The Globe got 60 people to agree to buyouts, but that still wasn't enough, and they've laid off 30 more for a total reduction of 90. The cuts were previously announced, but now we know a third of them are involuntary.
Meanwhile, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, which we'll remind you is newly without competition, is firing a quarter of its newsroom staff, confirming previous rumours.
The Globe and Mail today gleefully announced that during the 2010 Olympics, it will produce special Sunday editions for the first time in its history. Unfortunately, they'll only be distributed in British Columbia, where the games will be hosted, and they'll only go out on three days: Feb. 14, 21, and 28, 2010.
Naturally, the article rams down our throats that these will be collectors' editions and that people should buy 150 copies each.
What it didn't so gleefully announce, according to J-Source, is a "voluntary separation" program to reduce staff at the paper. The email also threatens non-voluntary layoffs if not enough people choose to leave, which it suggests is likely. No hard number is given as far as the number of reductions the Globe needs. UPDATE: The Globe says between 80 and 90 people need to go, representing about 10% of the total workforce. Other coverage from AP and Reuters.
This appears to be unrelated to the 105 jobs CTV cut in November, as those were at its television assets.
For those who may know someone facing less-than-voluntary separation, Globe blogger Craig Silverman has some suggestions on how to deal with them.
To those of you who might think that our local papers are getting too lazy in their reporting, and look to the respected media like the Globe and Mail and New York Times for insightful analysis on important issues, I point you to the following:
The Globe and Mail has an article about how big Vanna White's head is. Literally. Who knows how much CBC paid the Globe to write an article about Wheel of Fortune just before it starts airing on the network, but this is certainly an interesting angle to take on it. Will the next piece be an in-depth look at Alex Trebek's moustache?
Meanwhile, the New York Times summarizes last night's Colbert Report, regurgitating the jokes made by New York governor David Paterson, who was the headline guest.
The Globe and Mail and Transcontinental have signed a $1.7 billion, 18-year deal for the Montreal-based printer to print the newspaper everywhere but the prairies.
The highlight of the deal (from the Globe press release) is a promise from Transcon to buy new presses capable of printing full-colour on all pages. Currently newspapers have to budget which pages get colour and which stay black, mainly because colour is a four-plate process (CMYK) and black requires only one plate and one colour ink. (The change will also mean a shorter paper and another redesign)
That sounds pretty cool. But spending $200 million on new presses to satisfy an 18-year deal (2010-2028) when we're not even sure that newspapers are going to last that long?
Like the New York Times and other larger papers, the Globe will probably weather the crisis a bit longer than most (the fact that it hasn't drastically cut the number of journalists recently certainly helps). But 20 years is a long time in the future, especially when you consider where we were 20 years ago. In 1988, newspaper staffs were at their peak, television production values practically nonexistent, and nobody knew what the Internet was.
Two articles from two countries' most prestigious newspapers compare two television networks' coverage of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.
The Globe and Mail says NBC's coverage "outshone the work of the CBC, mainly because co-hosts Bob Costas and Matt Lauer brought more information and enthusiasm to the show than did the stolid, rather dull presentation of the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, who handled most of the commentary during the first 80 minutes."
The New York Times: "how extraordinarily pleasant it was to be able to view that spectacle in Beijing without the annoyance of constant exclamation and endless recitations of trivia — just great swaths of wonderful silence from our narrators MacLean and Mansbridge between 8am and 9am or so, just letting the show at the stadium tell its own story with the least obtrusive economy of helpful footnotes, no urgency whatsoever to riddle the air with inane nattering and relentless fill."
I guess it's all a matter of interpretation.
In the wake of the beheading on a Greyhound bus that titillated the media shook the nation, the Globe has an exposé on the fact that people take the bus to go from Alberta to Manitoba.
Just weeks after The Gazette reduced the size of its TV Times to save paper, the Globe and Mail has done the same thing, though they're being a bit coy about why, calling it "more consise." Needless to say that didn't fool everyone.
But since I can't find anyone blogging about it, I wonder whether too many people care. How many young people check the newspaper to see what's on TV?
La Presse unveiled its Beijing Olympics blog, noting that it's sending a team of reporters, including columnist Pierre Foglia, to China next month. (Ten years ago, a newspaper sending reporters to the Olympics wouldn't be news, but with the industry suffocating and cutting back, every plane ticket and hotel room has to be justified as a Newspaper Reporting Event.)
The Star, meanwhile, is putting links to its Olympics website on every page, including a logo next to its flag. Sadly, the website from Canada's largest newspaper has about the same design finesse you'd expect from a YMCA bulletin board.
The Gazette's Dave Stubbs, meanwhile, is still milking the Chinese news sources for weird stories relating to the Games on his Five-Ring Circus blog, which contrasts with Canwest's matter-of-fact topic page.
The Globe and Mail hilariously has its Olympics coverage in a section called "Others". Their Olympics blog is better, at least, though I'm not sure what "Wb" stands for in the URL.
The best Canadian Olympics news website unsurprisingly goes to the CBC, which not only has a general Olympics website, but has separate related sites for each major sport at the Games, each filled with stories. These will be the last Olympics the CBC has broadcast rights for.
And for completeness sake, Quebecor's Canoe portal has yawnable websites in French and English for the Games with stories from its newspapers and wire services.
But even that's better than CTV's Olympics website, which doesn't exist. (CTV has rights to 2010 and beyond, so you'd think they'd take advantage of the opportunity to get some practice online)
The Globe and Mail has a regular feature called "Collected Wisdom" by Philip Jackman, in which a bunch of people ask questions and another bunch of people answer them. The questions are those didja-ever-wonder types, like "why aren't there A and B batteries?" that you'd find the answers to in Uncle John's Bathroom Reader books.
Some other examples:
This column is part of the traditional media's embracing of News 2.0, interactivity, where the reader/viewer/listener has power. It's the same reasoning behind republishing anonymous troll comments in newspapers, or those "live" web chats the Globe is so fond of.
The problem is that this goes against the entire point of having a trusted news source. This column seems to pride itself on not doing any fact-checking whatsoever, nor providing credible source material for the answers it gives.
Forget the fact that many questions can be answered by spending about 30 seconds on Wikipedia or doing a Google search. The answers aren't checked to make sure they're right. Occasionally it might come from an expert, but the vast majority of the answers have the same authoritative backing as that guy at a bar or your friend Vinny who says he knows everything about everything.
As a result, we get urban legends repeated as truth, multiple (sometimes conflicting) answers to the same question, and corrections.
It would be one thing if these questions, interesting as they are, were answered by experts in those fields (you know, the way all those "ask the experts" columns are done). But why leave fact-gathering (and fact-verifying) to the most untrustworthy source that can possibly be found: some random person you don't know?
Either it's a really dumb idea or it's just plain lazy journalism. Either way it's not the way to innovate in the face of the Web revolution.
Speaking of ridiculous things to be outraged about, the Globe and Mail apparently found it necessary to assign a reporter to write a story about how there was no Canada Day Google Doodle this year.
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