The Olympian shuttered its doors for the day on Tuesday, May 26, as its unionized journalists joined their colleagues in Tacoma for a strike against corporate publisher McClatchy Media over alleged bad faith bargaining, unfair wages and problematic AI policies.
“We want better,” said Washington State NewsGuild co-chair and The News Tribune reporter Kristine Sherred. “We want our journalists to be able to afford to live here, but we also want them to feel like they can stay here, not just with money but also with things like AI, to feel like there’s a future in this career.”
The Washington State News Guild, a union of four newspapers representing 31 workers at The Tacoma News Tribune, Bellingham Herald, Olympian and Tri-City Herald, organized Tuesday’s demonstration outside The Tacoma News Tribune’s office in downtown Tacoma.
Tri-City Herald and Bellingham Herald reporters also held demonstrations in Kennewick and Bellingham.
The reporters at the four Washington papers went on strike in coordination with their peers at the Idaho Statesman in Boise.
The Washington and Idaho News Guilds have both been engaged in joint collective bargaining with McClatchy Media for new contracts for a year.
They filed an unfair labor practice with the National Labor Relations Board against the company last week for alleged bad-faith bargaining, including refusal to bring the actual decision-makers to the table.
“They’ve told us no, the people who are at the table are the decision makers, they have the authority — but then they’ll say things like ‘this is what I’m authorized to offer,’” said Sherred.
The News Guilds report that McClatchy’s contract bargainers have so far refused to budge on employee wages, and are offering wages well below the cost of living for the communities the journalists cover and are expected to live in.
The Washington News Guild’s most-recent wage proposal, which was a compromise to try and meet McClatchy in the middle, was a $53,000 salary for all current reporters and $50,000 for all new hires, with a 7% raise at signing and smaller raises in the following years to offset inflation costs
McClatchy’s latest proposal, which Sherred said has improved little since the start of wage negotiations, is for $52,000 for all current employees, $50,000 for new employees, and a 3% raise at signing for inflation.
With starting wages that low, a 3% raise is not enough to cover rising inflation costs, the News Guilds argue.
“There’s some people who have been working in journalism for 10, 12, 15 years and are still making now what is an entry level salary, and the company just looks them in the eye and says, ‘Too bad,’” Sherred said. “Our argument is, why do you want good journalists with institutional knowledge of the places they cover to feel like they can’t afford to do it?”
The Olympian reporter Martín Bilbao has lived in downtown Olympia since he started as the county government reporter there five years ago. Within those five years, the cost of living has gone up significantly, and his salary hasn’t.
“It’s been increasingly harder to live there,” Bilbao said. “I truly believe that reporters should live in the community, and should be able to afford to live there.”
The Tacoma News Tribune reporter Peter Talbot said he has seen many talented journalists leave local news, or the journalism industry entirely, due to poor pay.
“The company says that they don't have any more money to pay us better, pay us a living wage, but they're simultaneously paying a lot of money for AI systems to take our stories and spin them out into multiple headlines,” Talbot said.
The Pacific Northwest News Guilds raised the alarm over McClatchy’s AI practices in December 2025, when union representatives were fighting to get AI protections into their contract.
According to the union, McClatchy was pushing to publish AI news stories and images that aren’t clearly labeled as AI and were not reviewed by a human, publish deepfake images and create AI impersonations of reporters for podcasts and videos without their consent — even after they die or quit the company — and force reporters to use AI in their reporting.
McClatchy was also training AI models on reporters’ articles without their consent and then using those models to generate new — often inaccurate — articles. Those articles were then published under the reporter’s name, often without the reporter’s knowledge and without being reviewed by a human editor.
“I think these stories damage our credibility as journalists and damage our credibility at the newspaper with our readers,” Talbot said.
Union members say McClatchy has so far ignored reporters’ concerns about AI use and has claimed that investing in AI is the same as investing in the newsroom.
Meanwhile, investment in humans in the newsroom has been decreasing.
Layoffs and position cuts in recent months have dwindled The Olympian’s newsroom down to four people. Longtime Editor Dusti Demarest retired in November 2025 after 31 years at The Olympian, and rather than filling her vacant position, McClatchy transferred her responsibilities to The News Tribune Editor Alexis Krell.
A staff photographer was also recently laid off, with no plans in place to fill the position.
“There haven't been any clear plans to really try to beef up our newsroom funding or pay us any better,” said The Olympian reporter Ty Vinson. “They’d rather spend tons of money on AI.”
McCLatchy has reportedly agreed to include some AI protections in the contract that’s currently being negotiated, according to Sherred. That language will go into effect when the contract is signed.
While the Washington State News Guild considers the agreement on that AI language a win, Sherred said the union is still fighting for additional protections due to McClatchy’s continued interest in AI use and how fast the technology is developing.
“That battle will probably never end,” Sherred said.
The News Guilds’ strikes in Washington state and Idaho only lasted one day, and union members anticipated that McClatchy would continue operating as if the strike never happened.
They hope, however, that McClatchy will come into the next bargaining session with a better offer.
“We're out here to show McClatchy that they don't have a newspaper without us, and they need real people to do the work of journalism,” Talbot said.
McClatchy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Olympian has been operating as a local newspaper for the Olympia area since 1852. McClatchy Media has owned the publication since it acquired The Olympian’s then-parent company, Knight Ridder, in 2006.
The Washington State News Guild was established in 2021.
