BEFORE: Cyberpresse.ca

AFTER: LaPresse.ca

When I heard last night about how Cyberpresse.ca was being transformed into LaPresse.ca today, I started planning a post in my head, about how the last great example of the "portal" concept from a decade ago had finally fallen, following in the footsteps of Canada.com and Canoe.ca, who for years forced its papers and other brands to be mere sections of the portal instead of having their own websites with their own domain names.

But ... that doesn't seem to be what has happened here. At least not yet. Instead, they've changed the name and the branding (one that has existed for more than 10 years), but not the concept, and for now anyway all the Gesca newspapers still share the same online brand.

Here's what Le Soleil's website looks like right now:

Le Soleil website: Just another section of La Presse?

If I was a Le Soleil reader, I might feel insulted at the idea that my paper was nothing but a subsidiary of another. Imagine if the Montreal Gazette website was nationalpost.com/montreal, or if the Journal de Québec's was journaldemontreal.com/quebec.

The same thing happens for other Gesca papers like Le Droit and La Tribune.

If Quebecers weren't already convinced about the Montrealization of their media, this kind of shoves it in their faces, doesn't it? (Le Soleil's front page today lists its website as lesoleil.cyberpresse.ca, which makes me wonder: Were they even told of this change?)

(UPDATE: Briefs on the websites of Le Nouvelliste and La Tribune are notable in that their texts are identical. I guess the regional papers really are afterthoughts in the La Presse empire.)

I'm hoping that upgrades to the other papers' websites will quickly follow, so we'll see lapresse.ca for Montreal news, latribune.ca for news from Sherbrooke and lesoleil.ca for news from Quebec City.

That irritant aside, the Montreal paper is going all out in promoting the new look, which also includes redesigns of the paper and the website. There's the TV ad above, and a two-page spread in today's La Presse (PDF) explaining the changes. It's clear from the amount of space devoted to web and mobile how much La Presse is betting on new forms of media.

As you can see, the feel of the paper hasn't changed much apart from the logo (I'm sure some people will miss the oddly squarish-oval La Presse mark of old). The bigger change in print is the redesigned section fronts, which are given a more unified look, differentiated by name and colour. Headlines, columnist logos and other aspects of the layout are essentially unchanged.

Online, there are more changes, with the sections adopting the same names and colours as the paper. Notably, some sections that had been given their own names making them quasi-separate from the rest (Technaute, Mon Toit, Mon Cinéma) have been brought back into the fold and made sections of the main site.

But again, the biggest change is the name, and the most work seems to have gone into rebranding everything from their mobile applications to their Twitter accounts.

Goodbye Cyberpresse. We'll miss you, I guess.

Other coverage:

• Les Affaires
• OpenFile

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The lots are familiar to those who have witnessed this stunt the past few years: Yves Boisvert, Serge Chapleau, Marie-Claude Lortie and others propose some activity related to their specialty. Patrick Lagacé also offers to let you shadow him for a day, but he'll let just about anyone spend time with him for free.

And Paul Journet, despite coming in dead last in 2009, is willing to put his pride on the line again, proposing a trip to the golf course.

I'm sad to say that I won't be able to revive my Anyone But Foglia campaign this year since the star columnist doesn't feature among the 11 lots. This is most unfortunate, because we cannot defeat him if he doesn't participate. It's like going to the Stanley Cup final and the other team forfeits. That's not fun at all.

So who can we use our money to defeat this time? Alain de Repentigny came in second last year, and this year is offering the upcoming U2 concert, which is pretty enticing.

Or maybe we can just use our money for good instead of evil. Put it all on Paul Journet. Make his Christmas a happy one for once.

UPDATE: It's over, with $34,161 raised. The results:

• Émilie Côté: $1,000
• Éric Clément: $1,100
• Paul Journet: $1,250
• Alain De Repentigny: $1,600
• Nos 3 directeurs: $1,700
• Patrick Lagacé: $1,850
• Bernard Brault: $2,200
• Serge Chapleau: $2,500
• Marie-Claude Lortie: $3,000
• Sophie Cousineau: $3,901
• Yves Boisvert: $4,025
• Canadien: $5,200

It's Michel C. Auger-tastic!

Radio-Canada is also doing a similar event, auctioning off cool people and/or cool things, including some time with Joyce Napier and Michel C. Auger, or an autographed Canadiens jersey. Or you can go winter biking with Emmanuel Bilodeau.

The choice is yours. But this is the one time during the year that you can help some needy people and give journalists a rare indication that people actually care about them.

We'll take your spare change too

If the auctions are a bit too expensive for you, the Grande Guignolée des médias is coming on Dec. 2. And, of course, there's always the Gazette Christmas Fund, which is bombarding you with stories of the people it's helping until you either open your wallets or acknowledge that your heart is dead and that little bit of soul left in you has long ago bitten the dust.

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La Presse has set new rules on how reporters can use Facebook and other social media

Patrick Lagacé has published on his blog a new policy on the use of social media by journalists at La Presse and Cyberpresse.

Having such a policy is a really good idea and I wish more media organizations would develop their own (or adapt those used by other organizations) and have frank, constructive conversations with their staff about using social media as part of their jobs.

But while Lagacé describes his employer's policy as "le gros bon sens", I wonder how seriously it can be taken and how rigidly it can be enforced in real-life situations.

Let's explore it point by point:

• Don't republish (or "retweet") unverified information. As Lagacé says, this is the "Pat Burns" clause, and it just makes sense. Some social media experts argue that journalists should republish unverified rumours and explain that they're unverified, but I think even retweeting incorrect information can be damaging to your reputation. That said, how far should we take this rule? If a competitor has a major scoop, should it not be mentioned or even linked to on social media until the journalist has independently confirmed it? What about reports from so-called citizen journalists? Or celebrity gossip?
• Journalists (except columnists and editorialists) should avoid publishing their political or religious opinions or taking sides in societal debates. I'm guessing this refers more to taking sides on, say, the euthanasia debate than the latest episode of Mad Men. I like the idea behind this, but I think journalists suppressing their opinions gives a false impression to news consumers that they have none. I'd rather have a journalist who expresses their point of view and keeps an open mind than one who keeps it bottled up and lets biases show up in print.
• Journalists (except columnists and critics) should avoid giving their opinion on an event they're covering. This one is more straight-forward. If you're at a press conference given by Pierre-Karl Péladeau, don't tweet "QUEBECOR SUCKS". But would this mean, for example, that Fabrice de Pierrebourg couldn't comment about politics?
• Unless an agreement has been reached beforehand, journalists should report breaking news to Cyberpresse before publishing it through social media. This one bothers me a bit. Beat writers constantly have little bits of news that they publish on Twitter. Waiting for Cyberpresse editors to create a story and publish it online can waste valuable minutes and give competitors a speed advantage (looking at Cyberpresse's Twitter feed, I don't see a single breaking news tweet over the past two weeks that doesn't link to an already-published story). Besides, why encourage people to follow journalists if you don't want them to publish important news? I can understand wanting to make sure breaking news is on Cyberpresse's website as soon as possible, but I think both should try to publish information as fast as possible, without one waiting for the other.
• Journalists should indicate in social media profiles their employment for La Presse. Agreed. It's something a bunch of people forget to do, but it's important for the sake of disclosure. (Of course, context is everything - I'd expect this information on a beat writer's Twitter account, but is it necessary for an online dating site?)
• Profile pictures should be "professional" and not carry any campaign material (like those "twibbons"). I'm not entirely sure what "professional" means (no party pictures on Facebook, or just no pictures of drunken debauchery?), but it makes sense, provided the profile on the social media site is being used in a professional context. As for the "twibbons" (those little flags in the corner of profile pictures that show support for a cause, whether it's supporting Haiti or bringing the Nordiques to Quebec), I've seen quite a few on journalist profile pictures and I wonder if a blanket ban is realistic here.
• Journalists should inform their employer in writing if they have a personal blog outside of Cyberpresse. Having it in writing seems a bit much, but ok. But does this include, say, a LiveJournal account that's restricted to friends? Does it include anonymous blogs? (Can you be disciplined if they find out you run an anonymous blog and didn't tell them about it?)
• Journalists should avoid publishing photos, videos or commentaries about meetings or other private events at the office. This sort of goes to one of the rules that many people overlook but is one of the most important: Don't publish information meant for internal use only. Sometimes it can be something that seems innocent but turns out to be damaging, like inadvertently disclosing a colleague's secret source or tweeting about office gossip. It may seem odd that media organizations would want to be anything but fully transparent (and I certainly believe in having as much transparency as possible), but there are things that are kept from the public for good reason.

I think my biggest issue with these new rules is that their goal is to dehumanize journalists, to present them as if they're infallible beacons of objectivity and have no views of their own, even on society's most polarizing issues. It encourages journalists to go underground with their personal feelings, either through locked-down personal social media profiles or by using pseudonyms to express themselves. It goes in the opposite direction of recent moves by La Presse and Cyberpresse to put their journalists in the spotlight, putting their photos with their stories on Cyberpresse and encouraging them to start blogs.

Of course, few of these rules apply to columnists, of which there are an increasing number. So Patrick Lagacé can be as irreverent as he wants on Les Francs-Tireurs, and Hugo Dumas can still say what he wants about Tout le monde en parle. Becoming a columnist now becomes a way of gaining freedom of personal expression, even if a columnist's role is mainly journalistic in nature.

And then, of course, there's the fact that my blog probably goes against the letter of about half of these rules. I wonder how much of what I do here would be considered inappropriate by the authors of this policy.

A good first step

Despite my concerns, I think this is a step in the right direction. News organizations need to have discussions with journalists about social media, and this policy was the result of such discussions. It might need a few tweaks to consider various contexts, but the fundamentals are sound. Journalists shouldn't be advocating on one side or another of the debates they cover, and social media doesn't change that. Nor does it provide a way to escape being as a journalist, because people will judge you as much for what you write as your Facebook status update as what you write in the lead of your next news story.

Even those journalists without formal policies should look at the above and consider following these rules (or at least understanding why they exist and thinking hard before breaking them, like I do regularly).

Because when it comes to journalists using social media, the most important rule to follow is to use common sense.

UPDATE: NPR has sent out a memo to employees warning them about attending rallies organized by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The memo has some common-sense rules about journalists engaging in political activity.

UPDATE (Oct. 20): The Washington Post is the latest to weigh in with warnings, saying that reader engagement is important in social media, but that journalists shouldn't actually, you know, engage with readers.

UPDATE (Nov. 14): A piece in Trente calls for honesty if not absolute objectivity.

UPDATE (April 5): Mathew Ingram, formerly of the Globe and Mail, criticizes a similar social media policy at the Toronto Star that suggests reporters shouldn't discuss articles in progress or engage with readers in online forums.

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Fabrice de Pierrebourg

La Presse scored a major coup last week, hiring investigative reporter Fabrice de Pierrebourg, who has been breaking stories for Rue Frontenac since he and 252 others were locked out from the Journal de Montréal in January 2009, a lockout that just marked its 18-month anniversary.

De Pierrebourg was the posterboy for the lockoutés' argument that the true value of the Journal de Montréal came from hard-working investigative journalists, which their newspaper has replaced with wire stories, freelance opinionators and overhyped reporting from managers.

Henry Aubin named him one of the "watchdogs of democracy" in December for his scoops about city hall and the municipal election campaign. He was just as useful before he got locked out, perhaps best known for breaching security at Trudeau airport to prove a point.

De Pierrebourg was also one of nine employees fired by the Journal for storming the office while locked out - as part of a peaceful but illegal demonstration - in July 2009. While Patrick Lagacé says it's unrelated (because negotiations began weeks ago), de Pierrebourg tells Rue Frontenac that was the final straw.

The news of de Pierrebourg's hiring was met with mixed reviews. It's a huge move for La Presse (though not unprecedented - the guy who made the announcement was himself hired from the Journal de Montréal back in 2006).

And speaking of La Presse, I guess those financial problems that nearly forced them to shut down less than a year ago, until the union made serious concessions, are a thing of the past. Not only did they take on a new high-profile hire, but they've made 17 temporary workers permanent. (One of those workers I spoke to had no idea why, though that person wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.)

Aside from being good news for La Presse, de Pierrebourg's hiring is also good for him. He has a proper job again. The anxiety and stress is gone.

It's bad news for the Journal de Montréal (at least at first glance), which has lost a solid investigative reporter.

But it's also bad for Rue Frontenac. And if the comments attached to its story are any indication, his now ex-colleagues are supportive of his escape but still saddened at losing a high-profile member of their cause.

The beginning of the end?

Though I hate to use the term "trend", I have to wonder about who else might follow in de Pierrebourg's footsteps. Bertrand Raymond, the most high-profile columnist on the picket lines, announced in January that he would "retire" - and never again return to the Journal.

Raymond has, of course, hardly retired. He writes now for RDS, putting out a column about twice a week on average. Like de Pierrebourg, Raymond has simply found an employer that he can live with.

Both Raymond and de Pierrebourg gave similar reasons for leaving: they couldn't fathom the idea of going back to work for the Journal de Montréal, for Quebecor and the managers who put them out on the street.

It's a sentiment echoed by Jean-François Codère, when I interviewed Rue Frontenac's technology guy in January. I asked him how they would be able to work out their differences with their managers once the conflict ends, and he said he didn't know. Codère has turned down other job offers to stay at Rue Frontenac, but can he and the rest keep this up forever?

The Journal de Montréal isn't showing any signs of cracking. It's still publishing seven days a week (soon it will be the only Montreal newspaper to do so), and so much of the work of producing it is outsourced that they've made it seem almost transparent to its readers. (The number of people who have moral objections to reading a newspaper produced during a lockout are far outweighed by people who don't give a rat's ass about it.)

De Pierrebourg said he felt bad leaving his colleagues at Rue Frontenac. He should. Not because what he did was wrong, but because whether he wanted to or not his departure hurts the cause of those still locked out.

As this labour conflict drags out into the long term, more departures like this are inevitable. Some who are close to retirement age will just decide to give up. Some who aren't might take better jobs elsewhere. And as the union's strike fund starts running out, the rest might not have a choice.

And as the cream of the crop gets poached, what's left will be those who can't get jobs elsewhere. Those who work in classified sales or other non-editorial jobs, who have spent decades in a highly specialized function that doesn't translate well into the job market.

By then, the argument that the Journal is a lesser paper without these people begins to fall apart.

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Like other La Presse scribes, Nathalie Collard appears larger-than-life in a window of the La Presse building

It wasn't Nathalie Collard's idea to become La Presse's new media columnist.

Not that she was against the idea. But it was her boss that first suggested it. Collard had written about media issues for Voir and La Presse, but for the past five years was writing editorials as a member of the editorial board.

When she got that job, she told me during a recent interview, "I said I would stay for five years." And she was coming up on that five-year anniversary, so she decided to run for her life before she becomes like André Pratte ... err, that it was time for a change.

At the end of March, Collard started a new weekly column on media issues, as well as an accompanying blog. There was no introduction, no grand entrance, she just dove in and started writing.

Not inside baseball

"I'm not writing for journalists," Collard said, explaining that her column and blog shouldn't be seen as a newspaper version of Trente or Wired. "I'm addressing everyone. Journalists will read me, but so will my mother."

So, for example, she wouldn't write about the latest debate over freelance rates, but she might write a piece about copyright in general.

Collard sees her job as trying to explain the issues affecting media to a general audience that reads La Presse. Media is used in the broadest term here. She might write about the latest tech experiment at The Gazette, the local community radio station and whether Tou.TV will be accessible on the iPad, but also about travellers using Twitter or a vox-pop box installed on St. Laurent.

Though that general outline seems clear, the specifics are not. "I just started," she said, "I haven't yet found the tone I want to have. I'm really in a period of experimentation."

I asked her if she thought there was too much or too little media self-reflection in Quebec. She admitted that there's a lot of talk about journalists. "If we talked this much about doctors or professors," she said. "Maybe there's a bit of narcissism. But at the same time, it touches everyone. Everyone watches the TV, listens to the radio, reads the newspaper. They don't always stop to think about it."

So while a dozen journalists losing their jobs is given more weight than a dozen factory workers losing theirs, maybe it's because people are more directly affected by the former.

Collard also says there isn't that much talk about media in Quebec. There's Trente, but most people are unaware of it. There's the New York Times and U.S. media blogs, but not much in francophone Quebec that's really exploring the topic and making people think.

She synthesized her thought into this little sound bite: "We talk too much about journalists but not enough about media."

Cross that bridge when we get to it

One of the big questions I had for Collard was how she would report on her employer. It's a tricky issue, and one I've had to deal with in the past. The New York Times allows its media reporters to report on itself as it would any other company. Le Devoir is an independent paper (so it doesn't have to worry about pissing off affiliated media groups). The Toronto Star is the only newspaper in Canada with a public editor who writes about reader complaints.

So how would she have handled the recent threat to close down La Presse? How would she deal with labour disputes or other issues affecting Cyberpresse or other papers in the Gesca chain?

"I don't know."

Simple, direct, honest. She's glad she didn't have to deal with that particular issue, but she knows if it comes up again at some point she won't be able to pretend like it's not there.

Not interested

One thing she kind of has pretended doesn't exist is the war between Gesca/Radio-Canada and Quebecor. We spoke just after Véro-gate, where the Journal de Montréal broke the tradition of featuring the male and female personalities of the year from the Artis awards, supposedly because Quebecor hates Véronique Cloutier.

It's not that she's under orders to keep that stuff quiet, or that she doesn't agree it was an obvious slap in the face for Cloutier. It's that she simply doesn't care. "The war doesn't interest me," Collard said.

Like others at La Presse, Collard has had difficulty dealing with Quebecor. They don't call her back, or they call her back long after her deadline. In many cases it's for ridiculously simple things, too. Completely uncontroversial things.

For Collard, it's Quebecor's actions that largely contribute to something Quebecor has been complaining about recently (see this piece by Sophie Durocher): the unwritten alliance between Gesca and Radio-Canada.

Collard has nothing against Quebecor, and can't think of any reason they wouldn't like her, other than the fact she works for La Presse. She hasn't turned down an interview with TVA or the Journal de Montréal, but then she hasn't been offered any either. That's why when she was promoting her latest book, she was on Radio-Canada but not LCN.

So while "Quebecor people" (journalists at 24H, personalities at TVA and LCN, columnists for the Journal de Montréal) get exposure in other Quebecor media, in many cases to the exclusion of others, a "natural separation" is created, and Gesca's journalists find themselves at Radio-Canada.

If there is a secret agreement, Collard says she's never seen it or heard about it. If TVA wants to interview her, all they have to do is ask.

Nathalie Collard's media pieces appear in the Arts et Spectacles section, though she says she can move to others depending on the type of story she's writing.

The future of print

When Collard became an éditorialiste, she decided she'd stay for five years. Going into this new job, she hasn't set a similar timetable, simply because she doesn't know what the media universe is going to look like five years from now. La Presse could be shut down, or the online advertising market could take off and a glorious future of online journalism could be dawning.

Still, she's willing to bet that professional written journalism will stick around.

"We're very good at analysis and synthesis," she explains. "That will always be the case. On paper or online, we will always need these people."

As optimistic as she is about the future, though, Collard isn't necessarily looking forward to becoming a multimedia journalist. "I'm very nostalgic," she said. "I don't want to do TV. Video doesn't interest me."

She's also not crazy about all the work that goes into feeding the beast that is her blog. It's not that she minds blogging per se, just that it's a lot of work.

Twitter, on the other hand, she's crazy about it. It's just so convenient.

Her replacement

François Cardinal, journaliste

As Collard left the editorial board, she mentioned that her old post opened up to François Cardinal (I'm told the two ... umm ... know each other, making this swap all the more adorable).

"Nathalie a décidé de s'occuper des médias. Un poste s'est ouvert à l'éditorial. J'ai réfléchis à cette occasion. J'ai postulé, comme d'autres d'ailleurs. Je n'étais pas seul. Puis j'ai eu le poste, tout simplement," Cardinal told me via email.

Like Collard, Cardinal had been in his position for nearly five years and decided it was time for a change, so he decided to join the ranks of the judgment-makers. "J'estime que pour continuer à jouer son rôle de vulgarisateur, il faut changer de beat aux cinq ans, ou à peu près. J'avais l'impression d'avoir fait le tour du jardin, comme au municipal à une autre époque.

"Pourquoi l'édito? Parce que cette fonction me permettait d'élargir les sujets traités, tout en continuant d'écrire en environnement, en plus de me donner la chance de pousser cet enjeu un peu plus loin. Aussi, je continue à croire que c'est un job noble et essentiel."

Being a vedette

Collard is soft-spoken. Very soft-spoken. There were times during our chat over drinks (interestingly, for two journalists, neither alcoholic nor caffeinated) in an otherwise empty café that I could barely hear what she was saying. Although she was very polite and didn't hesitate to agree to an interview, I got the impression that she wasn't crazy about the thought of her being the centre of attention.

"It bugs me a bit," she says of having her photo in the paper, on her blog, on her Twitter account and even in the tiny form on every story she writes for Cyberpresse. (Interestingly, each of the above seems to be a different photo of her.)

"Journalists are more personalities than they were 20 years ago."

I guess that means blog posts like this one aren't exactly her cup of tea either.

Sorry.

See also: Trente on Collard's blog.

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This effectively means that La Presse won't be shut down on Dec. 1 as it had threatened to do.

The distribution workers will vote on their deal Monday, so we won't know the details until then.

But we know what's in the editorial contract (or at least most of it). I'm waiting for a copy of the full contract, but here's what's being reported (Radio-Canada, CP, Gazette, Trente, Rue Frontenac):

• The work week changes from 32 hours over four days to 35 hours over five days, at the same salary. Those who want to keep the four-day work week can become part-time employees (28 hours a week).
• Salaries remain frozen for 2010 and 2011, but will go up by 2% for each of the last two years. The maximum salary goes to $90,000 in 2012 and $95,000 in 2013. Those who work 40 hours a week have their salaries frozen until 2017.
• Employees will now pay 100% of dental insurance premiums, and 60% of medial premiums
• As of Jan. 3, pensions will no longer be adjusted to the cost of living
• Less vacation: they get 5 weeks at 14 years of service instead of nine, 6 weeks at 22 years instead of 20, and the 7-week vacation plateau has been eliminated. But employees get six more mobile vacation days a year.
• Employees of La Presse and Cyberpresse are merged under the same unit and will be treated equally.

As a result of the deal, La Presse foresees no layoffs of permanent editorial employees, but expects five to take voluntary departures.

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The deal still needs to be approved by the members, and we don't know which side caved on the various demands, but the union seems to think this is the best offer they could get.

In case you forgot, La Presse is shutting down on Dec. 1.

While many have dismissed this over-the-top threat (they'd also shut down cyberpresse.ca) as an insane bluff, Gesca has reinforced it, reportedly arranging for BlackBerrys to be returned next week. Managers and employees are clearing out their desks, and the atmosphere in the newsroom is very tense.

The union, which was in negotiations today and will meet with members on Saturday, released this video in which Richard Labbé and Isabelle Masse sing (!) about what people would lose if La Presse gets shut down:

Mind you, I think Patrick Lagacé could find employment elsewhere, and there are lots of options for crosswords.

UPDATE: Rue Frontenac watched the video.

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From Friday's La Presse

The first opinion polling after the Labonté scandal shows the three parties really neck and neck (and neck). Though Harel comes out on top, the real story is Richard Bergeron, whose party is living the wet dream of being a contender.

According to the poll, the number of undecideds has plummeted from 30% to 10%.

Election day is Sunday, and (as a journalist who will spend the night in the newsroom) it's gonna be fun.

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The news caught the other unions (affiliated with the CSN) off guard, and they shot off a communiqué accusing La Presse of negotiating in bad faith.

The CSN unions are the more important ones, because they represent editorial and distribution. Without their okay, nothing really changes.

La Presse is about two-thirds of the way to a deadline it has set for its employees to accept wage concessions. It has threatened to shut down the paper on Dec. 1 if its demands are not met.

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Negotiations between the paper and its unions have apparently been stalled, prompting editor Guy Crevier to send out a letter to employees, which lays out some of the employer's offer. They have withdrawn their demand for salary cuts, but are still demanding a five-day work week, laying off 48 people in distribution, and moving from a defined-benefit pension plan to a defined-contribution plan for new employees.

The unions responded with a letter of their own, saying they have accepted the principal demand of moving to a five-day work week but that the employer is refusing to negotiate on compromises. They say they will ask for a conciliator to be brought in.

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• Metro Montreal still talks about being #1 on the island of Montreal. That's true, barely, but if you include readership off the island, it falls to #3 behind the Journal de Montréal and La Presse. And that's not even counting the fact that Metro is a free newspaper.
• Metro Edmonton talks about "increasing popularity", but leaves out the fact that its readership numbers are still less than half of the Edmonton Sun and less than a third of the Edmonton Journal.
• The Calgary Herald talks about huge gains, and compares its numbers to the Calgary Sun - which of course is the only other major paid newspaper in the city.
• The Toronto Star, still the most-read newspaper in Canada, of course has a lot to gloat about. And it does in spades.

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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Within minutes, the email was forwarded to other news outlets all over the place (including Fagstein), the first news stories appeared within two hours, and the union quickly organized a press conference to respond.

Stories with the basic facts are all over the place:

• Rue Frontenac, which has a copy of the email
• Argent, which has a whole package of stories on the subject
• CBC
• The Gazette
• CTV Montreal
• Journal de Québec
• Le Devoir
• Canadian Press
• Reuters
• Bloomberg
• Agence France-Presse
• Associated Press
• CJAD
• UPI
• InfoPresse
• Projet J
• Voir
• Marketing Magazine
• Le Monde

and, of course, La Presse itself.

The big question now becomes: Is this a bluff? There are reasons to think it might be, and reasons to think it might not.

It's a bluff

• They're going to shut down a newspaper just before the Christmas advertising season, when newspapers are the most lucrative?
• Aside from shutting down the Sunday edition, La Presse hasn't made very serious efforts to reduce costs. It still has things like foreign bureaus that newspapers twice its size would consider luxuries. Normally newspaper shutdowns follow years of cutbacks of increasing severity.
• This is a union negotiation tactic - and employers tend to exaggerate the dangers ahead when they're in negotiations for a new contract.
• La Presse and Cyberpresse are vital to other newspapers in the Gesca chain. Shutting them down would do huge damage to those papers as well.
• Flagship papers like La Presse (and the National Post and Journal de Montréal) tend to have sentimental support from big media owners, even when they're losing money.
• The political fallout from such a decision would be enormous, especially in an environment like Quebec.

It's not a bluff

• Advertisers get really scared at stuff like this. They probably won't buy ads for after Dec. 1 until they know the paper is still going to be around (and there won't be a lockout).
• Management has agreed to have a third party look at the paper's financial situation, which will no doubt confirm that it's losing money hand over fist.
• Gesca isn't stupid enough to try a bluff like this without following through.

Right now my gut feeling suggests that "it's a bluff" is more likely.

But it's not my job that's on the line.

UPDATE: Patrick Lagacé doesn't know what's going on (just like I don't know what's going on at Canwest - being an employee of a media outlet gets you some inside information, but only on the small scale). Talks are on behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, locked-out Journal de Montréal workers (remember them?) are calling for Quebecor to release the Journal's financial information like La Presse is doing.

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This previously-announced decision is part of that $26 million in budget cuts that also resulted in the cancellation of the Sunday edition.

Before: Aug. 10

After: Aug. 11

It comes about six months after The Gazette also reduced its width by an inch in a bid to save money. Like The Gazette, La Presse has redesigned certain page elements to accommodate the smaller size (but isn't altering the size of its body type).

Philippe Cantin explained the decision in a brief note to readers on Page A4:

From La Presse, Aug. 11, Page A4

Various other media reporting on La Presse's change note that it's now the same width (though obviously not the same height) as the Journal de Montréal.

More coverage:

• Infopresse
• Argent
• Les Affaires (Presse Canadienne)

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I will highlight one rejected complaint though:

• Paul Chablo (SPVM) v. Radio-Canada: Chablo, who acts as a media representative for the Montreal police, complained that an Enquête report on Fredy Villanueva was unfair to the officers involved, used young photos of Villanueva to mislead viewers into thinking he was younger than he actually was when he was killed, and showed the faces and names of the two officers involved as if they were criminals. The Council rejected all of these complaints. ProjetJ also looks at this.

Among the complaints they upheld:

• Dimitri Roussopoulos v. La Presse: Roussopoulos wrote a letter to La Presse to refute another letter that had factual errors concerning the Plateau's participatory budget process. His letter was not published, and after months of delays (and pestering), he was eventually told it would never be published. The Council agreed that since there were factual errors in the letter that were not corrected, Roussopoulos had a right of reply that was denied to him.
• Matthew Trowell v. The Suburban: Trowell complained about The Suburban's biased views on anti-Israeli protesters, specifically a cover article from editor Beryl Wajsman which called them "purveyors of hate" after they took to the streets to denounce Israeli military action in Gaza. It also complained about articles in the next week's issue from Wajsman, Joel Goldenberg and P.A. Sevigny that painted all Palestinians as child-killers and Jew-haters. The Council, taking pains to note that it isn't taking a stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, upheld a complaint against Wajsman and Sevigny for having exaggerated in their pieces, pretending that the protest was made up mostly or exclusively of Hamas supporters. But it ruled that the Suburban did not incite violence, that quoting a rabbi who was in turn quoting inflamatory things at a public gathering was not inappropriate, and that an editorial cartoon in the paper did not cross the line.
• Front commun des personnes assistées sociales du Québec v. Sylvain Bouchard and CJMF: Bouchard said on his radio show that people living on social assistance in Quebec were "quêteux" that get free food and lodging from the government (this, during a discussion about whether such people should be denied the right to vote). The Council ruled that Bouchard was disrespectful, prejudicial and discriminatory toward those on social assistance with his comments. This item got a brief in Le Devoir.

The Council has also rejected an appeal from The Gazette concerning a ruling it had made about the paper's coverage of the Bouchard-Taylor reasonable accommodation report. Though the Council rejected most of the complaints against The Gazette (whose reporter Jeff Heinrich broke the news of the report's final draft), it upheld one that the paper was misleading about the importance of certain parts of the report's findings.

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"Bienvenue aux lecteurs du dimanche" reads the Gazette

Well that's it. There's no La Presse today, and there won't be any next Sunday, or the Sunday after that.

The painful decision to cut out the most expendable of the seven daily editions, made last month, has finally seen its effect. Except for a blog post from Chantal Guy, there isn't much mention of it today, probably because everything has already been said.

I'll note a couple of things though, both involving my newspaper. First is that today's cover has a note which I'm sure some old lady in the West Island will ask to have translated for her, welcoming former La Presse readers who are so desperate for a paper to read on Sunday that they'll grab the anglo rag. There's no article inside or anything, just the banner.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time a newspaper has tried to move in on the Sunday market left empty by another:

The other is a notice in yesterday's paper that warns readers in some far-away areas that the delivery of their Sunday paper will be delayed because The Gazette subcontracted delivery in those areas to La Presse and now there's no one to bring their newspapers to them. It's one of those little secrets of newspapers that often the same person will deliver competing papers to an area (especially when there are few readers in that area, as one would expect for Trois Rivières and Sorel). La Presse's cancellation of its Sunday edition was sudden and caught my paper a bit flat-footed.

UPDATE:

... and again the next week

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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.

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The Gazette won in the sports category for a column by Red Fisher on the retirement of Patrick Roy's No. 33 jersey, specifically his unpopular opinion that it shouldn't be retired. It was also nominated for a short feature by city hall reporter Linda Gyulai on traffic cones.

La Presse's André Pratte won again in the editorials category, and Julien Chung and Philippe Tardif won in the presentation category, where the paper was nominated twice. La Presse had eight nominations total.

So let the bragging begin:

• Globe wins six National Newspaper Awards
• Star wins four NNA awards
• Spectator wins two national awards
• Gazette's Red Fisher scores 3rd National Newspaper Award
• Free Press photographer wins National Newspaper Award
• Canwest journalists honoured at National Newspaper Awards

The Winnipeg Free Press was the only newspaper with multiple nominations (two) to be shut out of the winners category. Their story makes it clear they were hoping for something more.

And the winners are...

Since the National Newspaper Award website list of winners doesn't include links, I've copied my list below from my post about the nominations. Winners are listed first and bolded.

Winners in the cartooning and photography categories are posted on the NNA website.

Multimedia feature

• Globe and Mail: Talking to the Taliban
• La Presse: Podcast Boulevard Saint-Laurent (I talked about this in September)
• Ottawa Citizen: 70 years of Superman

News feature photography

• Lucas Oleniuk, Toronto Star
• Bernard Brault, La Presse
• Chris Wattie, Reuters

Beat reporting

• Michelle Lang, Calgary Herald: health and medicine
• Rob Shaw, Victoria Times-Colonist: policing issues (see "More on this story")
• Jane Sims, London Free Press: justice

Explanatory work

• Carolyn Abraham, Globe and Mail: 'We had to hide the knives' (bipolar disorder in children)
• Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe and Mail: The vitamin D miracle: Is it for real? (subcriber-locked)
• Catherine Porter, Toronto Star: Coal mining ravages Appalachia mountains

Politics

• Steve Rennie, Canadian Press (listeriosis)
• Linda Diebel, Toronto Star (insider stories)
• Jeffrey Simpson & Brian Laghi, Globe and Mail (Prime Minister Stephen Harper)

Short features

• Kenneth Kidd, Toronto Star: Oasis amid skyscrapers has a magic of its own
• Fabienne Couturier, La Presse: 48 heures à Bruges
• Linda Gyulai, The Gazette: Quebecers' invention rules the road

Local reporting

• Monte Sonnenberg, Simcoe Reformer: Ontario Home Owner Employee Relocation plan
• Gordon Hoekstra, Prince George Citizen: forestry industry in B.C.
• North Bay Nugget: E-coli outbreak

Presentation

• Julien Chung, Philippe Tardif, La Presse
• France Dupont, La Presse
• Catherine Farley & Sharis Shahmiryan, Toronto Star

Special project

• Globe and Mail: Breakdown: Canada's mental health crisis
• Hamilton Spectator: A Pig's Tale (rest of the series is not online)
• Toronto Star: Crime and Punishment

Sports photography

• Derek Ruttan, London Free Press: Football fumble (second photo)
• Tony Bock, Toronto Star
• J. T. McVeigh, Barrie Examiner

Business

• Sinclair Stewart & Paul Waddie, Globe and Mail: How it all began (the sub-prime mortgage crisis)
• Sophie Cousineau, La Presse: Du désespoir à l'espoir à Lebel-sur-Quévillon
• The (Waterloo) Record: Pigeons for profit

Columns

• Christopher Hume, Toronto Star
• Eric Reguly, Globe and Mail
• Doug Speirs, Winnipeg Free Press

Investigations

• David Bruser & Moira Welsh & Andrew Bailey, Toronto Star: When companies get rewarded for mistakes
• Sue Bailey & Jim Bronskill, Canadian Press (with CBC): increasing use of tasers by police forces
• David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen: The downing of Tusker 914

Arts and entertainment

• Jennifer Wells, Globe and Mail: Meet Mother Corp.'s daddy dearest
• Marty Klinkenberg, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal: The art of war
• Elizabeth Withey, Edmonton Journal: three stories

Sports

• Red Fisher, The Gazette: No. 33 not fit to be retired
• Steve Milton, Hamilton Spectator: Blood on the ice
• Randy Turner, Winnipeg Free Press: The killing field

Feature photography

• Ian Martens, Lethbridge Herald: Moonlit wedding photo
• John Lehmann, Globe and Mail: Naked bowling (See also video: Buck naked and looking to score)
• Steve Russell, Toronto Star: Reflected balloons

International reporting

• Graeme Smith, Globe and Mail: Talking to the Taliban
• Stephanie Nolen, Globe and Mail: Kenya's disputed elections (Stories including Into the valley of death)
• Michèle Ouimet. La Presse: La mèche dans la poudrière (Pakistan)

Editorials

• André Pratte, La Presse
• Phil Tank, Brantford Expositor
• John Geiger & Adam Radwanski & Edward Greenspon, Globe and Mail

Editorial cartooning

• Cameron Cardow, Ottawa Citizen
• Brian Gable, Globe and Mail
• John B. Larter, Calgary Herald

Long feature

• Jon Wells, Hamilton Spectator: Deadly encounter: The Art Rozendal story
• Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen: The dream grifter
• Denise Ryan, Vancouver Sun: The fantastic voyage of a West Coast warrior

News photography

• Dave Abel, Toronto Sun: Robbery takedown
• Dan Janisse, Windsor Star: Car rescue (2nd photo)
• Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald: "My son"

Breaking news

• Hamilton Spectator: C difficile outbreaks in Ontario
• Calgary Herald: Lall family murders
• Chris Morris, Canadian Press: New Brunswick van crash

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The gag order is only valid while the talks (which are supposed to be confidential anyway) are ongoing.

Monday in La Presse, Yves Boisvert says that reporting things that are supposed to be confidential is the entire point of investigative journalism. The Globe and Mail makes a similar point.

I don't know how important it is to know the status of settlement negotiations, but I also don't agree that either the federal government or a company that broke the law has any right to privacy in these negotiations, especially if one side (almost certainly in the government) has leaked that information to the media.

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La Presse "sur mon ordi" with NewspaperDirect

La Presse is promoting its new electronic edition "La Presse sur mon ordi", which uses NewspaperDirect, the same service that's being used by The Gazette, Sun Media and others.

For people who want a newspaper subscription but don't want the hassle of recycling newspapers, want it a bit cheaper, like the computer bells and whistles and don't mind reading on the screen, this format is a nice option at only $10 a month (about half the price of a print subscription, consistent with other papers).

One thing that's different about La Presse's approach is that it wants to charge existing print subscribers $2 a month for access to the electronic version. It's a small amount, but I imagine reaction being something along the lines of "you want me to pay for something I've already paid for?" (except, you know, they'd probably say it in French).

They're offering a free 14-day trial for those who want to try it out.

(via ProjetJ)

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Both the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail cherry-picked results to declare victory. The Star has more print readers on a daily, Saturday and weekly basis, but the Globe has more online readers and a higher total readership of both online and print (the Globe also says it won "key" demographics and implies that its readers are smarter). Other newspapers trumpeted their gains, especially the Calgary Herald, whose readership jumped 7% over last year,

In Montreal, the Journal de Montréal is still the undisputed print leader, with 578,800 having read it "yesterday" and 1,129,600 in the last week, 40% more than second-place La Presse (even throwing in Cyberpresse readers, against the Journal's lack of a website, the paper still comes up short). Note that this is all before the lockout.

For those who care about comparing competing papers, there's not much new here. The market percentages are almost identical to last year. A slight uptick in online readers for Cyberpresse, but only from 9% to 11% of the market.

In terms of raw numbers:

• The Journal de Montréal lost about 3% of its weekday and Sunday readers.
• La Presse lost about 30,000 weekly print readers but gained about 26,000 weekly online readers.
• The Gazette (my paper) gained modestly in all categories, but online growth is robust, rising 11% since it relaunched its website last fall. In the Greater Montreal Area, it rose 31%. (Still, most of the website's traffic comes from outside Quebec, an oddity among Canwest's papers)
• Metro lost almost 5% of its weekly readers, and though it gained almost 20% online, its web readership is still negligible.
• 24 Heures gained 2.4% in weekly readers (perhaps partially at Metro's expense). Its online numbers are similarly negligible.

In general, 49% of Montrealers 18 and over read a newspaper on the average weekday, 74% read at least one a week, and 76% read a newspaper or go to a newspaper's website in a week (which means a tiny number - 4% nationally - go to newspaper websites but don't subscribe). Freebie newspaper readership is at 24% here, with 717,000 people having read either Metro or 24 Heures in the past five weekdays.

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