Tag Archives: Journal de Montréal

Journal de Montréal, I wish I could quit you

March 11, 2010 – 3:03 pm| Posted in Media, Video

Recognizing, I guess, that despite not having most of its journalists the Journal de Montréal is still putting out a paper every day and people are still reading it, the union representing the 253 locked-out employees has released a new ad comparing the evil newspaper to some sort of drug, and Rue Frontenac to the nicotine patch.

It's cute, but it just reminds me that people are still reading the Journal. And I don't think most of them are trying to stop.

Meanwhile, the union has also put up a 13-question FAQ for those who want to learn more about their position and what's at stake in this conflict.

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Joannie who?

February 26, 2010 – 3:25 pm| Posted in Media, Sports

Journal de Montréal Feb. 24, 2010

I'm sure Joannie Rochette and her family would love to save the newspapers that carried the story of her courageous and impressive bronze medal in figure skating.

Fortunately the Journal de Montréal learned to spell her name properly today. They screwed it up on Wednesday's front page after her short program.

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Rue Frontenac on TVA

February 20, 2010 – 12:56 pm| Posted in Media

From TVA, Feb. 19

LCN's website posted a story yesterday about Haitian prison escapee sneaking back into Quebec with evacuees. The Rue Frontenac kids protest that they broke the same story 10 days ago and the LCN story doesn't mention them, saying only that "au cours des derniers jours, des journalistes montréalais se sont aussi intéressés à cette affaire." (TVA and the Journal de Montréal are both owned by Quebecor, which has a reputation for not allowing its media assets to report anything that might put another in a bad light.)

In the video, though, which aired on TVA's 6pm newscast Friday evening, you can see about the 1:40 mark a whopping two-second shot of Rue Frontenac's website, focusing on the face of locked-out journalist Daniel Renaud. If you freeze-frame, you can even see the website's address as part of his email underneath. (No mention of Renaud's name or Rue Frontenac is made in the piece.)

So now locked-out Journal de Montréal journalists can say that the address "ruefrontenac.com" has appeared on TVA.

For two seconds.

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Entrevue: Jean-François Codère, ruefrontenac.com

January 26, 2010 – 5:52 pm| Posted in Media, Video

A week before the anniversary of the Journal de Montréal lockout, I went to Rue Frontenac's offices and sat down with tech journalist Jean-François Codère, and asked him a few questions that had been nagging me.

You'll have to excuse the background noise, because Gabrielle Duchaine couldn't shut her bloody pie-hole and stop flirting with me I haven't gotten around to getting an external microphone for my cheap new video camera.

Some highlights from the interview, for those too lazy to sit through a half hour of a talking head (or who can't understand French):

  • Codère learned about the idea for Rue Frontenac in December 2008, at which point he undertook the mission to setup "something like Cyberpresse" in a month, in time for the expected Jan. 2 start of the lockout. (Last-minute negotiations pushed into the new year, delaying the lockout until Jan. 24.) The site is based on Joomla, only because they're familiar with it and the union's website is based on the same platform.
  • Though the few people organizing the website knew well in advance, and some journalists had an idea of it the week before the lockout, most of the 253 union members didn't know about Rue Frontenac until the day of the lockout.
  • The three-week delay between the end of the collective agreement and the start of the lockout helped to build up the site, but training everyone on how to use it still took a while, and was the main reason for a four-day delay between the lockout's start and the launch of Rue Frontenac. (Codère points out Patrick Lagacé's complaint last year that they weren't acting fast enough - he says he asked Lagacé about it when he visited Rue Frontenac at Christmas, and Lagacé admitted that nobody remembers or cares anymore)
  • Salaries are paid out of the union's strike fund, but Rue Frontenac's other expenses are expected to be self-funded, mainly by advertising and donations.
  • Rue Frontenac works with assignment editors, but most people just cover their own beats. The number of articles journalists might file in a week varies depending on the type of story and other considerations.
  • Non-journalists, like classified and business office workers, tend to do more picketing because there's not much they can contribute to Rue Frontenac.
  • Most people Codère talks to are at least aware of what Rue Frontenac is, so he doesn't have trouble getting interviews. (Codère's experience may be atypical - he's their tech reporter, so the people he deals with are more connected and more exposed to the website.) Most reporters also already have good relationships with their contacts.
  • Getting access to events like concerts isn't that difficult, even though they're the only purely web media accredited at the Bell Centre. They've negotiated photographer access to 15 of 42 Habs home games, and hope to get a better deal next year (assuming they're still locked out).
  • Rue Frontenac uses the Reuters photo service to get images for international stories. But all the text is generated from Rue Frontenac journalists.
  • Working at Rue Frontenac is "fun" compared to the Journal, but Codère is a realist: It's not profitable to do journalism the way they're doing it.
  • Some computers come from MédiaMatinQuébec, others are personal laptops used by journalists (many of whom had to get old ones or buy new ones because their work laptops were confiscated after the lockout was called).
  • They enjoy not having to do stories about the weather, Boxing Day and other ridiculousness.
  • Codère has received job offers since the lockout, but so far he's turned them down to remain a journalist.
  • Yes, Rue Frontenac asked for documents to submit a bid to do news for V (ex-TQS), but that was more to learn from the documents. Considering the CSN is still fighting for former TQS journalists whose jobs are being replaced by this subcontracting of news, actually submitting a bid would put the union in an awkward position to say the least.
  • What happens to Rue Frontenac after the lockout ends will depend on negotiations, but MédiaMatinQuébec's website was taken down as a condition of the Journal de Québec workers going back. What kind of impact that would have depends on how long it will be, and how much work will have gone into Rue Frontenac. Codère's ideal would be for the Journal to buy Rue Frontenac and all its content, but he isn't holding his breath.
  • Despite the success of Rue Frontenac, Codère doesn't think it's feasible in the short term to have an online-only news organization without a corresponding newspaper. Newspapers come to you, he points out, whereas you have to go to websites. He thinks it will be at least a few years until a serious online newsroom can be financially sustainable.

And one thing that wasn't in the interview: Rue Frontenac subscribes to digital television. But for some reason they prefer Bell satellite TV to Videotron cable.

UPDATE (Jan. 28):

Jean-François Codère talks about Rue Frontenac on CFCF's News at Noon

Seems CTV also got the idea that Codère was a good person to talk to about this anniversary.

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Série Montréal-Québec: Flawless, says Journal

January 26, 2010 – 3:56 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

On Sunday, TVA debuted its newest Sunday-night populist attention-getter, the Série Montréal-Québec, in which 16 players from each city (each including two women, one guy over 40 and one guy over 50) compete in a meaningless eight-game tournament to determine which city is superior to the other.

I switched back and forth a bit between the TVA broadcast and an actual sporting event that actually mattered. What little I saw of the show consisted entirely of long, drawn-out American Idol-style (or, if you prefer, «Star Académie»-style) player introductions. It's one thing when you're introducing two or three people you've never met, but it gets old after the first few dozen.

Thankfully, I wasn't the only one to notice that. Le Soleil's Richard Therrien and La Presse's Hugo Dumas showed an inspiring example of Quebec-Montreal unity by panning the show and its presentation devoid of any energy. The review from Dans ma télé's Annie Fortin was lukewarm at best, with similar criticisms.

But then there's the Journal de Montréal.

Journal de Montréal - Jan. 25, 2010

I find it ironic that Quebecor's new Agence QMI put together an article (one written like a ninth-grade book report or the minutes of a school board meeting) that was good enough for both 24 Heures in Montreal and the Journal de Québec website, but the Journal de Montréal decided it needed to have one of its few remaining journalists- Michelle Coudé-Lord - write a redundant story reviewing the show (one, I should add, that was reprinted verbatim in the Journal de Québec - in fact, the latter had an identical two-page spread, only in black and white).

Then again, Coudé-Lord's story has plenty of adjectives that the Agence QMI story was lacking, and her impression was so diametrically opposed to everyone else's (including mine) that I can only conclude that she was in a different universe at the time or has become disconnected from reality:

La Série Montréal/Québec sera rassembleuse comme le fut Star Académie. On n'abandonne pas une recette gagnante. Attendez-vous à ce que le Québec se divise en deux au cours des prochaines semaines. Les joueurs sont attachants ...

Guy Lafleur a résumé fort bien ce qu'allait être cette série : «le hockey est un jeu qui nous rend heureux».

La présentation des joueurs a donné le ton. L'émotion sera au rendez-vous. Stéphane Laporte et Julie Snyder, le concepteur et la productrice de cette série, savent faire de la télévision pour et par le monde. Et encore hier soir ils en ont fourni la preuve.

Le portrait de chaque joueur nous le rendait fort sympathique. ... C'était même touchant de voir les parents applaudir dans les estrades ...

Loco Locass a interprété avec enthousiasme l'hymne national de Québec ...

Montréal commence fort avec une gardienne de but ... Ça promet.

Belle initiative de Guy Carbonneau ...

Éric Lapointe a donné du chien à l'équipe de Carbo avec une interprétation enlevante de l'hymne national de Montréal.

Une belle réalisation de Michel Quidoz ... Marie-Claude Savard, l'animatrice, fut solide et a su laisser place à l'évènement. ...

That's 16 separate praises by my count, and not a single criticism of the show. I would have reprinted the entire article here if I could do so without fear of a copyright infringement lawsuit. It's surreal.

If I ever get married, I'm having Michelle Coudé-Lord write my vows. By then she'll probably be a public relations specialist.

PR is about the only way I can explain both Journals taking two colour pages to present players from both teams.

Hell, it makes Jeff Lee (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Quebecor-owned Videotron) look tame in his video blowjob.

Despite what some conspiracy theorists might think, Quebecor-owned media were not unanimous in their praise. Roxanne Tremblay of 7 jours didn't hold back on criticisms, and followed it up with a second-day story about the show's problems.

But still, even though I'm skeptical of theories about media owners directly affecting editorial content on a day-to-day basis, I can't help wonder if Coudé-Lord's article is what Pierre-Karl Péladeau envisions for his newsroom of the future - one where unionized journalists don't stand in the way of Quebecor's self-interest with their silly journalistic ethics.

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Journal de Montréal: One year later

January 24, 2010 – 9:16 pm| Posted in In the news, Media, Montreal

I was going to have a whole deal about the first anniversary of the Journal de Montréal lockout, but it seems everyone else had the same idea, and most of them are more interesting and better produced than whatever I could come up with.

Rue Frontenac, of course, goes all out. Besides Bertrand Raymond's retirement, there's a really well-produced video from Alain Décarie and Olivier Jean about the first year of Rue Frontenac. Gabrielle Duchaine has a timeline of events, and Duchaine and Valérie Dufour keep it fresh with news stories about pressure from the Fédération professionelle des journalistes du Québec and politicians for the government to step in and put an end to this conflict.

La Presse's Louise Leduc also has a dossier on the topic, with articles about the negotiations, concerns about the quality of journalism being produced by the Journal, and about the emotional impact of the lockout on staff.

In other media, a bit of acknowledgement: an article at Radio-Canada.ca about the FPJQ's demands, a story in The Gazette, a 15-minute discussion with two locked-out journalists at Corus radio, and Quebecor-owned TVA throws up a Presse Canadienne piece. Philippe Gohier of Macleans's Deux Maudits Anglais translates Pierre-Karl Péladeau's recent rant about the threat of unions (which has caused a lot of reaction) and points out how disingenuous it is.

A bus driver reads the Journal de Montréal at a red light a year after the paper's journalists were locked out

But the most interesting piece to me is this one by Patrick Bellerose (the only person I've seen to bring anything original to Quebec89.com) that asks the simple question: Why are people still reading the Journal de Montréal?

It seems so simple, but this is the first I've seen any journalist covering this conflict actually talking to people on the street about it. And their answers are mostly the same: They read it because it's there. They know about the lockout, but they don't really care.

If Rue Frontenac is really going to succeed as a pressure tactic, that's the sentiment that they're going to have to change.

UPDATE: Projet J has an audio interview with Raynald Leblanc.

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Bertrand Raymond retires from Journal de Montréal

January 24, 2010 – 3:21 am| Posted in Media, Montreal, Sports

Bertrand Raymond

It wasn't a very well-kept secret, but on the one-year anniversary of the Journal de Montréal lockout, sports columnist Bertrand Raymond has filed his final column.

As Raymond explains it, he knew he would never be going back to the Journal shortly after the lockout, when a bailiff came to his home to collect his laptop and cellphone (which were Journal property).

Ce jour-là, j'ai su que je ne travaillerais jamais plus au Journal de Montréal. Je ne voulais plus jamais y mettre les pieds. Je ne me trouvais plus aucune affinité avec des gens qui me traitaient comme un criminel. C'était quoi, l'urgence d'un tel geste ? Que voulaient-ils que je fasse de ces appareils ? Que je m'en serve pour faire sauter l'édifice ? Nous ne sommes pas des terroristes, nous sommes des journalistes. Les médias ne font pas la guerre. Ils la couvrent. Ils la commentent. Ils la vivent pour mieux raconter aux gens ce qui se passe.

Peut-être voulaient-ils nous faire sentir bien petits face à l'Empire ? Peut-être cherchaient-ils à nous humilier davantage ? Qui sait ?

Nous soulignons aujourd'hui, chacun à notre façon, un bien triste anniversaire. Un an sans travail, ça ronge l'enthousiasme; ça gruge le moral. C'est une année inutilement perdue dans une vie qui défile déjà trop vite.

Je veux être certain de vivre assez vieux pour ne pas oublier cet anniversaire. C'est pourquoi je choisis cette date pour partir. En annonçant ma retraite d'un métier qui a été toute ma vie, je veux m'assurer de ne pas avoir à vivre une deuxième année de lock-out.

Raymond has worked at the Journal for 40 years, and has been a columnist for the past 24. He was fiercely loyal to his newspaper before the lockout, but then fiercely loyal to his union afterward, even going so far as to blast Yvon Pedneault for writing for the Journal de Québec during its lockout in 2008-09.

After a vacation, Raymond will remain a part of RDS's Antichambre and la Ligue en question, and hinted about doing more for the all-sports network.

His departure is being noted by his colleagues, both at Rue Frontenac and in other media: La Presse's Réjean Tremblay, The Gazette's Mike Boone and RDS's Luc Gélinas devote columns to Raymond's retirement. (UPDATE: Corus Sports also has a quick question-and-answer with Raymond about his best and worst moments, and Patrick Lagacé has a few words on his blog)

But I feel most sorry for Four Habs Fans, who will have to find someone else to make fun of. (UPDATE: FHF bids Bertrand goodbye in its own way)

For the record, this stands as the final column he wrote for the Journal, a column about Mark Streit published one year ago today.

UPDATE (Jan. 28): Rue Frontenac has an article and a photo gallery from Bertrand's retirement party.

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Journal union celebrates a year off the job with a party

January 21, 2010 – 3:27 pm| Posted in Media, Montreal

The one-year anniversary is only days away (today is Day 363)

The Syndicat des travailleurs de l'information du Journal de Montréal held a press conference yesterday to advance the upcoming one-year anniversary of their lockout. I was working so I couldn't make it, but there's plenty of coverage in The Gazette, Presse Canadienne, Radio-Canada, Le Devoir, Metro (which has video of the press conference), and - to be fair - Quebecor-owned Argent does an acceptable job of getting both sides.

The STIJM also announced that they're holding a party on Sunday - the one-year anniversary - at La Tulipe. Performers include Richard Desjardins, Tricot Machine, Louise Forestier et El Motor, Loco Locass and Jean-Sébastien Lavoie. Tickets are $20 and available only at the box office (assuming they're not already sold out).

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Rue Frontenac and donation priorities

January 16, 2010 – 5:49 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

There's a debate going on, sparked by Steve Proulx, about whether Montrealers should be directing their donations directly to Haiti relief than by funding a trip by journalists from Rue Frontenac to cover the devastation.

It's a simple argument, but there are a lot of nuanced points to consider on both sides:

  • Donations aren't always a zero-sum game (though "donor fatigue" was brought into the lexicon after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and Hurricane Katrina in 2005). Different causes attract different people, and the difference may not be between donating to Rue Frontenac and donating to Haiti, but between donating to Rue Frontenac and keeping the money to oneself.
  • There are already plenty of journalists in Haiti covering it. Is there really an advantage to sending more of them, especially when they might put even more strain on the already struggling resources of the area? Especially when the stories they file, while very emotional, don't provide much in the way of useful news?
  • People making these donations are grown-ups and can decide for themselves how much money goes to humanitarian causes and how much goes to fund journalism
  • If we accept this logic, then how will organizations like Spot.Us (Dominic Arpin notes the similarity between the two) that take donations for journalism ever be able to cover humanitarian crises?
  • Rue Frontenac is not a newspaper. It's not a profit-making enterprise. Its purpose is technically as a pressure tactic in negotiations with the Journal de Montréal to get locked-out journalists and other employees back to work. It doesn't need to send journalists to Haiti to prove itself.

I stopped by Rue Frontenac's offices this week and had a chat with one of its journalists, Jean-François Codère. He argued that other news media sending journalists to Haiti (and everyone's doing it - The Gazette, La Presse, TVA, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, CTV, CBC among others) at much expense rather than donating money to relief causes.

Personally, I see both sides. I prefer to give my money to the Red Cross than Rue Frontenac because I think what Haiti is suffering from right now is not a lack of western journalists. But I don't blame anyone for wanting to put a few bucks toward their plane tickets (their salaries are being paid out of the union's strike fund). It's their choice.

In any case, they've already got money and are reporting from Haiti. Vincent Larouche has a report and Martin Bouffard has photos and a video.

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Journal de Montréal launches website, nobody notices

January 13, 2010 – 2:46 am| Posted in Media, Montreal, Web design

I came across it in a search - an article the Journal de Montréal wrote that was entirely based off an article from La Presse. I was surprised to find a new website for the Journal, one that looks just about identical to the one for the Journal de Québec and similar to the one for 24H, not to mention the Toronto Sun and the rest of Sun Media.

The fact that the Journal is producing little journalism of note (what with their journalists being locked out and all) is probably a big reason. The fact that the website is so forgettable is another (I'm not even going to bother with a review), as is public support for Rue Frontenac, the website setup by those locked-out workers.

Nevertheless, this is significant. The Journal had been prevented from launching a proper website because of clauses in its labour contract that gave the union some say in it. Employees started Rue Frontenac in part to show that they're not opposed to having an online presence and a website - they just want one unique to the Journal and not some cookie-cutter site that gets lost in the giant Canoe web.

So much for that.

The Journal also setup a Twitter account (@LeJournaldeMtl), which apparently quickly followed and then unfollowed a bunch of people, resulting in it getting suspended for spammy-like activity.

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Letter from Journal de Montréal pisses off locked-out workers

December 15, 2009 – 6:19 pm| Posted in Media, Montreal

There was a bit of a ruckus overnight in Mirabel.

The Journal de Montréal management, in response to the union's call for new negotiations to end the almost year-long lockout, laid out the "reality" of the situation and reiterated the demands made before the lockout began. Both the union and the employer accuse the other of backtracking on deals made during negotiations last year.

After receiving letters yesterday of management's presentation to the union negotiating committee on Friday (the text of which is reproduced below), Journal workers went to the Mirabel printing plant where the Journal is printed and picketed outside, delaying delivery of the paper (and, as "collateral damage", Le Devoir as well, as it's now printed there). Press release and stories from Rue Frontenac, Journal de Québec, CBC, Radio-Canada and Presse Canadienne.

The Journal condemned the "illegal" manifestation in a statement.

UPDATE (Dec. 16): La Presse has more on the situation in a day-after story.

Read More »

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Thoughts on local media

December 1, 2009 – 2:52 am| Posted in Media, Montreal

Kate McDonnell, author of the much-read Montreal City Weblog, does her yearly anniversary post and writes about how local media has changed since her blog was launched in 2001. A recommended read for people interested in the local media scene (like me).

Some thoughts to add:

Major local media have all redesigned their websites multiple times since 2001. Most now copy each other (much like print newspaper layouts copy each other), their homepages excessively long, far too much focus on Javascript, Flash and throwing as many links as possible into a tiny space. The idea of the Internet portal died a long time ago, but many still concentrate on the homepage as the single point of entry.

I don't own an iPhone, and I use my cellphone strictly for making calls (and sending text messages), so I can't comment on mobile offerings. But it would be nice if content-providing websites would open up their content a bit and let us make it work with our devices. Force us to go to your page for the full article if you're worried about page impressions, but let us spread the technology to better connect those pages with the people who want to see them.

At some point in the future, the idea of paying for wire copy will be considered ridiculous. It made sense for newspapers. It doesn't make sense online. Sure, keep your Canadian Press subscriptions for now, but at least separate the copy-paste wire dreck from original content your journalists create. Don't lump it all into one feed and put it all on one page.

Local media need to hire more programmers and geeks. Even with all the advances there is still so much inefficiency when it comes to news websites and how journalists and editors perform their craft.

For many people, Twitter is replacing the RSS feed. That can be both good and bad. But a lot of people just use Twitter to replicate their RSS feed. That's just bad. If I want to follow your feed, I'll do it in Google Reader, instead of getting a truncated headline and bit.ly link. If I see "via twitterfeed" on your Twitter page, I won't be following.

I can't help but agree about the "old arts weeklies". I don't read Voir much (Steve Proulx excepted), but my interest in the two anglo weeklies has diminished considerably. I thought it was because they focused less on news and more on arts, but I think they're falling behind in both categories, going through the motions instead of spending effort coming up with something new. I find I get more interesting news from The Suburban than Hour or Mirror, and that's not saying much.

As for Metro, Transcontinental's free daily, it has improved a lot since its launch in 2001, when it was exclusively wire copy. Now it has actual journalists. They're not doing groundbreaking investigative reporting, but considering their budget it's surprising the amount of original local content they get in. I'm not sure how much of their recent quality is based on competition with 24 Heures, whose journalists seem to exist right now solely to provide filler for the locked out Journal de Montréal, though. That might change if that labour conflict is ever solved.

Which brings us to Rue Frontenac, which has been working hard, but doesn't look like the kind of website that needs 253 people to put together. Obviously people have other responsibilities like picketing, and not all of those employees are journalists, but the small core of people putting out most of the stuff at that website is arguably exactly what the Journal and Quebecor want.

Finally, as far as local bloggers are concerned, well, that's the subject of another post.

Oh, and Kate, maybe it's time to install WordPress and start allowing comments on that blog. That way I don't have to write a response on my own blog to get it published.

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Rue Frontenac, paper edition

September 25, 2009 – 3:53 am| Posted in Media, Montreal
Rue Frontenac, with Quebecor's Journal de Montréal and 24 Heures

Rue Frontenac, with Quebecor's Journal de Montréal and 24 Heures

As Montreal's favourite hockey team suffered yet another preseason loss, many fans had in their hands a new newspaper put together by some very experienced journalists. Rue Frontenac, the news website put together by the 253 locked-out workers of the Journal de Montréal since January, put together its first printed product, a special section on the Canadiens.

You'll recall that when the Journal de Québec was locked out in 2007-08, they printed their own free newspaper MédiaMatinQuébec to compete with their employer as a pressure tactic. When the Journal de Montréal faced the same fate, it was determined that the larger city, not to mention the existence of two free dailies (one owned by Quebecor) meant doing the same here wouldn't work as well, so it was decided that RueFrontenac.com would be an online-only operation.

But then, online only gets you so far.

The publication, coordinated by Jean-Guy Fuguère, is strictly a Canadiens season lookahead, with commentary from veterans like Marc De Foy and Bertrand Raymond, as well as union-sympathizing stars Martin Brodeur and Jacques Demers. It's 40 pages long, and has a few advertisements, from Molson, Chambly Mazda, various unions and Georges Laraque's WeTeam Ice.

You can get it in PDF format on Rue Frontenac's website. They will also be distributing 50,000 copies of the paper over the coming days.

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Shockingly, people still reading newspapers

September 23, 2009 – 10:28 pm| Posted in Media

NADbank, the national newspaper readership monitoring service, released a report on Wednesday with some new numbers (PDF) for newspaper publishers to chew on. And, of course, with all the data there, each newspaper cherry-picks facts to make it look like they're doing better than their competitors:

So what do the numbers show?

For the sake of comparison, I'm using the "five-day cumulative" number, which measures how many people read the newspaper (in printed form) at least once over the previous five weekdays. The numbers are compared to the last annual report released in March.

  • Journal de Montréal: 1,027,400, up 3.3% from 994,600 despite the lockout
  • La Presse: 678,200, up 0.9% from 672,300
  • Metro: 630,100, up 2.0% from 617,900
  • The Gazette: 454,200, down 1.1% from 459,200
  • 24 Heures: 516,400, up 13.9% from 453,200

Note that no numbers are given for Le Devoir.

The big news here is with 24 Heures, which has shown a huge jump in readership, surpassing The Gazette for fourth place in the market overall.  This is most likely due to more aggressive distribution as well as the increased number of journalists now employed by the paper since the Journal de Montréal was locked out. It also may have picked up some former ICI readers, since ICI is now a weekly supplement in 24 Heures.

For online readership, the numbers are all press-release-worthy:

  • La Presse (cyberpresse.ca): 359,000, up 10% from 326,200
  • The Gazette (montrealgazette.com): 134,900, up 6.5% from 126,700
  • Metro (journalmetro.com): 36,900, up 12.2% from 32,900
  • 24 Heures (24hmontreal.canoe.ca): 27,100, up 24.3% from 21,800

NADbank is also, for the first time, counting Journal de Montréal online readership (the Journal doesn't have its own website, but Canoe groups some of its articles on a page here). It measures weekly readership at a paltry 130,700, just a bit less than The Gazette.

It's unsurprising that online has grown quite a bit (in most cases it really has nowhere to go but up), and while Metro and 24 Heures have seen huge gains percentagewise, their numbers are still so small that NADbank puts an asterisk next to them to indicate the sample size was too small to be reliable.

Speaking of small sample sizes, the numbers also include Montreal readership for the Globe and Mail (97.600 Monday-Friday, 79,800 weekly online) and National Post (71,400 Monday-Friday, 41,100 weekly online).

So I guess the newspaper crisis is over, huh?

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Journal Lockout Digest: Protest? What protest?

July 24, 2009 – 2:05 am| Posted in Media

As the lockout of Journal de Montréal employees celebrated its six-month anniversary, those employees took advantage of an open door on Wednesday and stormed the Journal's offices (CP, Le Devoir, Radio-Canada, Metro), a place they've been forbidden by court order to enter since the lockout began in January. Though there was no outright violence (despite the somewhat staged photo as evidenced by the video above), and they left a few minutes later, it was a very tense, very dramatic few minutes.

And if you're religiously tuned to the LCN 24-hour cable news network, you wouldn't have seen a moment of it. While Radio-Canada's RDI was all over the event, It seems the Quebecor-owned network gave only a brief mention of the incident on TVA's evening news. There wasn't even a video to attach to the story.

UPDATE (July 24): Richard Therrien has more in Le Soleil.

Meanwhile, Quebecor has responded by complaining to the court, arguing that the employees who stormed the building were in contempt of court by rather obviously violating a court order that said they couldn't enter the building. Thankfully, Quebecor-owned enterprises are all over that part of the story (ot at least, copying the Canadian Press version online).

The anniversary has also prompted some big-picture discussion from the blogosphere, with one capitalist saying unions aren't all bad, and another asking why the union doesn't forgo Quebecor entirely and start their own newspaper.

UPDATE (July 27): A video originally attached to this post, which criticized Rue Frontenac for a misleading photo, has been taken down by YouTube after a copyright complaint from the photographer. The photos have also been removed from the Rue Frontenac article on the protest, without any correction.

In other news

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Journal Lockout Digest: He’s a scaaaaaaaaab!

July 10, 2009 – 3:40 am| Posted in Media

It was spun as a victory at Rue Frontenac, but the union lost far more than it won in the latest round at the Commission des relations du travail.

In a decision issued Wednesday (PDF), commissioner André Bussière dismissed all but one of the complaints issued by the Syndicat des travailleurs de l'information du Journal de Montréal, which represents locked-out Journal de Montréal workers. The STIJM made numerous accusations about people and companies working as scabs for the Journal, mostly in roundabout ways.

Among the conclusions reached by the commission:

  • The setup of the Agence QMI wire service was not an illegal act. Stories from other Quebecor entities were assigned by them, and the Journal had no assigning ability over workers of other publications. The only communication between them (other than the stories themselves) were daily skedlines (lists of stories) that were sent from the news outlets to Agence QMI and then distributed to its members.
  • The revamping of websites for 24 Heures and 7jours were part of Quebecor's business plan and not measures to bring in scabs.
  • The cartoonist YGreck, who has been providing editorial cartoons for the Journal de Québec, is not a scab even though his contract with the JdQ was changed so he would provide more general (less regional) cartoons on a daily basis to replace the Journal de Montréal's Marc Beaudet. His orders came from the JdQ, not the JdM.
  • Joseph Facal, whose freelance column went from once a week to twice a week when the lockout started, is not a scab because the second column replaces that of other external freelancers who left the paper because they didn't want to scab.
  • Freelancers who worked on special sections of the Journal were not scabs.

The one complaint that was upheld concerned Guy Bourgeois, who wrote the Défi diète column in the Journal. The complaint concerned the fact that he began conducting interviews in the 2009 version, which was different from previous versions and also violated the collective agreement. The commission agreed, and said the Journal can no longer make use of his services as an interviewer.

Notably, the decision used the Journal de Québec decision as a precedent, countering the Journal's argument that he wasn't a scab because he never entered the building.

It's a silver lining in a decision that the union is not happy with. The STIJM has vowed to continue the fight.

In other news:

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Journal Lockout Digest: FTQ traitors

June 16, 2009 – 2:21 am| Posted in Media

It's hard to argue that your employees should make huge concessions when you're in the process of bidding for an eight-figure sports franchise. And yet, that's exactly what Quebecor is doing.

But the Quebecor bid for the Canadiens took a new twist this week when it was discovered that it's being supported by the Fonds de solidarité of the FTQ. The FTQ labour union.

Needless to say that's raised a few eyebrows among the media, not to mention the folks at Rue Frontenac. The STIJM calls it immoral, Martin Leclerc is calling for heads to roll, Michel Van de Walle calls it treason, Serge Touchette is revolted and Beaudet takes a whack at the issue in cartoon form. There was even a protest, another protest at the Bell Centre, and an open letter to Jean Charest.

Aside from the union implications, the deal is also making some worried about what would happen to Canadiens games on RDS if Quebecor and its "king of convergence" at Planète Quebecor were to buy the team. The Gazette's Pat Hickey calls it "a bit scary", Mike Boone agrees and unions aren't crazy about it either. There's even a Facebook group to keep Quebecor from buying the team.

Back to the table, please

Remembering that there's a labour conflict going on, labour minister David Whissell wants both sides to return to the negotiating table. Though he says he doesn't take sides since the conflict is with a private corporation.

Inside the conflict

Radio-Canada's Desautels has a piece about the Journal de Montréal conflict. The audio is online in Windows Media audio.

Défi Chicoutimi

25 of the Journal's 253 locked-out workers have embarked on a bicycle trip from Montreal to Chicoutimi (via Quebec City) to express solidarity with their locked-out colleagues at Le Réveil. You can read about their departure, Day 1 and two reports about Day 2.

Those who couldn't make it on bikes hit the golf course.

Bonne Fête

The Journal de Montréal is 45 years old. Not quite the birthday it expected. Thoughts from:

Rue Frontenac expands

Reinforcing the fact that they're in this for the long haul, Rue Frontenac has added a new section, Détente, for weekend lifestyle features. It also has a special from Jean-Michel Nahas looking at the various candidates for mayor of Montreal.

TVA Publications likes this union thing

Rue Frontenac reports that ad salespeople at TVA Publications are looking to form a union. They've requested accreditation. TVA Publications, in addition to abusing freelancers, is mostly ununionized.

And...

Another pot shot at the Journal's manque de rigueur...

Meanwhile, at the Journal de Québec

Remember that labour board decision that Quebecor said they'd appeal? They're appealing it.

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Journal Lockout Digest: Canoe promos are ads, arbitrator rules

June 8, 2009 – 11:20 pm| Posted in Media

You know how the Journal always has little boxes pointing you to Canoe.ca? For Richard Martineau's blog, or photo galleries, forums, or various other Quebecor cross-platform stuff? A grievance from the union that dates from before the lockout (in fact, dates so far back it mentions Canoe blogs from Patrick Lagacé and Dominic Arpin that no longer exist) has finally been decided on. The ruling from arbitrator Diane Sabourin (PDF) says that these promos in editorial space were promotional material, which violates the collective agreement's clauses preventing the mixing of advertising and editorial content.

This case is actually somewhat complicated because of the Journal's union contract. The contract prevents the Journal from setting up a website without union approval, so instead Journal stories have been published on canoe.ca. The Journal has been pushing the limits of this ability by pointing to columnists' blogs and other material on Canoe. Here, it was determined that the employer crossed the line. Either the contract will have to be changed or such promotions will have to be done in advertising space.

The union, of course, is celebrating.

QUINZE. TONNES.

Free trip to Switzerland

Rue Frontenac's Jean-Philippe Pineault has been "invited" on a trip to Switzerland sponsored by the Swiss tourism bureau. Apparently there are no ethical issues involved here.

In brief

Synergie multi-plateforme globale intégrée de toute


Christian Vanasse's take on PKP during what was otherwise a fairly uninteresting AJIQ awards ceremony.

And at Le Réveil...

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Journal Weeklyish Digest: Péladeau speaks

May 14, 2009 – 12:05 am| Posted in Media, Video

Today was the annual general meeting of Quebecor shareholders, so Pierre-Karl Péladeau had to come out of his cave and answer questions about how he does business. Lesaffaires.com has video highlights of Péladeau's press conference.

When asked about the Journal de Montréal lockout, Péladeau's minions at Quebecor gave the usual response about how the unions don't understand the seriousness of the financial situation the company is under thanks to the various economic crises it faces (which is forcing it to consider shutting down newspapers).

Of course, that's not stopping Quebecor from wanting to buy the Canadiens.

Needless to say, locked-out Journal workers were protesting outside,

30 ways to lead your lockout

The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec magazine Le Trente explores the Journal lockout in its April issue, with an article by Hugo Joncas that talks a bit about the months leading up to the Jan. 24 lockout. It's mostly union accusations, since the Journal and Quebecor aren't talking, but it's clear that Quebecor was planning for a lockout for a long time. Among the things that happened, the Journal:

  • Hired more managers, ensuring most of them were journalists
  • Started up new columns by freelancers who could still write in the event of a lockout
  • Created Agence QMI, a wire service the allows Quebecor-owned media outlets to share stories
  • Setup a system so page layout could be outsourced to another company under Quebecor control (it's believed this is on the floor above the Toronto Sun newsroom)

Another piece by Florent Daudens looks at Rue Frontenac, the centre piece of the union's pressure tactics.

Carbo (the other one) soldiers on

Claudette Carnonneau, the head of CSN who is suing the Journal de Montréal over a misquote related to the Caisse de dépôt, isn't dropping her case. She's seeking $250,000 in compensation from the newspaper.

Big advertisers fleeing

The Institut de coopération pour l'éducation des adultes pulled a lucrative ad contract from the Journal because of the conflict (as it did last year for the Journal de Québec) and spent more money having their speecial section printed as part of La Presse.

Similarly, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste has moved a contract to print Fête nationale schedules from the Journal to Transcontinental-owned Metro.

Neither of these are surprising (both had previously expressed support for locked-out workers), but it highlights some of the advertising pain the Journal is facing. The question is whether the money they save from salaries offsets the loss of ads.

Having to pay a $10,000 fine (for a story that appeared years before the lockout started) doesn't help either.

In other news

And at Le Réveil...

Not much, other than getting some moral support during the fête des travailleurs.

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Journal Weekly Digest: More support, but not in court

April 28, 2009 – 2:22 am| Posted in Media
Rue Frontenac survey results: Quebec MPs by party

Rue Frontenac survey results: Quebec MPs by party

Like the Canadiens, the locked-out workers at the Journal de Montréal are counting the moral victories while their actual ones are few and far between.

On Friday, the Commission des relations du travail denied a request from the Syndicat des travailleurs de l'information du Journal de Montréal to order the paper to stop using content from Quebecor's new Agence QMI. The union argued that it's being used to replace the work of locked-out workers with the work of journalists at other Quebecor-owned news outlets. The employer countered that they're playing by the rules - all the content is published elsewhere in the Quebecor empire before it's printed in the Journal.

The truth, of course, is in the middle. Many other Quebecor outlets have ramped up their journalism production to feed the Journal.

Still, even with that small setback (other issues are still on the table and will be discussed at other hearings in the coming weeks), the STIJM is heralding its new avenues of moral support.

The Bloc + 3 = 70%

On Sunday night, Rue Frontenac released a survey of Quebec MPs that headlined the fact that 70% of them support the locked-out workers and would support a boycott of advertising in the Journal de Montréal by the federal government. It combined that with a somewhat conspiracy-theory piece about why the Conservatives didn't support them, suggesting it had to do with Brian Mulroney's ties to Quebecor, ignoring the more obvious explanation that Conservatives don't tend to take the union's side in labour disputes.

More interesting is the fact that 12 of 14 Quebec Liberal MPs (including Stéphane Dion) chose not to support the workers (or more accurately, didn't respond to Rue Frontenac's survey). But Quebecor can't be in bed with the Liberals since La Presse and Radio-Canada already are.

Guy! Guy! Guy!

But more important than federal politicians are entertainment galas, and Guy A. Lepage made a few headlines when he appeared on stage to accept an Artis award sporting a Rue Frontenac sticker and declaring solidarity with the locked-out workers (along with 800 people let go by CBC/Radio-Canada, which airs his show Tout le monde en parle).

Lepage was the only winner from Radio-Canada (RadCan swept the nominations in the talk show category) in the Quebecor-dominated Artis. So if anyone was going to say something, it had to be him, especially since he had paid Rue Frontenac a visit just days before to give them an exclusive interview.

Outside, locked-out workers were demonstrating, keeping their cause in the news (well, on Rue Frontenac anyway, and as a throw-away mention in a piece about the more important issue of who people were wearing).

Meanwhile

Workers showed they're not intimidated by Pierre-Karl Péladeau's injunction and are still hounding him.

And to those of you who don't think Rue Frontenac is doing enough investigative journalism, I give you an exclusive report on the fact that electronics store flyers have errors in them.

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