Pop-up box that comes up when you hit the Gazette's metered paywall

Publisher Alan Allnutt announced in Wednesday's paper that The Gazette is moving back to a paid model for its website.

Based on a similar move by the New York Times earlier this year, montrealgazette.com will have a metered paywall, which allows a certain number of free articles a month and then charges for access beyond that. The model is designed to get heavy users to pay for content while not discouraging occasional readers who might reach an article through a Google search or a blog link.

The system, which is managed by Press+ and expected to be running by the end of the day, will allow 20 free articles a month, then charge $6.95 a month (or $69.95 a year) for access. This compares to $26.19/month for six-day print delivery or $9.95/month for the Digital Edition.

Print subscribers will, once they register, have unlimited access to online content.

The meter will only apply to "premium" content from The Gazette and Postmedia News, including photo galleries and videos. "Major" breaking news stories, blogs and content on affiliated websites like Hockey Inside/Out and West Island Gazette Plus won't be subject to the meter. It's unclear whether other wire copy (Reuters, AFP, etc.) will apply. Wire stories, including those from Postmedia News, Reuters and Agence France-Presse, will count toward the meter, even though many of those are freely available elsewhere.

Users of the iPad app will not be metered. Nor will mobile users.

"A great deal has been written about the economics of publishing newspapers in 2011," Allnutt writes. "The 'old' model - selling newsprint products very cheaply to readers and selling the audience to advertisers for the majority of income - is increasingly challenged. Simply transferring advertisers from print to online may not work for all. In order to continue our investment in the quality and depth of our award-winning journalism and offer you the features and functions you want from our website, we believe we have to find new sources of revenue."

Once upon a time, The Gazette used to charge for online access, under a model similar to what Le Devoir uses today: Some articles free, but most completely locked down behind a paywall, with only the first paragraph available to non-subscribers. Like the Times, The Gazette abandoned this model with the hope that increased advertising revenue would be more profitable than the subscriber revenue that comes out of the paywall.

The big question, of course, is whether or not this will work. The Times got 100,000 subscribers in its first month (most of those at 99 cents for four weeks), but its model isn't universally loved, and it has been criticized as being too loose and having too many loopholes. More importantly, there are still plenty of free sources of local, national and international news online, so paid sites need a significant amount of original content that can't be found elsewhere. People aren't going to pay for stories about highway crashes, politics and press releases they can get from six different sources.

There's also the added difficulty that, as part of the Postmedia Network, The Gazette shares content with websites of other newspapers, and those newspapers share content with it. Charging for a Gazette article will be pointless if it can be found unmetered on ottawacitizen.com. The Victoria Times-Colonist is also moving to a metered system (one that charges print subscribers as well), but other Postmedia websites are not. Postmedia is waiting to see how The Gazette and the Times-Colonist fare.

Of course, as much as I'm a fan of an open Internet and getting things for free, being a Gazette employee I stand to benefit indirectly if this results in a lot of new revenue. So subscribe away!

A page of frequently asked questions has been posted, and subscriptions are being taken.

UPDATE: Some early reaction from Twitter. As you can imagine a lot of it is negative (or at least sarcastic):

• trelayne: #Montreal Gazette going to "meter" your access to 10 views/month, then U pay! cooky-clueless readers R screwed
• justinCgio: Without debate @mtlgazette moves to a "metered" model. $6.95 per month after free 20 articles. #media #nevergoingtopay
• ArcadiaMachine: I guess I'll be reading Cyberpresse a lot more from now on.
• MsWendyKH: Check it: @MtlGazette adopts French literacy program!
• jacobserebrin: The Gazette is setting up a paywall. Why? Gaz has little pull, isn't the NY Times. Other Postmedia sites still giving away same content.
• codejill: I could imagine paying that for a coalition of papers, but not for the gazette all by itself...
• NathalieCollard: Ouf! Bonne chance!
• conradbuck: So they'll start writing premium content?
• justinCgio: In a job interview with @mtlgazette I brought up how the #RSS feeds were broken and how the web wasn't live enough. Now you want me to pay?
• ALundyGlobal: Interested to see results in a few months
• Sita311: #lame I'd put up with advertisement if would remain free.
• Andrew_MTL: great, that's a simple delete from my bookmarks. PLENTY of credible news resources for free. You going to charge for tweets too?
• ikenney: Goodbye Montreal Gazette. I won't be reading you anymore!!
• montrealmarc: People respect the truth. You should just admit that you need the money, not that u r following NY Times business model.
• tomhawthorn: What will readers do to get around paywall? Whatever it takes. Or they will go elsewhere. They will not pay.
• noahtron: the #paywall put up by @mtlgazette will certainly help increase readership... just cuz it works for @nytimes doesn't mean it works for you!
• AVassiliou: We have to pay for @mtlgazette on-line now?? #hugefail Fortunately, plenty of free news sites remain. Times must be tough for @mtlgazette
• finnertymike: Re Montreal Gazette paywall: current online offer not wow, plus @Cyberpresse outstanding and free. Subscriber interest likely tiny methinks
• finnertymike: Re MTL Gazette paywall 2: Need an online strategy beyond "Ok, pay now": must-read voices? multimedia/graphics? liveblogs? pizazz?
• delmarhasissues: Hilarious that The Gazette cites The NY Times when justifying charging for online content. I'll pay for The Times. YOU'RE NOT THE TIMES!
• jfmezei: Unless all Postmedia papers lock down, people will just go to other postmedia sites to get the exact same news.
• montrealmarc: All the big newspapers need to meet like the heads of the 5 families in "The Godfather" & make a group agreement to all go metered
• furry_princess: There's a reason I stopped subscribing to the Gazoo back in 2002. #tabloidfluff
• JulienMcEvoy: Voir une annonce «The Gazette cherche un(e) directeur(trice) du marketing» le jour où ils annoncent leur paywall, c'est comme ironique.
• Milnoc: The Gazette already lost me as a reader years ago @finnertymike. What makes them think a paywall will encourage me to come back? Sheesh!
• aranr: The Gazette's paywall scheme is so misguided. I'd pay to read their HockeyInsideOut mini-site but not the paper itself. #montreal
• cdiraddo: So now that @mtlgazette has started to meter their site, it means I will no longer link to them in fear that they may ask my visitors to pay
• jesspatterson: how else are they to pay their costs? gotta come from somewhere.
• spafax_arjun: If the Montreal Gazette wants people to pay for the content online it needs to step up its game by 2000%

The comments on the story on The Gazette's website are even worse (and less grammatically correct), as are those on the Times-Colonist story. There's also some reaction on The Gazette's Facebook page.

Other coverage from:

• The Globe and Mail
• The CBC (Comments there are similarly not very nice)
• Presse canadienne
• Canadian Press
• Global Montreal
• Financial Post
• Métro
• J-Source

UPDATE (May 26): Postmedia boss Paul Godfrey was on Toronto's Metro Morning to explain the paywall deal. Summarized by J-Source.

Related Posts

• I hope Jennifer said yes
• O, I C
• We’re Number 2.7!
• Dimanche vide
• Another newspaper doesn’t like Mondays

Rue Frontenac has been publishing weekly since October

Citing an unsustainable business model that was based on advertising revenue that never materialized, Rue Frontenac coordinator Richard Bousquet announced on Wednesday that the publication of formerly-locked-out Journal de Montréal workers will no longer be publishing a weekly printed edition.

Rue Frontenac has published weekly on Thursdays since October. Small, squarish, with all its pages in full-colour and very little advertising.

When I talked to Bousquet in January on the anniversary of the lockout, he said that advertising was starting to pick up, and that the big problem was that so many marketing companies plan advertising campaigns months in advance, that they want the stability of a paper they know will last that long. Bousquet mentions in his piece that large companies and even governments prefer to deal with ad placement agencies for the sake of simplification, and that made it difficult for Rue Frontenac.

Though it was played down at the time, there was also the nervousness from some businesses about antagonizing the Journal de Montréal, something that was expected to end when the lockout was ended with Quebecor apparently blessing the continuation of the newspaper and website.

In the end, though, I think the biggest problem goes to the larger problem of Rue Frontenac's business model. Not only do they have far more journalists than they can afford, but they're trying to squeeze into the most overserved market in Canada: Francophone Montrealers. They're fighting against five daily newspapers, including two free ones that are handed out every weekday morning outside metro stations. Rue Frontenac, meanwhile, is distributed like an alternative weekly, with distribution points in bars, supermarkets, restaurants and random places where the papers can easily be forgotten or missed among the dozens of others vying for attention.

So now Rue Frontenac will focus its efforts on its website. Bousquet notes that it's growing in popularity - if not so much in advertising revenue - and there are no plans to end that part of the project.

But part of the idea behind a printed edition of Rue Frontenac was to provide enough revenue to at least partially subsidize the work of journalists who report online.

Now they'll have to find some other way to make money. Even though the lockout ended more than two months ago, Bousquet and his team are still trying to figure out a viable business model.

If I can offer one piece of advice, the most important move they will make in that direction will be finding a niche audience that is willing to give them a lot of attention or a decent amount of money. Billing itself as a generalist news publication that's just better journalism than the Journal de Montréal isn't going to work in a market that has Le Devoir, La Presse, Radio-Canada and others.

Related Posts

• Rue Frontenac is dead
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Gesca to buy Rue Frontenac
• The future of Rue Frontenac
• Journal de Montréal Lockout Anniversary 2: The Boring Sequel

Page G4 of Saturday's Gazette

I also hope there aren't any other Adams and Jennifers out there who are in the process of having an awkward and confusing conversation.

UPDATE (Oct. 15): She did say yes.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• O, I C
• We’re Number 2.7!
• Dimanche vide
• Newspapers think newspapers have bright future ahead

• Halifax: Metro has a 20% increase in daily readership.
• Montreal: The Journal has had "spectacular" growth, with 58% more readers than its closest competitor La Presse and 64% market share.
• Ottawa: The Sun's readership has "skyrocketed", with Saturday readership up 43%. Metro's readership is up 22%.
• Toronto: The Sun is "the fastest growing paid English language daily newspaper in Canada", with 19.5% growth since the last full survey, far outgrowing its competition. The Star, meanwhile, clobbers its competition by a factor of more than 2:1 in readership, reaching more than half of the GTA's adult population.
• Edmonton: The Journal's online readership has jumped 21 per cent since the last survey, and weekday print readership has shown "stability." Metro has gained momentum with the second-highest growth increase.
• Calgary: Metro is the fastest-growing daily newspaper in Canada.
• Vancouver: The Sun's online readership jumped 19 per cent in the past year. Metro has a lot of "traction" in its key demographic.

Of course, it's all about selective cherrypicking of numbers:

• Readership numbers down but you're still No. 1? Don't talk about growth, and concentrate on how X% of the market is choosing you
• Still far behind the big players in a market? Talk about how fast you're growing, and leave out how your competitor still has twice as many readers.
• Print readership numbers suck? Point to the online numbers. Compare those to 2007 if necessary.
• Numbers stagnant? Talk about "stability" and imply you're ahead of the curve that is quickly leading to the extinction of newspapers.
• Still nothing? Focus on some key demographic - young adults are the best - to show how the cool people choose your product.
• Little exciting news about your paper? Focus on the national scene and what the numbers show nationwide for online vs. print readership.

Montreal numbers

Infopresse has the numbers for Montreal (PDF) as part of its analysis. Here they are compared to last year at this time, using five-day cumulative numbers:

Of note here:

• The Journal de Montréal continues to gain readers despite its lockout. This is being explained as more papers being given away free or cheap (this survey measures audience, not subscribers or subscription revenue).
• Métro has replaced La Presse as the No. 2 paper on weekdays. When you consider on-island readership (this survey covers the entire region), the difference is even greater.
• Online readership is mostly stable for all five (down slightly for The Gazette/La Presse, up slightly for the rest). La Presse kills in this category, with 330,300 weekly readers, more than twice that of the Journal and The Gazette. In fact, it's slightly more than all the other four combined.

Related Posts

• Canadian newspaper readership stable
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• O, I C

A Cmore tag on A2 of Tuesday's Gazette

Gazette publisher and editor-in-chief Alan Allnutt introduced a new feature in today's paper: articles are being outfitted with little boxes containing keywords, which when texted to a special short code sends an email with a link to the article (and any online extras attached to it).

It's a three-month pilot project being tested by The Gazette and the Calgary Herald. The technology side is handled by Montreal-based Cmore Media (not to be confused with C-More Systems, which makes gun sights).

The idea is similar to the one that has led to 2D barcodes appearing in newspapers such as the National Post: It's a way to bridge the gap between the non-electronic physical newspaper and the endless possibilities of Internet communication. People who want to get online-only extras related to a story or who want to share the URL with friends online have to go to the newspaper's website and search for the story. This is inconvenient, so these tags are designed to make it automatic, taking advantage of the fact that people carry cellphones with them wherever they go.

But while Scanlife, the system used by the Post, requires a mobile device to have a camera and a special application, the Cmore system requires only the ability to send a text message (and the patience to do so).

Here's how it works:

1. Send a text message as instructed. For this test case, I used the one next to an article on Joannie Rochette being on the Time 100 poll. The keyword is "ROCHETTE123" (capitalization isn't important) and the shortcode to send it to is 11-2-11. ("123" is one of the codes to identify to Cmore that the keyword belongs to The Gazette, so each keyword will end with 123 on weekdays, or 124 on Saturdays or 125 on Sundays).

2. Almost instantaneously, you get a reply text message asking to send your email address:

To get your info, reply to this message with your email address.

Standard rates apply. For help email help@cmoremedia.com

3. Reply with your email address.

4. Cmore sends an email to the address you've entered:

Hi [first part of email],

Thanks for signing up for CMORE, the free service that delivers shortcuts to more content online. You have successfully activated your free account. You may log in at your convenience at http://www.cmoremedia.com.

Username: [email address]
Your temporary password is the mobile phone number you used to text your request to CMORE. You may change your password once you have logged in.

All the shortcuts you request using the CMORE service will be emailed to you at the address you provided and also stored in your personal MY CMORE profile. You may reset your password, edit your CMORE profile and view and manage your shortcuts at http://www.cmoremedia.com. Please remember to add CMORE to your email white list so your requested shortcuts do not end up in your spam folder.

To learn more about CMORE or to get help please visit www.cmoremedia.com/FAQ/

Thank you for using CMORE. The Internet. Delivered.

5. Another email contains what you were looking for:

Hi [first part of email],You have requested more information on Rochette ranks in TIME's top 100 from The Gazette.

To save or share please click here

Special offers from The Gazette:

Sign up for The Gazette's Food&Wine newsletter stuffed with restaurant reviews, cooking tips, dinner recipes, wine Q&A and more

Join Gazette E-Offers for access to retail discounts and savings, pre-sale tickets for shows, exclusive contests, fabulous prizes and more!

To manage all your CMORE links, click here.

For further messages, steps 2-4 are skipped.

The service is free, unless your mobile carrier forces you to pay for text messages (or, I guess, your Internet provider charges you for emails).

Not only is this being attached to news stories, but advertisers can also use the service to communicate with print readers. And the emails themselves can contain advertisements, as you can see above.

So, will it work?

I'm kind of a skeptic when it comes to these kinds of gimmicks. On paper, they sound fantastic. Apparently they're all the rage across the Atlantic and Pacific. They're a way to track people's behaviour. They connect the online with the print. And they're a fantastic idea for advertisers, a way to facilitate communication as a result of a newspaper ad.

But in practice, they're an extra mile most people will choose not to go. In my case, for example, I read the paper on the metro on the way to work, where there's no mobile service for the most part and I can't send a text message. Many of the Gazette's readers are older people who either don't have cellphones or don't know how to send text messages (and don't want to learn). And, of course, many people just won't be interested in reading more about a story than has appeared in the paper. And if they want to share the story with friends, a 10-second Google News search is faster than fumbling with the phone to send a text message. (Sending these messages is difficult for me because the 1 key doubles as the everything-punctuation key, forcing a lot of scrolling.)

Even if it doesn't work, it's a three-month test, so there's no harm done.

What are your predictions? Will it take off, or will it die out from disuse?

See also: Coverage of this in Marketing Magazine and by Nathalie Collard in La Presse.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• We’re Number 2.7!
• Dimanche vide
• Newspapers think newspapers have bright future ahead

It's a cute little video from Search Engine's Jesse Brown, making a point about how newspapers aren't all that. And his arguments are valid - there are a lot of ads, wire service stories, opinions, comics, games and other not-original-news in your local newspaper.

But what bothered me was the implied conclusion: Newspapers are so full of not-news that they don't deserve to be saved. They should be left to die, because they're worthless.

This, while he's holding up a copy of the Toronto Star.

Now the part where I relate this to television somehow

I was watching an episode of The West Wing last night (on that Rogers On Demand Online thing - it's the only thing I find worth watching on it). It was from the beginning of the second season, when we're introduced to a character named Ainsley Hayes (played by Emily Procter before she was seduced by David Caruso putting on his sunglasses and saying cheesy puns). Hayes is a conservative Republican, but she's hired by the Democratic White House because she's smart.

After visiting the White House, she has dinner with friends, who call the people at the White House names, prompting Hayes to tell them to stop:

Don't say that.

Say they're smug and superior.

Say their approach to public policy makes you want to tear your hair out.

Say they like high taxes and spending your money.

Say they want to take your guns and open your borders.

But don't call them worthless.

At least don't do it in front of me.

I felt a bit like Hayes watching that Jesse Brown video. And it wasn't the first time.

We're not better than them

I've read people who write that The Gazette is useless, that it provides little journalism of interest, that all the news in it can be gotten for free from TV, radio and the Internet, that blogs (including my own) provide more local news than The Gazette does.

But those blogs and those TV and radio stations get a lot of their news from the newspaper. How often does a story appear in The Gazette and then get featured on the local evening newscast on TV, more than 24 hours after the story was written by a Gazette journalist? How much original reporting is done on CJAD versus stories just read from the newspaper, whether it's The Gazette, La Presse, Le Devoir, the Journal de Montréal (or its locked-out workers at Rue Frontenac), The Suburban or Metro?

Kate McDonnell's Montreal City Weblog is cited as another source of news by people who seem to forget that it consists entirely of links to local news sites, most of which are local newspapers. Aggregation is an important job (I do a lot of it myself), but it's pointless without the sources.

I'm not better than them either

When a blogger wrote recently that "Fagstein’s blog, most of the time, has more news on the city of Montreal on a regular basis", I called him on it, listing the articles that were in that day's paper produced by local journalists.

It's not that I don't put a lot of effort into this blog, or that I'm not proud of its contents (most of the time), but I don't for a second think that it could replace the work of dozens of professional journalists working at a major newspaper, nor do I think it should. After all, I'm only one man, doing this as a hobby.

Two weeks ago The Gazette let me go, a move described as "stupid" by some of my defenders. And I'm not the only thing they've cut back on over the past few years - copy editors, secretarial and support staff, the size of the paper (both in width and number of pages), syndicated services like comics and crosswords (one of the bigger reader complaints is that The Gazette now has only two crossword puzzles on Saturdays instead of three). But even through those cutbacks, they've done their best to preserve their core block of employees - reporters.

Even after all that, it's still my primary source for local news.

If you don't believe me, I'll repeat that experiment I did for that blogger and list the original stories that appeared in today's Gazette:

• A1: "Relief effort disorganized, Red Cross says" by Michelle Lalonde
• A3: "If you marry out, you move out" by Cheryl Cornacchia (with sidebar)
• A4: "Bodies if missing men recovered" by Catherine Solyom
• A4: "Man who killed nun to be set free soon" by Paul Cherry
• A4: "Private clinic's negligence killed patient: coroner" by Charlie Fidelman (with sidebar)
• A6: "Infrastructure work on back burner" by Aaron Derfel and Linda Gyulai (with infographic)
• A6: "Region's mayors offer their 2 cents' worth: a gas tax to fund transit" by James Mennie
• A8: "Lieutenant-governor pushed to explain spending" by Kevin Dougherty (in Quebec)
• A8: "Education minister defends change to school calendar" by Kevin Dougherty (in Quebec)
• A9: "Three killers jailed for 12 years" by Paul Cherry
• A10: "U.S. envoy backs fast rail" by Hubert Bauch
• B1: "STM given 'stupid, false advice'" by François Shalom
• B1: "Gildan seeks Asian production base" by Robert Gibbens
• B3: "Avensys, 3S Photonics merging" by Mike King
• B3: "Retailers' outlook rosier" by Mike King
• B7: "Plek finishes off pesky Caps" by Pat Hickey
• B8: "Younger Kostitsyn shows how it's done" by Pat Hickey
• B9: "Sculptor Baines chisels own specialized gym" by David Yates
• C1: "In the groove of maturity" by Mark Lepage
• C5: "Composer was distinguished by traditionalism" by Arthur Kaptainis
• C7: "Lots of love still to give" by David Johnston

These are all original stories written by Gazette writers for one day's paper. And this list doesn't include columns by Peggy Curran, Henry Aubin, Don Macpherson, Jay Bryan, Bryan Demchinsky, Mitch Joel, Red Fisher, Pat Hickey, Stephanie Myles, Bill Brownstein, Doug Camilli, Rochelle Lash. It doesn't include a handful of original music reviews, two editorials, nine letters to the editor, and unsigned local news briefs. It doesn't include photos from six Gazette photographers (not including file photos). And it doesn't include blog posts and other content exclusive to the website.

Some balance, please

I'm not saying newspapers should be immune to criticism (I do a lot of it right here), or that all newspapers provide quality journalism and deserve special status (some are almost completely useless - including, unfortunately, some of Transcontinental's community weeklies). And I'm not saying that TV, radio and blogs don't do original journalism of their own.

But criticism of newspapers has to be done keeping context in mind. Don't get lost in your own hyperbole and start saying we'd be better off without them.

To paraphrase Ainsley Hayes (badly, because I don't have Aaron Sorkin on the payroll):

Say they're smug and superior.

Say they don't understand the Internet.

Say they have a counter-productive business plan and they're contributing to their own downfall.

Say they're wasting their money propping up a medium that's only future is failure.

Say they have too many managers and not enough workers.

Say they're making a fatal mistake by not hiring geeks to come up with innovative ways of bringing quality journalism online.

Say their ad-to-content ratio is far too high and they're selling their souls with advertorials and special advertising sections.

Say they're too generalized and are leaving the specialized "long tail" to alternative sources online.

Say they have too many columnists and not enough reporters.

Say they have too many wire stories and not enough original content.

Say they have too much of yesterday's news and not enough of what's coming tomorrow.

Say they have too much he-said-she-said and not enough analysis or useful information.

Say they rely too much on press releases and don't focus enough on uncovering original information that wants to remain hidden.

Say they're too lazy and the old geezers who work there should be replaced by energetic young people with new ideas and new skills.

Say they care more about people like them than about people like you.

Say they have too much fluff, lifestyle and sports news and not enough investigative reporting about issues that matter.

Say their designers focus too much on how a story looks and not enough on whether it's conveying information in the most efficient way.

Say they're not honest with their readers and use bullshit to cover up their faults.

Say they should have fewer journalists and more editors.

Say they should have fewer editors and more journalists.

Say they're too stupid to recognize your brilliant solution to the newspaper crisis that has somehow eluded every newspaper in the world.

Say you don't think the government or the people owe anything to them and shouldn't step in to prevent them from going bankrupt when their century-old business model finally fails.

But don't call them worthless.

At least don't do it in front of me.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers
• O, I C

(From left) Arthur Holden, Jean-Guy Bouchard, Ellen David, Sheena Gazé-Deslandes and Howard Rosenstein in David Sherman's The Daily Miracle

Over the weekend, I joined a group of journalists (in fact, two distinct groups - one veteran and one up-and-coming) to see a production of the Infinitheatre play The Daily Miracle, written by former Gazette copy editor David Sherman.

I'll spare you the usual theatre review stuff, because (a) I'm not a theatre critic and (b) it's already been talked about in The Gazette (along with a feature article), La Presse, Mirror, Hour, the Suburban, the West Island Chronicle, the McGill Tribune, the Concordian, the Link, Le Quatrième and maybe some other places too.

We'd first heard about this play years ago, when Sherman left his copy editing job at The Gazette. By the time he made his leave permanent to become a playwright (and work on his first play Have a Heart for Centaur), there were rumours floating that he would use the copy desk as the basis for a production - and the editors potentially as models for his characters.

I should add here that I know Sherman - he was a copy editor when I was an intern at The Gazette, and he was one of the people who I got the most on-the-job training from.

Though I got a sneak preview at a reading a while back, the people I went with on Saturday didn't quite know what to expect from this play. Though the name of the newspaper is the Montreal Star (taken from the former newspaper of the same name - they even used the same logo on computer screens and papers on set) and its parent company is called WestPress, it's pretty clear which major newspaper the play is based on. Even some of the characters are familiar, either as composites (Gazé-Deslandes's Carrie, the pretty young desk intern) or as near-ripoffs (Jean-Guy Bouchard's Roland reminded most of my former colleagues of a particular person with a similar personality and accent).

But what's most familiar is the work. The play, staged at the Bain St-Michel (literally inside a pool that had been converted into a theatre) is set in real time, between the 10:30pm first edition deadline and the midnight final. It's a time when copy editors and other night staff get chatty (the stress of making first edition deadline having just been lifted) and start airing their grievances with the paper and the news industry, along with spreading personal gossip.

It's hard to evaluate the play objectively because I'm so familiar with what it's based on. It's the life I lived for three and a half years at The Gazette. I know the terminology, I know the stress, and I know the characters and their roles.

Still, for the benefit of those who don't work on a copy desk, I can tell you that what happens in this play is a dramatization. I for one never saw anyone come to work five hours late, pop pills like they were candy and start sexually assaulting his coworkers. But maybe it's just because I wasn't there in the old days.

One of the people who saw the play the same night as me was Thomas de Lorimier, who works as a copy editor at La Presse. He agreed that there was a lot more drama here than you'd see on a normal night (but then, that what we'd want in an entertaining play, right?) but that the elements of the characters' personalities and the way things work are what you'll find on the copy desk of a major newspaper. A line about how disasters in China need a triple-digit death count before becoming news is entirely true. Having a picture of a pop diva on the cover solely because she's famous and she performed at the Bell Centre that night is also spot on, as are the staff's reactions to the burying of (what they considered to be) real news in order to emphasize fluff.

One thing de Lorimier and I both agreed on that was missing from the play was pun-offs. That's when an editor takes a story and makes a really bad pun (like saying Haiti's "all shook up") and other editors jump in with even worse ones. It's part defence mechanism against the horrors of life they're exposed to on a daily basis, and partly a way to hone their skills as wordsmiths.

It's a skill Sherman clearly doesn't need too much help with, judging by this play.

If you're interested in getting a dramatic look at a newspaper's news desk on deadline, The Daily Miracle is a good way to spend an evening. It's on every night until Sunday, Feb. 14. Details at Infinitheatre.com

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers
• O, I C

The Gazette devotes a page a day over 10 days to the subject, looking back at both 2009 and the 2000s as a whole.

Dave Bist, a highly-respected senior news editor at The Gazette, wrote one of those year-in-retrospective stories for Sunday's paper about the Michael Jackson story, and his decision not to tear up the front page to run with it.

His reasoning was that by the morning after, everyone would have known that Jackson was dead (including readers of montrealgazette.com, where the story was played up), and because The Gazette had nothing original to offer on the story (the original plan for A1 had a Gazette exclusive, albeit a small one). So instead, Jackson took over the skybox above the Page 1 flag, as well as a large part of the Arts section inside.

It's a decision that makes sense, but wouldn't have 15 years ago before the creation of the Internet. Though I worry a bit sometimes about newspapers being so desperate to "advance" a story that they neglect to mention what actually happened for the record (like, say, "Man walks moon"). People still pick up newspapers even if they know what the story is, just to see it on paper. Barack Obama's election, the Alouettes' Grey Cup win, or the next Canadiens Stanley Cup, which should come any time now. If I pick up the paper, I want to see "Canadiens win Cup", not "RDS hurries to schedule parade coverage after NHL playoffs end early", even if the latter advances the story.

And while the print world considers what to do about their front pages, the online world is still trying to figure out how to balance so-called "top stories". Right now, the emphasis seems to be on time more than importance - big news websites are expected to change their top story on an almost hourly basis, unless the story is so important that it trumps all others. People complain when they see that the top story is about some recent traffic accident or something sports-related, but they're applying the old newspaper Page 1 logic to the Internet.

I'm still conflicted about it. This blog is strictly chronological, so an important feature might be pushed down by some funny cat video I found online a few minutes later. That clearly doesn't work for a large media organization that has so much content that nobody should be expected to read it all. But keeping the same story up for hours or even days at a time makes it boring and discourages people from coming back.

Ideally, we'd have a dual system, where you can check the top story on the homepage or see the stories posted chronologically, depending on your preference (the Toronto Star is trying something like that). And, of course, tagging, RSS feeds and topic pages means the homepage won't be the point of entry for many visitors.

So maybe this whole discussion will become irrelevant.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers
• O, I C

Lookin' good

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (the people who measure how many people subscribe to newspapers, as opposed to NADbank which measures how many people read them) has released numbers for this summer.

Media In Canada looks at the national numbers, and InfoPresse looks at Quebec. Both cite The Gazette as bucking the trend, with a 2.7% increase (it went up more than that in the spring numbers).

The National Post went down considerably (20% due mostly, I'm guessing, to their decision to not publish Mondays this summer), the Globe went down too (8%), as did Le Soleil (5%) and, just barely, La Presse and Le Devoir (less than 1%).

Sun Media, which owns the Journal de Montréal and Journal de Québec, is part of rival CCAB, and so numbers aren't available for those newspapers.

Still, a conclusion is hard not to reach here. The Gazette is the only paper with a significant circulation increase, and it is also the only paper that currently employs me.

I expect my huge bonus cheque will be waiting for me in my office mailbox this week.

Related Posts

• Gazette wins, Post loses in ABC circulation numbers
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• O, I C
• I, for one, welcome our new consortium overlords

The eight-page insert is part of the weekly paper, available for free on campus or for download in this 10MB PDF file. Or you can read the stories online.

Among the articles is this interview with some know-it-all complaining about his doomed career.

Also in this section:

• Media lawyer Mark Bantey (who also represents The Gazette in media issues) looks at SLAPPs - lawsuits of questionable merit brought against critics in an effort to silence them.
• Laura Beeston interviews Ottawa journalist Mark Bourrie and Gazette health reporter Aaron Derfel on convergence and computer-assisted reporting
• Tristin Hopper writes a first-person story about working in Whitehorse and accidentally running afowl of court publication bans.
• Terrine Friday (who was an intern at  The Gazette this summer) writes about the pros and cons of using anonymous sources.
• Jane Doe (I'm guessing that's not her real name) writes about marketers making use of social media for viral advertising.
• Christopher Olson ponders what technology is doing to print culture
• Elias Makos (who is CTV Montreal's tech correspondent) discusses Rue Frontenac's upcoming iPhone app with locked-out journalist Jean-François Codère.
• Madeline Coleman writes about music criticism in an age of oversaturation
• Tom Llewellin looks at errors in digital media and the danger they might just be scrubbed without an apology in the future, in an article that amazingly manages not to quote Craig Silverman.
• Kamila Hinkson writes about diversity in media, talking to CBC's Hugh Brodie and mentioning CFCF's diversity award last year
• Tu Thanh Ha, a reporter with the Globe and Mail and a Link alumnus, discusses what technology has changed about news gathering, and wonders whether it's for the better
• Mike Gasher, who runs Concordia's journalism department, says journalism students are still needed, the profession will survive, and please please don't shut down J-school.
• Elsa Jabre has a brief look at photojournalism
• Vivien Leung discusses western bias in foreign reporting

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• Concordia’s Link newspaper: A hypocritical lack of transparency?
• Show me your paper’s papers
• I hope Jennifer said yes

Friday's paper contained a headline noting the most important part of the story: "More in Saturday Free Press"!

Yeah. So the newspaper will, starting Oct. 31/Nov. 1, be moving some Sunday regular features (i.e. comics) to the Saturday paper, and the new Sunday tabloid (called "On7") will be newsstand-only to save on the cost of home delivery (the FP story even suggests carriers will welcome this news because they'd get to sleep in once a week).

What the story doesn't say is that seven-day subscription rates, now that they have become six-day subscription rates, won't change. On7 will be $1 or $1.25 an issue.

It's true that La Presse (Sundays) and the Victoria Times-Colonist (Mondays) have cut a day off the week, and the National Post did so temporarily this summer (Mondays). But none of those was paired with a new product that they refused to deliver to home subscribers.

As the union told the CBC: "If you are a seven-day home subscriber, you will have to go out and buy this product. I would be a little p-o'd at that."

One organization that's not pissed off is the competition, the Winnipeg Sun. Their article on the subject points out that the Sun will be the only paper with home delivery on Sundays, offers quotes from the Sun's publisher saying if they subscribe to his paper, "after a week or two I'll bet they won't miss their old paper at all", and even helpfully offers the phone number of their circulation department.

Stay classy, Sun.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers
• O, I C

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.

An interested Rue Frontenac reader on the metro

It's not clear at this point whether this is a one-off thing or whether there might be more paper editions of Rue Frontenac. The Gazette prints a roughly-monthly special section called Hockey Inside/Out which has the same concept: A tabloid section all about the Canadiens. Since advertisers love the Habs, they'll associate with just about anyone who talks about the CH.

Such disrespect for all that hard work

Among the tidbits you get from actually reading the paper is that they're working on an iPhone application to get headlines, as well as an ad for a contest to win a dinner with De Foy and Raymond.

My favourite part is that this special section is printed by World Color Press.

For those who don't know, WorldColor is better known by its former name, Quebecor World. The printer was spun off from the Quebecor empire as it emerged from bankruptcy. And the St. Jean plant where this was printed was apparently more than happy to give the finger to the company that took away its business and moved it to a plant in Mirabel.

Related Posts

• It’s over: Journal workers approve contract by 64%
• New contract proposal to Journal de Montréal workers
• Some reading on Quebec’s anti-scab law
• The future of Rue Frontenac
• Journal de Montréal lockout by the numbers

Reaction has been mixed:

• blogTO, which is a content partner with t.o.night (the paper has a page devoted to content from the blog), has a blog post with pictures of Day 1.
• Torontoist, which is blogTO's main competitor in the Toronto alt-blog scene, has a much more critical post which picks out all of t.o.night's flaws (making the blog look a bit like sour grapes in the process).
• Eye Weekly is also highly critical of t.o.night, predicting it won't last because of its many flaws (like misspelling a word on the front page).

CBC and the Doon Valley Journal have previews of the new paper.

The Bluffer's Guide this week in The Gazette looks at t.o.night and evening newspapers in general. It also debunks one of the arguments used by t.o.night's backers that this concept worked in London (England) by pointing out that the free evening daily there probably won't last another month.

Related Posts

• I can feel it coming in the air: t.o.night (UPDATED)
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• Bixi in Toronto
• I hope Jennifer said yes

t.o.night newspaper mockup from BlogTO

It's being compared to Dose because it's new, hip and aimed at a younger audience. The comparison is perhaps more apt because it's a cheap junk rag in an over-saturated market that's doomed to inevitable failure within two years.

It's called "t.o.night", it's a free, advertising-supported newspaper which will be distributed in Toronto in the fall. It will contain mostly wire copy and wire images with a minimum of local content and no original journalism, and will be handed out to transit users.

Now, you ask, how is this different from Metro or 24 Hours, which have that exact same business model (ditto for Dose)? Well, t.o.night will be an afternoon paper, and will be printed on glossy paper. Ta-Da!

The brainchild behind this newspaper launch in quite possibly the worst market for newspaper launches ever is a 24-year-old business school graduate who saw a similar thing in Melbourne, Australia, and thought it could work here.

Of course, there are differences between Melbourne and Toronto. Melbourne only has two major dailies, and no freesheet competition. Toronto is home to two major local dailies (the Star and Sun), two freesheets (Metro and 24 Hours) and two "national" newspapers that obsess about everything Toronto (the National Post and Globe and Mail). Metro, the Globe reports, has tried afternoon papers and failed for various logistical reasons.

Part of me kind of likes the idea of an afternoon paper which can set itself apart by at least having different news than the morning papers. But afternoon papers died off for good reasons, and coming out at a different time isn't going to be enough for t.o.night to separate itself from the other freesheets.

One thing that t.o.night is doing different is getting content from blogs. It has reached a "partnership" with blogTO (the sister publication of Montreal's Midnight Poutine) to use its content, similar I suppose to the deal its competitor Torontoist has with the Globe and Mail (UPDATE: Except as blogTO's Tim clarified below, that the Torontoist/Globe deal involves website links, and the blogTO deal involves actual syndication of content in the printed paper).

The hitch, of course, is that blogTO doesn't pay its contributors (UPDATE: Though it does pay its regular editorial staff). So t.o.night is trying to take the blog's idea of making money off the free work of others (oh but don't worry, they'll get a byline!) Tim says that unpaid "community contributions" won't appear in t.o.night, only the work of paid writers. He wouldn't say how much blogTO's writers are paid.

As much as I like seeing a new voice in the newspaper scene, I have to agree with Torontoist's skepticism here (even though it can't really criticize blogTO without being hypocritical): the paper will offer little of value (basically anything that breaks after the morning papers go to press and that Canadian Press can publish before 11am), and will only serve to dilute the market for advertising at a time when the other papers can least handle a drop in ad revenue.

Then again, maybe it will finally make commuters realize that a free newspaper with nothing but wire copy and advertising isn't worth even that price.

UPDATE: A quick hit from the New York Times' media blog.

Related Posts

• Can you feel the love, t.o.night?
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• Bixi in Toronto
• I hope Jennifer said yes

You'll recall that Transcontinental signed an 18-year deal with the Globe and Mail to print their newspaper last year.

UPDATE: A short piece in the New York Times that questions the point.

Related Posts

• Globe thinks colour will solve newspaper crisis
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers

"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

Related Posts

• Canadian newspaper readership stable
• Gazette begins charging for website access
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• O, I C
• We’re Number 2.7!

Ah, Montréal-Matin...

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• The return of Montréal-Matin
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers

Message from the publisher in Victoria Times-Colonist, May 9, Page A2

The Victoria Times-Colonist announced in Saturday's paper that, because of the weakened economy and the business crisis facing newspapers, the TC will stop printing on Mondays as of June 22.

That's a week before the National Post does a similar cost-cutting measure. The difference is that the TC move isn't temporary and they're not producing a smaller online-only edition, just promising to post breaking news online seven days a week.

(The TC story is closed to comments, but the Globe and Mail story about it is open.)

The Times-Colonist case is also unusual because the newspaper will still print both Saturdays and Sundays. Unlike most other Canadian newspapers, the TC has a strong Sunday paper with plenty of advertising.

I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, but the this-week-in-history column in Sunday's paper focuses on the decision of Victoria's two newspapers, the Times and Colonist, to move in together and share space, though keep their editorial matters separate. We all know how that turned out.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers
• O, I C

Let's hope this move turns out to be sustainable in the long run.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• Rue Frontenac ends paper edition
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• NADbank numbers: Journal, free dailies gain readers
• O, I C

The series is in five parts:

1. David Akin on the general state of the newspaper industry (which, in case you're wondering, does talk a bit about Canwest and its debt crisis)
2. Akin on how advertisers are best served by the print medium and by newspaper publishers
3. Akin on the difference between Canadian and U.S. newspapers (though you could just say we're a few years behind them on the death spiral)
4. Randy Boswell on how newspapers are a trustworthy medium that other media rely on
5. Kirk Lapointe with a very optimistic look at how newspapers are repositioning themselves as online destinations.

As part of the series, Canwest's newspapers were also encouraged to write about their individual histories and connections with their communities. The Gazette got young reporter Jason Magder to do a piece on the paper's connection with its community.

Other Canwest papers also wrote self-congratulatory pieces:

• Ottawa Citizen
• Regina Leader-Post
• Saskatoon StarPhoenix
• Calgary Herald
• Edmonton Journal
• Vancouver Sun
• Victoria Times-Colonist (which produced a podcast short audio piece with EIC Lucinda Chodan)

The National Post also asked its "opinion-makers" about their thoughts on newspapers:

• Conrad Black
• Michael Coren
• Father Raymond J. de Souza
• Robert Fulford
• Barbara Kay
• John Moore
• Noah Richler
• Marni Soupcoff

As if underscoring how far newspapers have to go, in neither of the three above cases could I find one page linking all these related stories together.

Finally, unrelated to any of the above, Stuart McLean writes in the Globe and Mail about why he loves newspapers.

Related Posts

• Gazette begins charging for website access
• I hope Jennifer said yes
• O, I C
• Good news for freelancers
• Congratulations, you’re an unsecured Canwest creditor