Ars Technica Mission Statement

We love Ars like you love Ars. We know readers come to Ars for comprehensive, accurate, and analytical coverage of the scientific and technical world. And our staff—many with IT, medical, science, software development, and other backgrounds outside of journalism—comes to Ars for the unique opportunity to have the time and space to do our particular brand of reporting.

In order to preserve the future of that reporting and safeguard our rights as workers, we have decided to form a union. We are as proud as ever to work for Ars, and we see opportunities for a better Ars Technica for staff and readers alike. By coming together collectively to work with management now, we believe we can solve current issues and address challenges as they arise, ensuring that the future of Ars stays true to the site’s ethos.

Working with management, we hope to find collaborative solutions to the issues we currently face. We want a seat at the table for conversations about diminishing editorial resources and how to navigate budget or staff cuts handed down from Condé Nast. As an entirely remote staff, we need to create more transparent communication channels to better navigate our remote work realities and to develop concrete strategies that will help Ars better represent the many diverse voices in science and tech. We’d like to see staffers receive more opportunities for growth, both monetarily and professionally, without the need to leave to seek more money elsewhere in the face of rising living costs. And we want to formalize some of Ars’ unique structures and practices to ensure they remain in place for future staff.

To help achieve these goals, Ars staff have formed a union with the NewsGuild of New York, an organization that has long represented our peers at places like the New York Times, Reuters, and Consumer Reports. The NewsGuild also supports a rapidly growing number of newly unionized publications, including Mashable, PC Magazine, New York Magazine, The New Republic, and our Condé Nast colleagues at The New Yorker. We are proud to announce today with Pitchfork, a fellow Condé Nast publication that shares our values of collective representation.

We ask Condé Nast to recognize our union as part of an effort to help improve communication and working conditions within Ars and establish a more constructive relationship between workers and management. We are committed to protecting the future and quality of our publication from any turbulence within our corporate parent, and we look forward to participating in fair and amicable bargaining to address workplace issues with transparency and respect.