Schneps reporters unionize to demand better pay, benefits, and protections

Two months after making Schneps Media the most decorated news group at the 2026 New York Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest, journalists at the local media conglomerate have formed a union. They are calling for improved pay, healthcare benefits, job protections, and working conditions—which they call essential to sustain their award-winning work.

The union is also seeking more clearly defined editorial standards from a company that has closely aligned itself with public figures—most notably former mayor Eric Adams—and allegedly pushed for favorable coverage of allies and advertisers.

The 27-member unit represents journalists across 10 newspaper groups in Schneps Media’s massive portfolio, including amNY, Brooklyn Paper, Bronx Times, QNS, New York Family, Long Island Press, and Dan’s Papers.

The union, which quickly gained public support from Mayor Mamdani and Brooklyn BP Antonio Reynoso, joined the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees (IAPE), Local 1096 of The NewsGuild-CWA on June 15 after a year and a half of organizing.

According to organizers, 81% of eligible employees have signed a public mission statement, and 85% have signed union authorization cards. They will hold an election with the National Labor Relations Board on July 24.

Overworked and Underpaid
An organizing unit of 27 might seem small for a company that produces over 90 community newspapers, magazines and websites and claims to reach over 2 million readers a week—but its size reflects a driving issue behind the union: Schneps’ newsrooms are small, overworked, and underpaid, organizers say.

“The fact that you have ten or so different outlets, and you have 27 editorial members who are providing all of the stories, is—when you think about it—kind of stunning,” said Max Parrott, Senior Reporter for amNY Law. Four QNS reporters produce nearly two dozen papers alone, he said.

Cameryn Oakes, Deputy Managing Editor at Long Island Press, works with a staff of four reporters to fill the pages of 10 weekly papers.

“It’s constantly working evenings, constantly working weekends,” she said. “We often don’t have enough staff to cover everything, so we’re being pulled every which way.”

Reporters regularly hit their 40 hour workweeks before Friday, she said. Sometimes, they don’t make it past Wednesday—and overtime is approved “sparingly.” Oakes often has to fill in for reporters who have hit their hours cap.

Layoffs have stretched the editorial staff even thinner. In April, a layoff claimed Parrott’s editor and a fellow reporter, along with writers and editors at Queens Courier, New York Parent, and Long Island Post. When Schneps bought amNY from Newsday in 2019, they cut staff from 16 to seven.

Schneps’ pay rate has driven even more employees away, Parrott said.

Starting salaries at Schneps’ NYC papers range from $40,000-50,000, Parrott said. An open reporter role in Long Island offers a salary of $37,000-40,000. A living wage in Manhattan, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator states, starts at $79,469 for a single person, pre-tax, and jumps to $126,705 if you add a child to the mix The poverty threshold for a family of four was set at $44,297 in NYC’s 2022 Government Poverty Measure.

“A lot of people at Schneps make really low wages for a company that is really profitable,” said Jon Schleuss, President of the NewsGuild, adding that some reporters utilize food pantries while their employer continues to expand its portfolio. Schneps’ purchase of Community News Group and NYC Community Media in 2018 made it one of the state’s largest media companies.

Mamdani echoed this concern in a June 16 tweet: “Schneps reporters do crucial work covering our neighborhoods and holding power to account. Many of the journalists who document the challenges New Yorkers face are struggling to afford life here themselves.”Since launching the Queens Courier from her house in Bayside, Queens in 1985, Victoria Schneps has espoused the importance of local news. Reporters like Parrott want to see that ethos reflected in their paychecks.

“Across our staff, we’re punching above our weight, but we need more support from management,” Parrott said.

Victoria and her son, CEO Josh Schneps, did not respond to the Red Hook Star-Revue’s request for comment.

High Turnover
The combination of low pay and heavy workload has created a revolving door of reporters at Schneps newspapers, Oakes said. Veteran reporters are deterred from joining the company, and the new hires often don’t stay long.

“Many of our reporters are early-career journalists getting their first foothold in the industry,” Parrott said. “I think that there isn’t a very clear path to raises and promotions in the company, and this stops many from staying longer than a year or two.”

Isabella Gallo, an amNY Law reporter, doesn’t blame them. “It’s not sustainable to feel like we have to do unpaid work,” she said. “It’s not sustainable to be only making $40,000-$50,0000 a year long-term, and that pushes people to leave for a different industry, or to a different paper.”

When newspapers lose long-tenured reporters, they also lose institutional knowledge that’s essential for high-quality local reporting, Gallo added. She sees journalism as a public service—one that is often time-intensive and requires adequate pay to be done effectively.

“We’re really looking for our management to invest in us so we can better invest in our stories and our work,” said Gallo, who won two first-place awards at the Better Newspaper Contest.

Schneps’ healthcare package, which charges up to $1,000 to add a spouse or child to a PPO plan, is “not commensurable” with their salaries, Parrott added.

Bryce Jacobson, Executive Director of the New York Press Association said the organization doesn’t comment on staff unions, but commended the work of Schneps’ journalists and called amNY’s police bureau chief Dean Moses a “shining star.”

Adding to Nationwide Momentum
The Schneps Media Union is the seventh to organize with the NewsGuild this year, joining a long list of NYC-based outlets that include major publications like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC Digital, and The New York Daily News.

Last November, journalists at the Daily News won minimum salaries of $63,000 and annual raises of 3% along with expanded benefits and worker protections, the result of three years of negotiations.

The NewsGuild, which represents worker units at 312 newsrooms across the US and Canada ranging in size from three to 4,800, has added 127 workplace unions since 2020. “It’s been sort of an explosion over the last several years,” Schleuss said.

In recent months, staff at The New York Times, Politico, and the New Yorker have rallied outside their Manhattan offices to demand better pay, benefits and protections. The Albany Newspaper Guild is fighting NYC-based Hearst for its first contract in 17 years.

Before the Schneps union can lay out their demands to management, they first need Schneps to recognize their union. So far, it’s been primarily “radio silence,” Parrott said, excluding a June 19 email in which Mr. Schneps told union members that he was cooperating with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in response to requests for open dialogue.

Over 630 supporters have signed the union’s petition calling for recognition.

Instead, Schneps has retained a law firm to communicate with the NewsGuild, Parrott said. The firm informed the NewsGuild that six of the unit’s 27 journalists are ineligible for membership, citing their supervisory responsibilities. Parrott said this is inaccurate, and called it “a bad faith effort to exclude our beloved colleagues” from union-earned benefits.

Organizers said they are eager to work with the Schneps family to create a model in which journalists get a bigger share in the media empire’s success.

“We really do believe in these papers, and the company, and in its power to inform so many people, and we just really want to be able to do that long term, in a sustainable way,” Gallo said.