Long Beach Post reporters on strike following mass layoffs

Reporters accuse their CEO Melissa Evans of leading the news outlet into disaster, and are asking the public to boycott the Long Beach Post.

Striking and laid off staff members from the Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal are accusing the local media outlet of union busting and mismanagement, picketing outside its downtown offices Monday morning.

The Long Beach Media Guild, the as-of-yet unrecognized labor union Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal employees are trying to form, announced over social media on Friday that nine employees out of a total of 15 had been laid off.

The Long Beach Media Guild said that while seven of the layoffs were expected, two staff members who were told their positions were safe before the staff pushed to unionize were also laid off. The Long Beach Media Guild alleges that these two reporters were fired as a direct result of their decision to join the union. The two reporters in question are Kat Schuster and Brandon Richardson, who have become prominent figures in the union movement. 

The Long Beach Media Guild has filed a complaint against the Long Beach Post leadership with the National Labor Relation Board, striking Long Beach Post reporter Jason Ruiz said. 

The Long Beach Post suffered a previous round of layoffs when it started its transition from a business to a nonprofit model in late 2023. Another nine staff members were laid off between September and November, said Ruiz. 

The dwindling newsroom at the Long Beach Post follows an ongoing trend of growing news deserts and local outlets struggling to stay afloat. The State of Local News 2023 report by the Northwestern University’s Medill School found that over half of all the counties in the United States had either very limited access to local news coverage, or none at all.

In December, the Long Beach Post announced its new nonprofit status to the public. The IRS had granted 501(c)(3) approval in the first half of December 2023, the Long Beach Post said. This gave the Post and Journal‘s ownership entity, The Long Beach Journalism Initiative, the ability to take tax-deductible donations.

“Everyone on staff, as well as our Board of Directors, knew that this move to a nonprofit carried with it considerable uncertainty and risk,” CEO Melissa Evans said in a statement. “We completely changed our business model, with greater reliance on donors and grants. We’ve made huge strides — Long Beach is a fantastic and generous city — but carrying so much salary was threatening our ability to pay our bills now and in the long term. Our financial circumstances were the only reason for these cuts.”

The former and striking Post staff allege that the CEO of the newly formed nonprofit, Melissa Evans, would not work with the staff on implementing cost-saving measures that they believed could have saved funds and jobs.

Reporters affected by the strike and layoffs told the Signal Tribune that the Long Beach Post staff notified Evans that they were willing to take pay cuts in order to preserve jobs. 

Staff also said they wanted to continue working remotely to save money, but Evans began renting an office space for $6,000 a month. 

They allege that Evans asked staff members to work without pay for two weeks during the transition period. Ruiz said Evans made it clear that staff members who weren’t willing to work for free during this time would not be offered jobs at the nonprofit after the transition concluded. 

The Long Beach Media Guild said that on March 8, staff sent a letter outlining their concern to Evans and the board of directors. Ruiz and laid off reporter Jackie Rae said as a result, the board hired an human resources (HR) consultant, after which staff were reimbursed for the two weeks they worked without pay.

Due to a consensus among the staff that their concerns and suggestions were being ignored, they decided to unionize. All 14 staff members who were eligible signed unionization cards, publicly announced their unionization efforts through social media on March 15 and called on the CEO and board of directors to voluntarily recognize the Long Beach Media Guild.

“I do not think Melissa’s ego will allow her to admit that she is the sole reason for the failure of the Long Beach Post,” Rae said.

Rae said that when the Long Beach Post first started the process to become a nonprofit, a meeting was held where staff members asked whether they should preemptively take pay cuts and whether there would be additional layoffs — both of which Evans assured them wouldn’t be necessary. 

Rae said that Evans’ confidence in this matter was based on a verbal promise of $500,000 in funding from John Molina, a wealthy local investor and founding partner of Pacific 6, the company that previously owned the Long Beach Post. Rae said that Molina ended up donating $175,000, leaving a shortfall in Evans’ planned budget for the outlet.

“We told her on several occasions that she should not rely on a verbal promise from somebody we were separating from,” Rae said. “[…] And she insisted that he made a promise to her that it was coming.”

Rae’s version of events seems to be supported in the open letter Evans published on the Long Beach Post site, in which Evans writes that the Post “retained nearly all of our previous staff based on the promise of several large donations, some of which did not materialize.”  

Evans went on to announce layoffs due to the lack of funding. Staff said that these layoffs were a direct result of mismanagement by Evans, and that she was not allowing them to have any input in the outlet’s decisions. This led them to begin their unionization efforts.

The Long Beach Media Guild asserts that Schuster and Richardson were always told their jobs were safe and were let go because they became leaders in the union movement.

“I don’t see a time when we align with Melissa Evans, that’s just not something that I personally can see us ever doing,” Rae said. “But I do think we are an immensely talented group of people who love Long Beach and do not want to see Long Beach become a news desert. So I do see us — as long as we can get the community to rally behind us — I do see us being a group of people who can relaunch a new site that’s dedicated to Long Beach and the community, independently of anyone else besides the community.”

As the strike continues, the Long Beach Media Guild is asking the community to boycott the Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal. Ruiz said that while they’re not asking people to cancel their subscriptions, they are asking people not to visit the site, read any stories on it, or engage with the Long Beach Post’s social media.

The laid-off and striking workers have started a GoFundMe campaign to pay for necessary living expenses while they’re out of work. As of March 25, the online campaign has raised $6,400 of its $10,000 goal.

The Long Beach Media Guild launched a petition on actionnetwork.org urging the Long Beach Post to voluntarily recognize the union. The petition has garnered 739 signatures as of March 25.

To keep up with news and updates from the Long Beach Media Guild, follow them on social media, including X and Instagram, @LBMGuild.