforcement actions and protests,” the Guild said.