It’s official: La Presse will no longer be publishing on Sundays as a way of saving $3 million a year. The last Sunday paper comes out June 28.
Take the news through your favourite corporate filter:
- Quebecor’s LCN
- Presse Canadienne (on Cyberpresse)
- Radio-Canada
- The Gazette
- Rue Frontenac
- Le Devoir
- Canadian Press
- Branchez-Vous
- and, finally, La Presse itself, with bloggers Patrick Lagacé and Richard Hétu.
Gesca wants to save $26 million. Half of that will come from reducing expenses, including cutting the Sunday issue, reducing the width of the paper by an inch and cancelling internships. It is asking for the other half to come from concessions from employees (including managers), and is throwing out thinly-veiled threats to shut down the paper entirely. La Presse’s union has been without a contract since Dec. 31.
Cyberpresse and other Gesca papers aren’t affected by these demands, though there is still an open call for buyouts.
La Presse’s union says it is studying the concession demands, which would come with a promise that 15% of profits (should the paper become profitable again) would go back to employees.
UPDATE (June 18): Lagacé discusses the business model affecting newspapers (of which La Presse and Gesca are not immune) and predicts that employees will have to make some concessions, though he argues against those who say journalists are overpaid. Yves Boisvert waxes poetic about the physical newspaper and how it will soon be a thing of the past.
And so it goes….down the drain.
Does this mean my weekend-only subscription rate will be discounted?
“Only time will tell.”
This doesn’t bode well for the daily newspaper as a medium. Tough times and changing consumer demands are undermining the bloody things. And Craigslist is sucking a huge amount of ad revenue out as well. It’s making me wonder how long this can remain sustainable, and what options for re-invention of the daily remain.
I wonder what a Journalist earns at La Presse. Just to know what Overpaid means.
According to its last collective agreement, starting (base) salaries at La Presse range from $730 to $1058 a week, depending on position. That works out to between $20 and $29 an hour. Whether that’s “overpaid” is a matter of judgment I guess. It falls near the Canadian hourly average wage of $23.50 an hour.
In my humble opinion that’s a fair pay. No where near OVERPAID. I don’t know why people have this issue with people earning good money. 20$/h can barely get the bills paid if you live by yourself.
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