New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal
Unionized workers at The New York Times and The Athletic are protesting a potential partnership between The Athletic and the prediction market platform Kalshi. The workers argue that the deal threatens journalistic independence and associates the publication with an operation described by officials as illegal gambling.
Why it matters
This conflict highlights the tension between traditional journalistic ethics and the pursuit of new revenue streams through controversial financial technology partnerships.
With a unanimous vote, the Times Guild Unit Council and The Athletic’s contract action team approved the following statement:
As unionized workers at The New York Times, we are deeply concerned by the company’s potential deal for The Athletic to partner with Kalshi, a company whose prediction markets have been described by New York officials in our reporting as an “illegal operation. ”
Any partnership between Kalshi and The Athletic would threaten our journalistic independence across the company. Despite management’s claim that The Athletic and The New York Times are separate business entities, the journalism and the work are intertwined, as any reader can see.
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