Punches have been thrown in the first U.S. newspaper strike in two decades

Everyone get your “Rashomon” metaphors ready: The newspaper strike in Pittsburgh is getting nastier.

Some employees of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been on strike since October, seeking (among other things) their first contract since 2017 and reversal of a new health insurance plan that would roughly double some workers’ premiums. (Staffers have not had an across-the-board pay raise in more than 16 years.) Our Sarah Scire wrote a great piece from the scene that will give you all the background you need. But the strike’s importance stretches well beyond western Pennsylvania. It’s the first newspaper strike in the United States in more than 20 years, despite (or maybe due to) the incredible shrinkage of the industry over that span. And it’s happening amid an unprecedented spike in unionizing inside digital newsrooms.

On Sunday, both the Post-Gazette and the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh issued dueling press releases (see below) describing quite different versions of a fight at a newspaper production facility late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

Here’s what we can suss out. A group of strikers was at the facility, which distributes printed papers to delivery drivers. When isn’t exactly clear; the P-G’s press release says “around 1 a.m.,” the P-G’s news story says “about 11:09 p.m.,” and the guild’s press release says only “Saturday night.” The unions’ strike paper, the Pittsburgh Union-Progress, hasn’t published a story of its own yet. (Update: This story went up early Monday afternoon.) The guild calls what they were doing “picketing”; the Post-Gazette calls it “harassing.”