Copies of The Capital Times on a news rack.
In a news release, the Cap Times News Guild urged 'newspaper management to honor the paper’s legacy of support for labor movements by voluntarily recognizing its own staff’s right to unionize.'
Reporters at The Capital Times are forming a union affiliated with NewsGuild-CWA, the largest union for journalists and media workers in the United States.
“Every single one of our reporters is in support of this,” says Erin McGroarty, the paper’s health and policy reporter and, with three years on staff, the most senior reporter. “Local journalism thrives when local journalists are also thriving.”
McGroarty says the paper’s eight reporters presented a mission statement and letter seeking voluntary recognition of the union, which they call the Cap Times News Guild, to editor Mark Treinen and publisher/president Paul Fanlund Thursday morning.
She describes Treinen’s and Fanlund’s reactions as “friendly” and “professional” but says she does not yet know whether they will agree to voluntary recognition.
“It is still very recent,” she says. “[We] are ready and willing to have conversations moving forward.”
In a statement to Isthmus, Fanlund says the paper respects that its employees “have the right to organize.”
“We are committed to complying with the required processes as this plays out,” Fanlund says. He did not answer a question about whether management would voluntarily recognize the union.
A Thursday statement issued by the guild noted that the publication has been “a pro-labor voice for the Madison community since its inception more than 100 years ago. The Cap Times News Guild urges newspaper management to honor the paper’s legacy of support for labor movements by voluntarily recognizing its own staff’s right to unionize.”
McGroarty says the publication's reporters have been collectively discussing unionizing for months, but stops short of identifying any specific workplace issues that led to a unionization push. The goal of the union, she says, is to create “sustainable systems within The Cap Times that allow us to continue to do what we love, which is to report local news.” Specific bargaining table demands have not been finalized, though the union is “open to discussing a variety of topics with management.”
Fanlund wrote a Jan. 19 column laying out a future strategy for The Cap Times based on the results of working with Nicco Mele, a national consultant “with insights into the contemporary local media landscape.” According to Fanlund, Mele spent a lot of time talking with readers and “considerable time with Cap Times staff” as well. Among the consultant's suggestions was to "deepen and sharpen" the outlet’s daily email newsletter.
If Treinen and Fanlund voluntarily recognize the union, union representatives and managers would move to the bargaining table. If they do not, McGroarty says the union filed paperwork Thursday with the National Labor Relations Board to initiate an election process. That, she says, “would ultimately reach the same end, because we have 100% support among union-eligible workers.”
“Then [we would] still go to the bargaining process,” adds McGroarty. The reporters plan to withdraw the petition to the National Labor Relations Board if managers voluntarily recognize the union.
McGroarty also says the union is “unsure” what role Lee Enterprises, owner of the Wisconsin State Journal, with which The Cap Times shares some business functions, such as human resources, circulation and IT, would play in the process.
The union looked to other unionized news outlets in the state, including the Madison-based nonprofit publication Wisconsin Watch, to see “what has gone well and…how we can incorporate that into our process.” Wisconsin Watch unionized in affiliation with NewsGuild-CWA in 2023 and ratified its first contract in March 2025.
“I worked really closely with Natalie Yahr, who used to cover local business and economy for The Capital Times, and now she's at Wisconsin Watch. She and I are very good friends,” says McGroarty. “It was interesting to see the way that the contract was formed at Wisconsin Watch and hear from the reporters there about what that process was like as journalists.”
In 1977, workers across five unions from The Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal went on strike against Madison Newspapers Inc., a jointly-owned operating company of both publications, after MNI’s general manager cut the pay of some printers and laid off 34 others.
The strike birthed one alternate publication — the Madison Press Connection — and resulted in the crushing of each of the papers’ combined five unions.
[Editor’s note: This article was updated shortly after publication to add a statement from Cap Times publisher and president Paul Fanlund.]
