Pacific Media Workers Guild

While ASLIU and Purple representatives inched closer on a key article when they met last Thursday in San Francisco, overall agreement on a first-ever union contract for VIs remained frustratingly elusive.

Location and timing is everything for local journalism as it is for real estate. The San Mateo Times adhered to that principle for decades. And it proved quite profitable.

When a group of local investors bought the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the unionized news staff invested, too.

The Guild has launched an effort to find or build community-based enterprises to free news organizations from the grip of the Digital First Media hedge fund.

An ad posted by the San Francisco-based Guild local reads: “Employees of your community’s newspaper want a new attitude respecting quality jobs & quality journalism on the part of ownership.”

We are putting together a committee to decide how we’d like to honor the 20th anniversary of the San Francisco newspaper strike. Please volunteer.

Compromise was the name of the game when Purple Communications and ASLIU negotiators met in San Francisco last Thursday after nearly four months away from the bargaining table.

More than 40 people showed up at the Mexican Museum in Fort Mason on Tuesday night to learn about the Leopoldo Méndez prints discovered and restored by the Guild.

Thanks partly to the Pacific Media Workers Guild’s efforts, a city charter amendment aimed at improving transparency in local government and politics will go before Oakland voters in November.

For three decades, a set of black-and-white linocuts hung on the exposed brick walls of the Guild office, rarely eliciting more than passing interest. Each bore the signature of Leopoldo Méndez.