“In the midst of some crazy sitcom”: A case study of journalist union representatives’ work during disruptive change

Abstract

While there is a growing literature on disruptive digital innovation and change in media organizations and the effects on both journalism and journalists, little is known about journalist unions as key actors in processes of disruptive change: how they perceive challenges and the strategic choices they make. The aim of this paper is to advance the understanding of journalist union representatives’ work during disruptive change in local news media. The study draws from interviews with union representatives at the Swedish news media group Mittmedia, analyzed from the perspective of strategy-as-practice (SAP). The findings suggest that the double roles of a journalist union, as a trade union and a professional organization, provide a parallel set of arguments in the negotiations, but that when the pace of investments in digital innovation, transformation of work processes, cutbacks, and layoffs is forced and constantly ongoing, relying on existing practices and strategies is not enough when trying to protect the members’ interests. When external conflicts are constant there is also a risk of internal conflicts.

Introduction

Journalist unions can be described as a set of dualities: on the one hand, journalist unions are trade unions, protecting their members’ interests and rights at the workplaces, on the other hand, journalist unions are professional organizations, safeguarding journalistic values and norms, and journalism per se (Salamon, 2022a). While journalism has always been precarious work, journalists have naturalized and even mythologized this precarity as part of what journalism is; “[p]recarity [has become] a rite of initiation” for young journalists entering the profession, Örnebring (2018: 123) concludes in a comparative study on European journalists, making unionization among journalists difficult and the level of unionization low (Örnebring, 2020; cf. Amman, 2007; Salamon, 2020). However, the last decade has seen a rise in unionization in the media industry as digital-first journalists face even more precarious working conditions and new types of media outlets are emerging, bringing gig economy to the media industry (Assmann, 2024; Cohen and De Peuter, 2020; Deuze and Prenger, 2019).

While there is a vast and growing literature on disruptive change in media organizations and the effects on both journalism and journalists, less is known about how journalist unions act and react in such processes of disruptive digital innovation (DDI).

The Swedish Union of Journalists (SUJ) was founded in 1901 as an association for newspaper journalists, and the professional organization principle was present in the original statutes (Lindblom Hulthén, 2001). “The Swedish labor market model”, based on legislation and central- and local-level collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), has ensured SUJ’s local branches influence not only on wages and issues related to working conditions, but on all decisions that could affect the employees. The relationship local union branch–management is institutionalized, well-established, and mostly well-functioning. What makes SUJ different from journalist unions in most parts of the world is its comparatively very high degree of unionization; the membership density among Swedish journalists follows the national trend of union membership density among white-collar employees – in 2022, circa 74% were members of a union (The Swedish National Mediation Office, 2023, cf. Norbäck, 2022).

In the 2010s, the Swedish news media market, just as news media in other parts of the world, went through a journalism crisis, leading to what researchers such as Almiron-Roig (2011) and Salamon (2025) describe as an increasing financialization that brought corporate logics into what had previously been a rather diversified media market: in 2009, there were 11 big newspaper owners and a handful small ones. In 2021, most of the titles were still operating, but ownership was concentrated in three groups after an intricate chain of affairs in a search for synergy effects (EurOMo, 2024; Malmsten, 2022). The trigger to all this was, as in most parts of the world, the abrupt drop in advertisement revenues (Ohlsson and Facht, 2017; Trappel and Tales, 2021). The 2010s was also a decade of digitalization of media work, and Swedish news media saw many examples of digital innovations in the publishing processes, many of them disruptive indeed, including cross-department and cross-newsroom cooperation and finding synergy affects through the implementation of data, metrics, and algorithms (Carlsson, 2021; Nygren and Nord, 2019). During this period, journalists at Swedish news media faced not only economic cutbacks, layoffs, and a harsh transformation of work processes, but also a centralized management model of line control (Waldenström et al., 2019).

Previous research (Cozzolino et al., 2018) shows that when a mature industry such as legacy news media faces digital disruption, the process of adapting business models and renewing strategies is challenging because of organizational and cultural inheritance. Others (Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009; Ekdale et al., 2015; García-Avilés, 2021) has highlighted the problems with implementing digital innovation in already existing structures. But, what happens when a well-established journalist trade union that doubles as a professional organization and with well-established relations to the employers faces disruptive change in a mature industry? Based on theories of strategy-as-practice, the aim of this paper is to advance the understanding of journalist union representatives’ work during disruptive change in local news media. The study draws from interviews with union representatives at the Swedish news media group Mittmedia, and will be guided by the following research questions:

RQ1

How do journalist union representatives understand disruptive change?

RQ2

How do journalist unions’ representatives strategically engage with change in practice?

Strategy-as-practice as a theoretical framework

Labor process theory (LPT) focuses the relationship between technology and labor, e.g. how journalistic work is transformed by digitalization. Attributed to Braverman (1998), LPT explains not only how (and why) work is transformed in processes of change but also such as changing skill demands and the rise of newsroom analytic tools (Omidi, 2026; Petre, 2018). Applying a LPT perspective would help focus labor over work, Örnebring (2010) argues, not least because the “lack of interest in labour is difficult to explain” (p. 59).

Strategy-as-practice (SAP) has developed into a field of its own within strategy research and is perhaps best described as a lens or a tool to better understand strategic challenges in processes of change (Jarzabkowski, 2004). While researchers with a SAP approach usually focuses managerial responses to a continuous change in various organizations, the perspective as such is not limited to management strategy, formed by individuals and manifested in a formal plan or document, only, but also include strategies that emerge from collective practices (Burgelman et al., 2018; Jarzabkowski et al., 2021, 2022; Jarzabkowski and Whittington, 2008).

There are few examples of SAP approaches in the field of media and journalism research, but in a study of multi-platform media organizations, Järventie-Thesleff et al. (2014) focused the strategical challenges brought on by digitalization of the media industry and compared strategies for paper versus strategies for digital. The authors make a point of the use of SAP in analyzing media organizations in continuous change, as SAP helps shift attention to the level at which strategies are managed within organizations – i.e. from a strategy an organization has to something its members do. “In the context of the rapidly evolving media environment, strategy development and the management of strategy in general necessarily entail the challenge of successfully managing continuous change,” they argue (p. 125), but also that “[b]y extending the strategy-as-practice perspective to the domain of media management” (p. 133) the understanding of digital innovation in the media industry becomes more nuanced.

In this study, SAP is understood as by Jarzabkowski et al. (2007): an ongoing process of adaptive practices among actors facing complexity and challenges in a specific context. Building on (Reckwitz, 2002), practices are understood as “collective, institutionalized and organization-specific structures of knowing, reasoning, and understanding” (p. 249) that guides individuals within an organization on their strategic choices. In other words, SAP is concerned with activities and interactions that contribute to strategic outcomes. These activities and interactions encompass a range of practices such as sensemaking, storytelling, decision-making, and knowledge sharing (Rouleau and Cloutier, 2022) in a collective decision-making process in which personal experiences, assumptions, values, and expectations shape the strategic choices (Bourgoin et al., 2018; Fenton and Langley, 2011).

The actors in focus are the union representatives, the challenges they face are the disruptive changes in local news media and in journalistic work, the adaptive practices are used as almost a synonym to “the union’s work”, and the strategic outcomes are the (intended) outcomes of the union’s work, based on their strategic choices.

Then, what is union work? The Swedish Union of Journalists describes its tasks as promoting its members’ union, economic, and social interests, as well as promoting their idealistic interest and professional ethics, and its members as entitled to obtain advice and information and, when necessary, “legal protection in everything relating to the exercise of their profession” including help and support when in dispute with their employer (SUJ, 2025). To fulfil its obligations, the union negotiates both centrally and locally on behalf of its members. Negotiations are examples of very concrete union work; legislation and CBAs stipulate that this is something the union must do. From a SAP perspective, one can also argue that the union plays an important role as a knowledge sharer and sense maker not only in processes of change – inviting to union meetings and social gatherings, passing on information, discussing union strategies etc., and by providing these activities for its members the union also reinforce an important sense of belonging, and, not the least, leveling the playing field (Assmann, 2024; Higgins-Dobney, 2024).

Union representatives’ work during times of change

Does union work matter? Yes, argue Mosco and McKercher (2008): unions not only provide representation and protect their members’ interests and rights at the workplaces, but in doing so, unions also play an important role from a corporative perspective.

Research on journalism labor has grown, as shown for example by Neilson (2025), yet the strategic work of union representatives during organizational and technological change is somewhat overlooked. Existing studies often examine unions’ public rhetoric, i.e. how unions publicly communicate to win support for their arguments as part of a strategic external communication (Brimeyer et al., 2004; Salamon, 2022b, 2025), or explore historical developments connected to the professionalization of journalism (e.g. Demers and Le Cam, 2006; Salamon, 2018a; Salamon, 2018b; Salamon, 2023). These contributions are valuable but largely overlook the practice-based dimensions of union work: the sensemaking, storytelling, decision making, and knowledge sharing (cf. Rouleau and Cloutier, 2022). A strategy-as-practice perspective draws attention to these often invisible forms of agency through which actors enact strategy. From this view, union representatives’ engagement in everything from interpreting management proposals to negotiating changes constitutes strategic work in practice, even if not framed as such in formal organizational terms.

Parallel to this, research on “new” media unions highlights growing precarity and fragmented employment patterns in the digital news industry and the rise of new organizing forms (Amman, 2007; Assmann, 2024; Cohen and De Peuter, 2020; Proffitt, 2021; Salamon, 2016; Salamon, 2020; Salamon, 2022a; Salamon, 2022c; Saundry et al., 2007). Despite increasing recognition that unions have become more central amid industry disruption, not least to help journalists navigate change (Brennen, 2024; Neilson, 2025; Omidi et al., 2022; Salamon, 2024), research rarely investigates how representatives understand change or how they strategically engage with it in practice in established unions representing journalists at legacy news organizations. This paper adresses this gap.

Methodology

This study is based on a case study of the local branch of one journalist union and its strategies during a period of disruptive digital transformation of local news media.

The Swedish case of Mittmedia 2012–2019

The Swedish news media group Mittmedia, at the time one of Sweden’s largest local news media groups, dates to 2003, when a small local news business started expanding by buying titles in its geographical surroundings. Despite deteriorating finances, Mittmedia soon became one of the key actors in the transformation of the Swedish media market: in 2012, it consisted of 14 different titles, in 2016 – after the incorporation of the news group Promedia, there were 23, and in 2019 the total number was 28 (Carlsson and Facht, 2014; Malmsten, 2022; Weibull et al., 2018). This study focuses what is known as “the Mittmedia years” 2012–2019, when top management and control of all newspapers were centralized. From the start, Mittmedia received a lot of national as well as international attention for its enforced digitalization (including cross-department and cross-newsroom cooperation, and finding synergy effects from the implementation of data, metrics, and algorithms, in the publishing processes). In 2019, the local news media group Mittmedia was sold, and the new owners have since continued the digital innovation strategy but with a renewed focus on local news (Wadbring et al., 2024).

The Mittmedia case highlights how journalist union representatives work during disruptive change, and as such it can not only help us understand more about journalist unions but also function as a point of reference for comparative studies (cf. Della Porta and Keating, 2008).

Material

The study draws from two sets of empirical material: annual reports and interviews.

The annual reports for Mittmedia AB and Mittmedia Förvaltnings AB 2013–2019 are public reports aimed towards stakeholders, and consist of descriptions of the most significant activities during the past year, along with financial statements etc. The descriptions of the most significant activities are biased, as they reflect the top management’s views of what they want the shareholders (and the pubic) to know. For this study, these 14 annual reports were used to construct a timeline of key events, and this timeline was used (a) in the construction of the interview guide, and (b) as a point of reference in the initial exploration of the transcribed interviews.

The main set of empirical material is retrospective semi-structured interviews with journalists elected as local branch representatives during the Mittmedia years, 2012–2019, either for the Mittmedia local branch or for the Promedia local branch. The local news media group Promedia was taken over by Mittmedia in late 2015, but the local branch made the decision not to merge with the Mittmedia local branch. Representatives from both local branches were strategically selected regarding role in the union, workplace, professional experience, gender, etc. A research assistant, with documented experience from semi-structured research interviews, conducted 11 interviews in 2022/2023. All union representatives, seven from the Mittmedia and four from the Promedia branch, were first approached via email. The respondents were provided with written information on the right to anonymity and data protection, along with a consent form. The interviews were conducted via an online video platform or cell calls. The interviews were recorded and then transferred to a third-party service (respondents’ names withhold) for word-by-word transcription. The interviews followed a guide with open-ended questions about the respondents’ experiences from and views on (a) working on Mittmedia during these years, and (b) the union’s work during this period of time, exploring the areas of the respondents’ professional and union roles, disruptive change, work environment, relations to and negotiations with the management, internal union work, and sensemaking, and lasted between 29 and 105 minutes, with a median length of 48 minutes.

The fact that the interviews are retrospective has implications. On the one hand, the respondents did not have to worry about research interviews conflicting with ongoing strategic work and negotiations with management. And in hindsight, what initially seemed like a line of single events and actions may be understood as parts of a long-term management strategy or general development. On the other hand, this time to reflect may have made the respondents construct individual narratives of the Mittmedia years with exaggerations, constructed correlations, and apologetical explanations for their own possible shortcomings. Single events and actions may have been forgotten or considered irrelevant. However, the transcribed interviews show that while the respondents highlight different events to exemplify their arguments and show different understandings of some events, the overall internal consistency is solid, indicating a high validity (as per Cox and Hassard, 2007; cf. Huber and Power, 1985).

Data analysis

An iterative thematic inquiry, as suggested by Morgan and Nica (2020), has guided the analysis of the interviews. Step one in the manual process was an exploratory phase to gain an overview of the empirical material in general and the timeline and important events in particular. This phase included an open coding to identify and categorize key aspects in the transcribed material, focusing the respondents’ understandings of these. In the second step, the material was organized thematically and in line with the theoretical framework of strategy-as-practice. Excess data was dismissed, and the remaining data was organized to uncover challenges, adaptive practices, and strategic choices. In the third step, the transcriptions were revisited for a more focused reading, following the thematical organization from step two. In the fourth and final step, the remaining material was evaluated once again, and relevant episodes and quotes were selected to illustrate the analysis.

Limitations

This study focuses the union representatives’ perspectives and understandings of what went on during “the Mittmedia years”. The interviews are retrospective, and, in addition to the concerns discussed above, there is a risk that a retrospective collective sensemaking affect the representatives’ memory of events. From a strategy-as-practice point of view this is perhaps not a problem – sensemaking is one aspect of the adaptive practices pointed towards in previous research, and as such can be regarded as ongoing (cf. Jarzabkowski et al., 2007; Reckwitz, 2002).

Also, the counterpart’s, i.e. management’s, views are not included in the analysis. While this is a deliberate choice, as reflected in the aim of this study, it also means that this study does not claim nor set out to tell an objective account of events but instead strictly focuses on the subjective experiences of the union representatives.

Challenges, adaptive practices, and strategic choices

During the Mittmedia years, 2012–2019, the union representatives at the expanding news group met a range of challenges: layoffs and savings plans, digital innovation and implementation of new practices, work environment worries, and award-winning change management programs (e.g. INMA, 2014). While the 2010’s were years of digital disruption for the entire news media industry, Mittmedia stands out in not only timing and the scale of changes, but also in the focus on the “Digital first!” strategy and the determination of the newly appointed management of the necessity of change.

In the following, the findings are organized not chronologically but thematically and in line with the strategy-as-practice framework. The union representatives (UR) are regarding branch, workplace, etc., but, when necessary, context is provided. The quotes are edited for clarity.

RQ1 Strategic challenges during disruptive change

In the case analyzed in this study, the main strategic challenges facing the union representatives were the deteriorating finances in the media industry, management’s analysis that the immediate future was digital only, and the following re-organization of working processes and centralization of functions. From a strategy-as-practice perspective, these challenges can be understood not only as external conditions or formal strategic managemental choices, but as ongoing accomplishments produced through everyday practices, in which both management and union representatives were actively involved.

Most of the challenges described below do not differ from the challenges other legacy news media met during this period. However, in the Mittmedia case, management’s analysis of how to deal with the crisis –the timing and the scale of changes as well as innovations – stands out, as does management’s determination that the “Mittmedia way” was the only possible way. To this, we can add a management that, as the union representatives recall it, was reluctant to engage with alternative interpretations or counter-arguments during negotiations. From the union’s perspective, this marked a shift in strategic interaction and created frustration, as established practices of dialogue were weakened. In addition to these external pressures, the union representatives also faced internal strategic challenges, as they were required to make sense of, communicate, and legitimize decisions to their members under conditions of uncertainty and repeated setbacks.

Deteriorating finances: Sensemaking under pressure

The underlying analysis for Mittmedia’s strategy “Digital first!”, launched in 2012, was that the immediate future for news was digital only and ad-financed rather than subscription-financed, and to survive, the implementation of a fast, innovative, digital strategy (“the Mittmedia way”) with the explicit aim to truly transform the local news industry, was the company’s only realistic choice (Wadbring et al., 2024; Malmsten, 2022). From the start, Mittmedia suffered from financial problems. To fight this, top management launched a 3-year savings plan with extensive cutbacks. For the union representatives, much of their strategic work during this period consisted of ongoing sensemaking in and through negotiations. They describe how they participated in one or several negotiation meetings each week, across different papers in the group, where financial urgency was repeatedly invoked to justify layoffs and restructuring. While management framed these decisions as economically inevitable, union representatives struggled to reconcile the rhetoric of digital progress with the human consequences of repeated downsizing:

“We made some fantastic progress with digital. No doubt. There and then, maybe we didn’t always see that, because so much was about seeing so many of our colleagues being humiliated and having to leave.” (UR8)

The initial 3-year savings plan soon proved insufficient and was followed by others. When Mittmedia acquired the Promedia group in 2015, union representatives there were already familiar with Mittmedia’s financial situation through media reports and informal exchanges with colleagues. This prior knowledge shaped how the acquisition was interpreted and anticipated, long before formal meetings were held:

“The most acute when we were bought, was economy. The first thing they presented to us was a gigantic savings plan. Was it perhaps the 300-bilion plan? We were to leave print as soon as possible and become all digital. For us, it was very clear that they had bought us with the intention to cut down. We were slaughtered. […] It was extremely hard to have to negotiate on so many cutbacks and layoffs and to have so many colleagues being so mistreated, in some cases even scammed.” (UR4)

Here, strategy emerges as something anticipated, narrated, and even emotionally processed well before it is formally enacted.

The “Digital first!” strategy: Storytelling and contested interpretations

Several of the union representatives tell anecdotes about how the leadership duo travelled from newspaper to newspaper with a presentation (“And yes, the Powerpoint! Always the Powerpoint!” (UR5)) with a single message on the first slide: “Print is dead!”. From a strategy-as-practice perspective, such presentations functioned as key storytelling practices, designed to create a shared understanding of crisis and necessity. The union representatives recall how they, and regular journalists, tried to question if the analysis really called for such an abrupt move to digital only – especially as most revenue, from subscriptions and from advertising, still came from print (“We did our maths.” (UR8)) – and how they always were told off:

“They didn’t even pretend to listen. We were dismissed as opposing change, as digital ignorants.” (UR4)

In the interviews, several of the union representatives stress that they did not oppose change. Rather, their sensemaking revolved around when and how change should occur. Their objections concerned timing, revenue models, and readers’ willingness to pay – issues they perceived as sidelined by management’s dominant narrative.

“We all knew we had to be even more digital, that we had to increase digital subscriptions. But this was before our subscribers began to understand it was ok to have to pay for journalism. They came around, eventually. But this was the problem. We never questioned we had to be more digital.” (UR4)

The representatives repeatedly talk about a lack of communication from the management as one of the main problems. Most regular journalists, as they recall, did not object to digitalization, but they wanted more information, i.e. communicative practices that would allow for knowledge sharing not only downward but also across the organization:

“Many of our members had difficulties to understand and accept why this was the way it had to be. Why all the layoffs? Why the ‘golden handshakes’? It was hard to understand the purpose of those changes. I guess it’s in our nature as journalists that we’re keen to know more.” (UR8)

While the union representatives acknowledge the need for digitalization, many of them question the management’s motives for how the changes were implemented:

“I know no better example of group thinking. If you ask me, the main reason was that they wanted to be first, not only in Sweden but internationally … that’s why they participated in these INMA [Global] Awards or whatever they were called. It was personal, the incentive was personal.” (UR8)

In 2016, the company revised both its focus and the parole “Digital first!” in favor for renewed investments in paper, and parts of the management were replaced. The union representatives speculate on why the “Digital first!” strategy was abandoned, and retrospectively interpret it as a confirmation that their counter-arguments in the negotiations should have been listened to:

“The dismantling of print and all … our readers got less of what they wanted to pay for, local news. So, the loss of subscriptions escalated. Because they didn’t fill the print papers with the content people were willing to pay for. That was the Mittmedia way of making a paper.” (UR7)

Re-organization and centralization: Decision-making as practice

The union representatives describe that for many of its members, the Mittmedia years were years of pride of being in the digital forefront of local news. But the transformation of working processes and practices was not without problems. Every journalist was to be multi, i.e. able to write a text, live stream (tv), publish across platforms, etc. What was perhaps intended as a digital “need to learn” set of skills, by management framed as learning and adaptation, was instead experienced as non-negotiable demands. The union representatives recall how management would not discuss any problems with the implementations:

“During those years that were the toughest, we were supposed to do live [tv] on everything. Not only when [the content] was suited for live streaming, but on everything, really. It was a burden. And we could all see that we had almost no viewers at all. We tried to discuss this [with management], that we had to do a lot of extra work for almost nothing. But they didn’t … This was how the work should be done. They didn’t listen.” (UR10)

Decisions about skills, staffing, and technologies were rarely opened up for discussion, limiting opportunities for collective learning. Similar patterns appeared in decisions concerning photographers, print sub-editors, and the establishment of the staffing firm Mittmedia Kompetens. In each case, the union representatives engaged in strategic work by raising concerns, mobilizing legal knowledge, and warning of long-term consequences, even if their arguments failed to alter outcomes.

Union representatives recall how print sub-editors found themselves in an awkward situation – print was not yet dead, and the papers were indeed printed, but no one was supposed to interact with them:

“When you worked with print, you felt like some sort of pariah, and that people were afraid to even say ‘Hello!’ The boss could come and say, ‘You’re not allowed to talk to this person, you can’t think print, you can’t pretend print exists’.” (UR3)

Ignoring the demands not to talk print or the colleagues working with the print edition became acts of resistance. One union representative recalls that “the news editor wasn’t supposed to even talk to them. He did it anyway, on the sly” (UR10). These examples of everyday resistance (continuing to talk to print colleagues, questioning content centralization, defending local brands) can be understood as micro-practices of strategy, through which alternative values were introduced and kept alive.

Critique from members: Internal strategy work

During the Mittmedia years, the union representatives received continuous criticism and engaged in constant internal sensemaking with union members and non-members. Some union members even expressed concerns that the representatives did not try hard enough. This continuous criticism, combined with the absence of visible “wins,” made it difficult to sustain legitimacy and trust. As one of them put it: “I don’t think many understand how tough it was when it was the toughest.” (UR9).

From a strategy-as-practice perspective, this highlights the union representatives’ position as boundary-spanning practitioners, simultaneously translating management decisions, members’ frustrations, and legal constraints, all under conditions of limited influence and ongoing disruption.

RQ2 Adaptive practices and strategic choices

The “Mittmedia years” were, as the union representatives describe them, years of constant negotiations and continuous union work. From a strategy-as-practice perspective, this period can be understood as one of sustained strategic intensity, where the representatives had to take on problems on a much larger scale than they were used to. Most of the representatives also talk about “the Mittmedia years” as an extreme with ongoing negotiations on cutbacks or innovations and hardly any time to reflect on an overall strategy or even to elaborate over alternative strategies in the imminent cause of events. Rather than indicating the absence of strategy, this points to strategy as emergent and improvised, shaped in the flow of events. In hindsight, several representatives reflect that “we could have done things differently”, but at the same time, they are not sure if that would have made a difference.

Another cause for frustration for many of the individual representatives is that the Mittmedia case stands out as a true outlier, and examples of applicable “best case practices”, for the representatives to learn from, were hard for them to find.

Negotiations: Strategic interaction without reciprocity

As the union representatives recall the negotiations, they were not listened to and their arguments not evaluated. In the representatives’ opinion, the management called to negotiations because they had to by law (SFS, 1976: 580), but with no intention to actually negotiate. Negotiations thus became a recurring ritualized practice, preserving formal procedure while closing down substantive influence.

When traditional trade union arguments based on economy, employment protection act, and CBAs, respectively, failed, the union representatives adapted their strategic repertoire and armed themselves with a set of alternative arguments. They increasingly used arguments related to the union’s professional role: downsizing, especially on local representation, was a threat to democracy (“One single journalist can simply not cover as much as three journalists can” (UR5)), centralization and content sharing a threat to the quality of journalism (“What do they know in Sundsvall [where all sub-editing was centralized] about our local geography?” (UR6)), the implementation of new publishing systems a possible violation of the Source Protection Act (SFS, 1949: 105; SFS, 1991: 1469), and multi journalists a problem from the perspective of professional ethics – for example, reporters going “multi” might lack the experience to make the necessary ethical considerations when taking photos of a car accident, and former photographers might lack training in protecting sources. Despite this broadening of arguments, the representatives reflect that their efforts rarely altered outcomes: “From what I can recall, we never won anything. They just went on”. (UR10).

It is clear from the interviews that there was a lot of collective sensemaking going on among the representatives, and with few discrepancies, most of them tell the same story of a management duo with one focus only, constant negotiations, and never being listened to. This story is also what the representatives use as basis for their sensemaking, allowing them to frame their own actions as reasonable and responsible under the circumstances, summarized in the recurring conclusion “at least we tried”.

At the same time, a parallel narrative runs through the interviews: the acknowledgment that digitalization was necessary “but not like this”. The union representatives describe their work not as resistance to change, but as an attempt to influence how change was enacted: ”It was as if we were in the midst of some crazy sitcom”, as one of them recalls.

Internal organization: Re-aligning practices with a centralized strategy

Most of Mittmedia’s journalists were members of the Swedish Union of Journalists (SUJ). They were initially organized in one local branch at each title, with local representatives negotiating with the local newspaper managements. When Mittmedia centralized control of all newspapers, one of the first strategic choices was to merge the local union branches into one.

This reorganization can be understood as an attempt to mirror the company’s centralization, enabling more coordinated action and information sharing. However, the Promedia respondents articulate a contrasting experience. When Promedia became part of Mittmedia in 2015, the union representatives at the Promedia branch decided not to merge with the Mittmedia branch the way previous local branches had. According to the Promedia representatives, the years of cutbacks, mistrust, and lack of communication, had infested not only the relations union–management but also the Mittmedia representatives themselves:

“It was like becoming a member of a dysfunctional family in which everyone had their set roles, and everyone was completely ignorant to facts. And I need to be honest about [The Mittmedia branch]. They … were part of this dysfunctional family. They were like siblings, fighting. [They] had this attitude that ‘well, now it’s your turn to face the music’, sort of. They fought management on staffing and so on, but when it came to [digitalization and the future for print] they were totally on. And that we were stupid that couldn’t see that this was the way it had to be.” (UR4)

In the interviews, the Mittmedia representatives acknowledge that there were problems in the relations with the Promedia branch: “I guess we had come to different [strategies].” (UR3) These diverging interpretations point to fragmented sensemaking within the union, shaped by different histories, exposures, and local experiences.

Declaration of no confidence: Escalation as strategic practice

In the re-organization of working processes and centralization of function, many journalists experienced work environment related health problems. Management met the growing concerns about worker’s health and psychosocial and physical work environment with surveys, but according to the union representatives, these surveys posed the wrong questions and therefore were misguiding. The union’s answer: surveys of their own – an act of counter-knowledge production aimed at making members’ experiences visible.

“Perhaps one can question how we posed our questions [in the surveys] but the results were so disheartening that no matter what the survey design the findings were such that they needed to be discussed. But [management] showed no such interest. We were desperate to discuss work environment issues, but they never wanted to.” (UR8)

The union representatives recall that not even their surveys were enough to get management to act on the work environment problems. As one of them (UR3) puts it: “It was as if they were afraid to lose prestige or something.” The representatives therefore decided to escalate, and in 2017, after a membership vote, the Mittmedia branch posed a declaration of no confidence against management and the board. This decision is recalled as strategic but desperate, a last resort after other practices had failed:

“We were desperate and saw no other way. In hindsight, I don’t know if we did the right thing. But they refused to listen when we told them they can’t treat people like this.” (UR8)

Rather than opening discussions on work environment issues, the declaration backfired. Representatives were called to a meeting. But – much to the representatives’ surprise – not to discuss work environment problems. Instead, at the meeting the two representatives were confronted with accusations of disloyalty and threats of dismissal. As one of them conclude this episode: “For me, that was the absolute worst.” (UR3).

In retrospect, several representatives express uncertainty about whether this escalation was the right strategic choice, illustrating the risk-laden character of strategic decision-making under stress and asymmetric power relations.

Newsletter: Knowledge sharing and membership alignment

To keep the union members up to date on the ongoing negotiations on cutbacks, voluntary redundancy schemes, layoffs, etc., to pass on any information that the union representatives got their hands on, and to show the union members what the union did, the Mittmedia branch initiated a weekly (one of the interviewees recalls it as “at least monthly”) newsletter, distributed by email. The newsletter functioned as a routine knowledge-sharing practice, aimed at sustaining legitimacy and collective understanding:

“I’ve saved them all. There’s extremely detailed information in there on what went on from 2012 and onwards. We still distribute them. We’ve always tried to explain to our members what’s going on. We tried to be accurate but also be honest about our opinion on things. I believe this helped us know we had our members’ support. In general, we had massive support. And if there’s anything I’ve learnt from all this, it is that one must always keep the members up to date.” (UR8)

Although the content of the newsletters was not available as supplementary data, the interviews suggest that they played an important role in maintaining member support. Several representatives describe this as one of the key lessons learned from the Mittmedia years: under conditions of uncertainty and loss, continuous communication becomes a strategic necessity.

Conclusion and discussion

This study contributes not only to the literature on journalism unions, but also to the strategy-as-practice (SAP) literature by extending its analytical focus beyond managerial actors to include union representatives as actors in contexts of digital disruption. By analyzing the “Mittmedia years” through a SAP lens, the study responds to calls to examine who does strategy, how strategy is enacted through everyday practices, and how strategic work unfolds outside formal managerial hierarchies (cf. Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2014). Rather than treating unions as reactive stakeholders or institutional constraints, the findings show how union representatives engage in continuous strategic work through practices such as sensemaking, negotiation, storytelling, decision-making, and knowledge sharing, even under conditions of severely constrained agency.

The study further contributes to SAP research by demonstrating how strategy is enacted when influence over outcomes is limited and when formal strategic arenas, such as negotiations, persist without deliberative reciprocity. In this context, strategic work is oriented less toward choosing among alternatives and more toward adaptation, escalation, and maintaining legitimacy among constituents. By foregrounding such practices, the study highlights forms of strategy work that often remain invisible in organization-level analyses of digital transformation. At the same time, the reliance on retrospective interviews underscores how strategic practices are embedded in collective sensemaking and storytelling.

Four main findings stand out:

1. As shown in previous research (e.g. Cozzolino et al., 2018; García-Avilés, 2021) disruptive digital innovation in an already existing and mature market comes with problems. This study adds to that knowledge by showing that for journalist unions, existing strategies are not enough when facing disruptive change and a management that appears as not willing to communicate. From a SAP perspective, the challenge is not only structural but practical: when the pace of cutbacks, layoffs, transformation of work processes, and investments in digital innovations, is forced and constantly ongoing, union representatives are drawn into continuous reactive strategic work, leaving little room for reflection or for developing alternative courses of action. This adds a new dimension to the prevailing understanding of journalism crisis narratives: it is not (only) technological and economical changes that increases pressure in newsrooms (cf. Petre, 2018; Salamon, 2025), but also by how strategy is enacted through everyday practices that limit actors’ capacity for sensemaking and influence.

2. Applying the SAP perspective also shows that during disruptive change, there is a risk of internal conflicts. What was described as a “dysfunctional family” illustrates how dominant patterns of sensemaking and established practices can become sedimented and internalized, making cooperation with new actors, such as the Promedia representatives, difficult. Hence, this study suggests that established relations also within an organization face severe challenges in processes of change.

3. In the interviews, the union representatives show a shared and strong sense of crisis awareness. The strategic focus in the negotiations with management was not to question digitalization and innovation, but rather the timing and the execution of changes, and to protect the union members’ health during times of severe work environment problems. From a SAP perspective, this highlights how strategic focus is produced through collective sensemaking and prioritized through recurring practices such as negotiations, surveys, and escalation strategies. But “we never won anything”. Legislation and CBAs give Swedish unions the right to negotiate on almost everything, but it does not come with the power to influence management’s decisions if management is not willing to listen to the union’s arguments. In other words: When there is too much disruption the system fails (cf. Mosco and McKercher (2008)).

4. Do the union’s double roles – as a trade union and a professional organization – inflict problems? In this case, the answer is “no”. The representatives’ strongest argument in negotiations on issues that were not related to worker’s health and work environment was economy, legislature and CBAs. But the “professional organization” side provided a parallel set of arguments: arguments on the importance of professional ethics and the need to protect sources can be used to show the risks of downsizing and change work processes, as can a general argument on the need to safeguard the quality of the journalistic content, and arguments on the importance of local news for local democracy can be used in negotiations on closing or downsizing local representation. From a SAP perspective, this illustrates how union representatives mobilize multiple repertoires of knowledge and norms in their strategic work. The core of union practice thus emerges as the continuous effort to ensure that legal frameworks, collective agreements, and professional standards are respected in times of disruptive change (cf. Neilson, 2025).