In the fall of 2015, my Huffington Post colleagues and I sent a letter to our founder and editor-in-chief, Arianna Huffington, telling her we'd rounded up a couple hundred union cards. The writers and editors at Gawker had recently joined the Writers Guild of America-East, and we intended to do the same. Everyone had their grievances or concerns. Lack of transparency on pay. Shifting job titles and responsibilities. I was especially worried about our editor's personal business interests (Huffington would soon join the board of Uber) and the conflicts they might create with our journalism. Many of us viewed unionizing—which, until Gawker, had never happened at a “digital native” newsroom—as the only way to seize some agency in a hellish industry.
However she felt about dealing with a union, Huffington told us she would remain neutral. After a messy but brief fight over the scope of the bargaining unit,...
