Candidate for Council, Online Media Sector
Who Am I?
Hi, I’m Hamilton Nolan. I’ve been a journalist for more than 20 years. Most of my career has been spent covering labor, politics, and social justice. I became a WGAE member in 2015, when my colleagues and I unionized Gawker Media, the first online media shop to join our union. Playing a part in the past decade of organizing that has turned our non-union industry into a solidly union industry has been one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve experienced in my lifetime.
After joining our union, I served three terms on the council, for six years. During that time we organized a ton of new publications, grew our membership, and became one of the most successful organizing unions in America. I got to learn about what has made the Writers Guild strong for generations: solidarity, and a willingness to fight when it’s time to fight. I consider that to be a responsibility that we all carry as union members.
Like many of you, I was laid off, took new reporting jobs, had to freelance, and am now a full time independent journalist. I’ve also gotten more and more involved in the union world, both by reporting on unions and by getting active in organizing, including by helping to launch a nonprofit dedicated to funding unions. In 2024, I wrote a book about the labor movement. Its basic thesis was that the decline of union power in America brought on the inequality crisis that we’re all living through–and that reviving union power is the path out of that. I’m proud that our union is doing its part in that struggle, and I think I can help us be an even more vital part of the labor movement.
Why Am I Running?
Our union will always be fighting on three fronts at the same time. First and most fundamentally, we fight for our members–to win good contracts, to enforce them, to beat back bad ideas from feckless bosses. Second, we fight to build power in our industry–by organizing new shops, and by staying ahead of the constant upheavals in media to try to make sure that the union goes wherever the jobs are going. And third, we fight to build a stronger labor movement–not just by making our own union stronger, but by doing everything we can to build solidarity with other unions nationally, and to increase working class power politically and economically everywhere.
As hard as our individual fights against our bosses can be, they aren’t the biggest battles we face now. The online media industry that was riding high ten years ago has economically crumbled. Hundreds of the journalists that we organized have been laid off. Publications that we unionized have disappeared. Our industry is being bled dry by big tech companies that figured out how to extract all of the profits from journalism, without ever having to produce any journalism themselves. Having broken our industry’s economic model, they now aim to gut it further by using our work to train AI programs to take our jobs. Our publications used to compete with one another. Now, we’re all in a life or death competition with trillion dollar corporations. Solidarity and big picture thinking are more important than they have ever been, if we want our industry to survive. Our union is the single best tool that we have. We’ll never stop organizing more workers and fighting for good contracts. But if we want journalism to stay viable, we also have to think big: What are the legislative solutions? Where can we wield our cultural and political power to try to even the scales with big tech? How do we achieve public funding for journalism? Do we need to change laws to allow us to organize more effectively in the new, disparate world of self-employed writers and creators?
Fundamentally, our responsibility as a union is to protect all workers. If the economic conditions of our industry change, we need to change with it, and go wherever the workers are going. I love journalism, and I want to do everything I can to make sure that this can be a viable career for generations to come. The only way we get there is with solidarity. Fascists and oligarchs know that unions have power. That’s why they hate unions.
I’d appreciate your vote, and thank you all for being active in the union, no matter what.
Endorsements
Larry Cohen, Sara David, Devin Delliquanti, Liz Hynes, Kim Kelly, Zachary Lennon-Simon, Susan Rinkunas, Sasha Stewart
WGAW: Adam Conover
Endorse Hamilton Nolan for Council, Online Media Sector
Note: WGAW members who wish to endorse a candidate may follow the process outlined in section G.1.B of the 2026 Election Policy.
