Fagstein » Toronto-Star

Outsourcing returns to haunt Toronto Star employees

Fagstein — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 05:38:24 +0000

In January 2010, the Toronto Star and its union agreed on a plan that would allow the paper to cut jobs and save money while avoiding some more dramatic cost-cutting plans like outsourcing copy editing to an external company.

Those of us around the country who work in the copy editing field breathed a slight sigh of relief, knowing that somewhere jobs were being saved and would still be done locally. The issue appeared settled: The Toronto Star would still be produced by the Toronto Star.

Less than two years later, we seem to be back to Square One. The Star is offering another round of buyouts to cut staff even further (they won't say by how much they want to reduce the workforce) and Reuters is reporting a rumour that the Star again wants to outsource layout and editing work.

I hope that's just a rumour. Layout and editing is an important job in print media, and I'd hate to think that the industry is coming to a consensus that this work can be done by some kid in a third-world country with 20 minutes of training.

Toronto Star wants to outsource 78 editing jobs

Fagstein — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:41:35 +0000

The Toronto Star, Canada's national largest newspaper, has signed a deal with page-layout outsourcing firm Pagemasters and has informed its union that it plans to outsource 78 copy editing and layout jobs to this company, which form part of 121 job cuts it plans to save millions of dollars a year.

I've written before about the larger issue of the outsourcing of copy editing jobs. Saying I'm against it would be transparently self-serving, but I'd like to think there's some magic in the designing of pages, writing of headlines and editing of copy that will be missed when the job is handed over to a third party that is interested more in volume than quality.

On the other hand, I'm pessimistic that readers will care enough about how their paper is produced to speak with their wallets and tip the economic balance in favour of those workers.

UPDATE: Torstar says it has "no choice" - which of course is not true. It also says it hopes to keep the same level of quality, which is obviously not feasible.

Star redesign: I don’t hate it

Fagstein — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:19:57 +0000

After inexplicably hyping it for weeks, the Toronto Star finally unveiled its website redesign last week. I took one look at it and was unimpressed, but figured I'd return for a closer look.

Toronto Star's thestar.com

Colour me more impressed.

I'm still not crazy about the visual design, which is filled with rounded corners, blue-grey gradients and just about every other Web 2.0 cliché in the books, but some of the functionality is worth noting.

One is the topic pages. News organizations have to get used to the fact that the Internet provides them with a different way to present information. Background doesn't have to be repeated in every newspaper article to re-educate the reader. Instead, you can simply link to a previous article in a series, or better yet to a summary of the topic so far (kind of like what you'd see on a Wikipedia page). Many topics have short introductions followed by a list of articles on that topic. It's simple, but very useful. The best part is the "hot topics" banner at the top of the page, which allows quick links to the big issues of the day.

Another is the timeline view, which translates as "everything published on this website, in reverse chronological order." If you don't know what you want to read, go here and just read whatever is new. There are other views like the "visual news" view, which presents stories as a series of pictures, but that's only useful if all stories lend themselves to good pictures. Many don't and are illustrated with boring file art instead, lessening the usefulness of this page.

Text in these boxes don't have enough ...

More from teehan+lax, Torontoist and the Star itself.

Phillips jumps to the Star

Fagstein — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:41:42 +0000

For those of you wondering what happened to former Gazette editor-in-chief Andrew Phillips, he's now the business editor at the Toronto Star. (Thanks Dave)

I'll leave the analysis of that career change up to you.

Toronto Star fires classified employees

Fagstein — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:16:15 +0000

The Toronto Star's union is pissed that management has announced it is outsourcing its classified advertising department to a company in Buffalo, cutting 27 jobs.

The reason given is the death plunge of classified advertising. The Star says it doesn't make sense to do it "in-house" anymore.

Post wins pointless design award race

Fagstein — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 05:25:09 +0000

The Society for News Design has announced the winners of its annual awards.

For the uninitiated, the Society for News Design is the big newspaper design group and winning one of their awards is a badge of the highest honour for newspaper designers.

Or, at least it would be if they were more selective. The SND gives out almost a thousand awards each year, and considering there are 10,725 entries from 346 newspapers, that means that each entry has a one in ten shot of winning an award, and each newspaper should get three awards on average just for showing up.

Perhaps for that reason, the number of newspapers participating in this exercise has dropped. Notably missing from the list below is the Globe and Mail, for example.

Still, it's seen as a penis-measuring contest, so let's whip out those rulers. The 108 awards given to Canadian publications break down as follows:

National Post: 56 (including two gold medals)
La Presse: 32
Toronto Star: 14
Montreal Gazette: 4
Guelph Mercury: 1
Swerve Magazine (Calgary Herald): 1

You can seee a full list of winners by searching the database (there's too many of them to list all on one page, after all). You'll probably also see special pages devoted to SND wins in the above publications. Updated with links to self-laudatory stories in the four multiple-award-winning papers.

Star runs You Be The Editor quiz

Fagstein — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:33:31 +0000

The Toronto Star, still looking for some holiday filler, has produced a journalism ethics quiz which it invites readers to answer on its website. (via J-Source)

The Gazette did something similar a while back.

Editors deal on a regular basis with tough ethical decisions, and must choose between publishing something or holding it back. The Star gives some examples, at least some of which were based on actual events which were published in the paper and got complaints.

Most are unfortunately a bit too easy to answer for me.

As holiday filler for this blog a public service, here are my answers to the quiz and the explanations for them:

1. A Toronto woman is struck by a bus and dragged beneath its wheels to her death. Some witnesses on the scene told your reporter that the woman was decapitated. Do you publish this fact in the article and headline?

Yes, but only if you can verify this from the official police report.
No, why publish such graphic details that will further distress the woman's family?

My answer: Yes, but only if you can verify this from the official police report.

I'd leave it out of the headline, though, and I certainly wouldn't make it a major part of the article. But there's no reason to hide the information.

2. The Canadian Press reports that a 77-year-old man is dead after a tombstone presumably fell on him while he worked on his parent's grave. Do you publish this headline: "Couple's devoted son victim of grave misfortune."?

Yes, it's a clever play on words.
No, it's insensitive here.

My answer: Yes.

Normally you want to play it straight with stories about deaths. You certainly don't want to sound like you're having fun with a headline at some dead person's expense. But the pun here is benign enough that I'd let it through.

3. A mother calls the Star seeking to talk to a reporter about "death threats" at an Oakville high school. She says her son told her that graffiti on a washroom wall indicated that "teachers will be gunned down." and the "shooting would make Columbine look like a joke." The call comes near deadline and the reporter can't reach police or school officials to verify the mother's report. Do you publish this story or hold it for further reporting?

Yes, publish. A death threat in a high school is news and the mother's call is evidence that the community is already talking about this.
No, hold it. A newspaper must verify facts, not report rumours.

My answer: No, hold it.

It's most likely a hoax. Call the police instead and have them negotiate. There's no way that publishing this information is going to save lives, but it's very likely it would cause unnecessary panic.

4. A photo in the Sports section captures interim Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher surrounded by three young women as he makes the draw for a horse race. Do you publish this photo caption: "It's a tough job but someone has to do it. Interim Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher is flanked by a trio of fillies yesterday as he makes the draw for Woodbine Oaks"?

Yes, it's a humorous cutline.
No, what year is this, 1962?

My answer: No.

I learned long ago that comparing young ladies to horses gets you into trouble.

5. Your photographer covering the Olympics captures a shot of kayaker Adam van Koeverden bent over with the dry heaves after his eighth place finish in a race he was favoured for a medal. Do you publish this photo?

Yes, it's a dramatic, gripping photo that captures an Olympian's despair.
No, it's mean-spirited and offensive.

My answer: Yes.

I wouldn't make it the main photo, but I'd publish it. It happened on a world stage. It's embarrassing, but no more so than coming in eighth place out of nine in a race you were expected to win.

6. A Reuters photographer captures this photo of Hillary Clinton in March on the campaign trail during the height of her race against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Do you publish this on the front of the World section?

Yes, it aptly illustrates the headline, "It's do or die for Clinton"
No, it's a highly unflattering photo that's unfair to this candidate.

My answer: Yes, if you have nothing better.

Looking through wire photos, you see pretty quickly that photographers love to take these kinds of shots of Hillary Clinton (or their editors like to send them out). I have nothing against publishing a photo (candidates who worry about looking unflattering in the press shouldn't be candidates for high office), but it's not very good.

7. A judge rules against banning the media from naming several women who are to testify in the sexual exploitation trial of a former NHL agent. The women, between the ages of 24 and 28, were teenagers at the time of the alleged sexual incidents involving former hockey players and have told the court that publishing their names would humiliate them. The names of the hockey players are banned from publication. Do you publish the women's names when they testify?

Yes, it's legal to name them.
No, some evidence suggests the women were coerced into the sex acts and the Star should not stigmatize them.

My answer: No.

I honestly can't imagine this actually happening. (Did it?) Courts almost always err on the side of protecting the identities of minors who are victims of crimes (or even when they're the perpetrators). The only exception to this rule I can think of is when they consent to being identified after they're adults.

Not knowing the court's reasoning behind this decision, I'll err on the side of not publishing their names unless a compelling case can be made that there's a reason the public should know who they are.

8. Three young Toronto men are killed in a car crash in Muskoka when their car rips through a guardrail and plunges into a river. A few days later, your reporter examines public court records and learns that the driver, 20, was in danger of losing his licence and that the two passengers who died had also faced charges under the Highway Traffic Act. Do you report these facts?

Yes, this is a matter of public interest because reckless driving was likely a factor in this tragedy.
No, it's heartless and insensitive to the grieving families.

My answer: Yes.

I would definitely try to determine if driver error had something to do with the cause of the crash. Failing that, I would report the information but stress that we don't know what caused the crash.

9. An earthquake devastates China's Sichuan province killing thousands of people. An AP photo captures an anguished mother cradling her dead daughter. Do you publish this photo on Page 1?

Yes, though the Star rarely publishes photos of dead bodies this photo conveys the impact of the human suffering.
No, the photo is too graphic for a family newspaper.

My answer: Yes.

People die. You don't want that information, don't read the newspaper. The photo in question doesn't show anything obviously gruesome, so I'd let it in. If it was someone whose head was blown away, I'd probably keep it off of Page 1.

10. The mayor of Vaughan is under fire for her expenses, which include thousands of dollars for meals. The Star investigates meal receipts and learns she spent $300 for lunch for three at an Italian restaurant. You send your restaurant critic to review the restaurant. His review includes stereotypical descriptions of the restaurant patrons that read like a scene from The Sopranos. Do you edit these references from the review?

Yes, these descriptions are unfair, offensive stereotypes about Italians and the Star should hold to a higher standard that doesn't perpetuate stereotypes of those of any race, religion or nationality.
No, reviewers are entitled to their opinions and the reviewer reported on what he observed.

My answer: Yes.

Racism is bad, mmm'kay? The fact that Italians might go to an Italian restaurant is not news.

That's my take. Anything you disagree with?

UPDATE (Jan. 13): The Star summarizes responses. Most are in the form of "readers said don't publish; The Star did; The Star was wrong"

Newspaper letter credibility scores one at the Star

Fagstein — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:44:56 +0000

Last month, the Toronto Star made an interesting decision concerning so-called "user-generated content": It decided it would no longer be publishing anonymous or pseudonymous web comments on its letters-to-the-editor page. Such "reverse publishing" is being used by a lot of newspapers who want to appear all hip and cool and stuff, and are desperate to increase traffic to their horrible websites.

The main argument, which was also expressed by many people inside the Star's newsroom (they even circulated a petition about it), is that printing these comments alongside letters to the editor essentially creates a double standard: Letters to the editor must be signed and verified if submitted by email or mail, but don't have to be if they're posted in an online forum.

It's a valid argument, but it ignores the big secret about letters to the editor: The verification process for "real" letters isn't much of a verification process at all.

Many newspapers, especially smaller ones, don't even check that the person whose name appears at the bottom of the letter is in fact the person who wrote it. They just copy and paste from their email inbox and assume that if there's a full name that doesn't read "Anita Bath", it's probably legitimate.

Larger newspapers, like the Star, require readers to send their phone number, and an editor or secretary calls them up and verifies their name and whether they wrote the letter. There's no exchange of ID, no looking names up in a database, just a phone call. It works mainly because very few people are going to go through that kind of trouble just to get a fake letter into the newspaper.

Still, I think the change is a good one, if only because seeing online handles like "geeko79", "No McCain fries for John McCain" and "Fagstein" attached to grammatically-incorrect texts in a supposedly respectable newspaper looks ridiculous.

The policy change doesn't affect the website; people will still be able to post with silly pseudonyms there, though that's not what public editor Kathy English would have decided:

I would prefer the Star demand real names of those who comment online. I've been told that's a near-impossible expectation in the online environment. I don't buy that.

Of course, online faces the same problem. Restrict it to verified names, and you cut off most discussion and spent lots of time verifying IDs. The more moderation controls you have, the less commentary you have and the less active the forum becomes.

(via J-Source)

News, the way cool people read it

Fagstein — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:50:01 +0000

The CBC and Toronto Star didn't waste any time and have already launched iPhone versions. Sadly, neither appears to be customizable (or if they are, it's hidden).

TorStar, Gazette plan massive layoffs

Fagstein — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:13:05 +0000

Toronto Star owner TorStar has announced it is cutting 160 jobs (of which 122 are apparently voluntary buyouts) most of which involve its Internet operation including 10 people at a redundant Internet division. No word on what they plan to replace it with, though I imagine they'll try replacing it with outsourced work that involve either non-journalist Internet professionals or non-unionized cheap labour.

Buried in that story is an announcement from The Gazette's union, the Montreal Newspaper Guild (of which I am a member), which says the paper is gutting its Reader Sales and Service department (the people who deal with subscriptions), replacing 46 union jobs by centralizing operations chain-wide in Winnipeg. The union is fighting the move, which it says violates a clause in the collective agreement that prohibits outsourcing jobs.

Toronto Star reaches tentative agreement

Fagstein — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:30:17 +0000

The Toronto Star has reached a tentative agreement with its union after days of round-the-clock talks that went 14 hours into we-can-call-a-strike-at-any-time territory, and three days after the union's members voted near-unanimously in favour of a strike.

No details are being released about the agreement, which must still be ratified by the union's members. But a notice from the union suggests that a decent compromise has been reached, phasing out Sunday pay bonuses, increasing wages 2% each year and no changes to the overtime pay formula.

UPDATE (Jan. 25): The agreement has been ratified by union members, making it official. There will be no work disruption at the Star for at least another three years.

Toronto Star union votes to strike

Fagstein — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:07:52 +0000

A strike vote today at the Toronto Star's union had 80% of members voting 96% in favour of a strike starting as early as Saturday. That's when a mutual agreement between the two parties to not strike or lock out expires.

The vote represents a mandate to strike, which means that union leaders can call a strike at a moment's notice now. Negotiations are continuing and are expected to continue until Friday, however a media blackout has been imposed on recent talks at the request of the mediator.

That means information about management demands may or may not be outdated, and only those involved in negotiations have any idea how close they are to a deal. (Much to the annoyance of union members who are in the dark, as well as reporters who have to write about the situation.)

Previously: Toronto Star edging toward strike

Updates on the situation can be found on the union's website at wearethestar.ca.

Toronto Star union edging toward strike

Fagstein — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:44:23 +0000

(UPDATE: Union votes 96% in favour of a strike starting as early as Saturday. Negotiations are continuing under a media blackout.)

Next week will be a big one for the Toronto Star. Union members are without a contract and negotiations aren't going too well. A strike vote is being held Wednesday evening, and a strike or lockout could cripple the paper as early as next Saturday.

The demands being made by management are extreme, especially the parts about eliminating double-time overtime, having "free" straight-time overtime for five hours a week, and eliminating pensions altogether for new hires.

As Canada's largest newspaper, these talks are bound to get a lot of attention, especially from its direct competitor, the Toronto Sun.

Updates on the situation can be found on the union's website at wearethestar.ca.

UPDATE (Jan. 15): The Financial Post is all over this.

Regret the Error roundup

Fagstein — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:43:33 +0000

Regret the Error presents a roundup of this year's funny corrections and cases of plagiarism and fabrication.

No Montreal media appear on either list, though the Toronto Star gets two dishonorable mentions, for prematurely killing off Morley Safer and for bringing the Detroit murder rate up by a factor of 50. The Ottawa Citizen, meanwhile, put a photo of an innocent man on a section front, identifying him as a pedophile.

Toronto Sun on media errors

Fagstein — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:46:16 +0000

Toronto Sun columnist Mark Bonokoski has a column (via Regret the Error and Toronto Sun Family) about errors in newspapers. He starts off talking about an error in the Toronto Star and then talks about some of his own. (Funny how media outlets have no problem talking about direct competitors by name when they're pointing out their flaws.)

I suppose we can't say he's hypocritical, since he does self-criticize, but the Star has an online corrections page, while the Sun does not. And my experience with Sun papers have mostly involved hilarious headline mistakes and errors they made about me. Neither of these have since been corrected (at least not online).

Then again, as the Sun Family blog points out, the Star this week also admitted to plagiarizing the Sun.

Why are errors in online articles not corrected?

Fagstein — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:33:27 +0000

The Toronto Star's public editor talks to Regret the Error's Craig Silverman about his new book (via J-Source).

The article talks about the reluctance of journalists to admit their own mistakes. It's something you find in all professions, but journalists have a special duty to get their facts right. In fact, it's the only thing they have to do.

Naturally, the article talks about how great the Star is at their corrections (few Canadian publications have corrections pages) and how they want to get better.

One suggestion, that Silverman has I think given up making because few bother with it, is to actually correct articles online when you issue corrections about them.

As a random example, this article about Ontario's civil courts makes a simple error, saying that someone is currently in a position when she's not. The correction is online and everything, but the original error is still there (about halfway down the article), and no mention is made of a correction.

For a more serious example, this correction notes that the Star violated a publication ban by revealing the names of victims in an inquiry. Unfortunately, at least one of the original articles, which has the full names of six children in it, is still online. (I won't link to it because I don't want to violate the publication ban myself, but it's Googlable.)

In case the nature of the problem isn't blatantly obvious by now, the original articles are emailed, del.icio.used, Dugg and otherwise passed around, and people can read them days after the fact, learning the false information with no clue that a correction has already been issued.

Newspapers, radio stations and TV networks can't go back in time and unpublish something, but website articles can and must be altered to correct inaccuracies, preferably with a note describing the nature of the error and how it was corrected.

Why is that so hard to understand?

Star PM: Good on paper, but still a failure

Fagstein — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:34:00 +0000

Just over a year ago, with much fanfare, the Toronto Star launched a new service called "Star P.M.", which was a dozen-page letter-sized PDF file that could be downloaded on weekday afternoons.

The idea was simple: Office workers would download the paper, which had afternoon updates of important stories, as well as things like Sudoku puzzles, print it out and take it with them on the ride home. There are certainly lots of people who take public transit to whom this might appeal.

And from some who fit that criteria there was initial praise of the project, which was the first of its kind in North America.

But there was also criticism with what now looks like keen foresight, pointing out that people won't download as a PDF what they can get faster in HTML. And then there were numbers to back that point up.

And so it was, this week the Star announced it is killing Star P.M. to focus more on its mobile website, which is a format more friendly to the cellphone-toting workforce. The last issue will be Wednesday, October 17.

The format is what ultimately killed Star P.M. The Star underestimated the amount of effort involved in printing such a document every weekday. They overestimated how fast non-junkies need to get their news (busy workers could just wait until the next morning to read stories in the paper). They underestimated how much time news junkies would spend bored at work reading the paper's website, or getting any news they cared about from their favourite blogs.

The new mobile website ("mobile version" is the new "non-Flash" or "low-bandwidth" -- making me wonder why the rest of the website can't have such a simple design) is a better way for the Star to spend its time. It updates faster and it's much more interactive.

But what about the other PDF papers out there? The Ottawa Citizen has Rush Hour, which is still running. Other such papers in the U.S. and Europe have quietly shut down. Expect Rush Hour to have a similarly sad end.

You might also see obituaries being written for "Game Day" issues, which are special afternoon before-the-game downloadable PDFs with rosters, last-minute updates and other stuff the newspapers think you'll want to take with you to the game. The Ottawa Citizen has one for Senators games, the Vancouver Sun just started one for Canucks games, and the Montreal Gazette runs one for Alouettes games. Considering these publications have even stricter audience limitations, I just can't see them getting popular enough to support the work put into them.

There's also G24, the PDF paper produced by the Guardian, which has the advantages of being somewhat customizable and more up-to-date because the PDFs are produced automatically. This also means that even if nobody reads it, it doesn't cost the paper anything. Sure, it doesn't have the newspaper-like modular layout, but is that really necessary in these kinds of circumstances?

By the end of the year, we'll probably be able to conclude once and for all that these PDF papers are a failed experiment. But, as one blogger commented, at least it was an experiment. We have to at least give them that.

UPDATE (Jan. 9, 2008): The London Daily Telegraph has killed its "Telegraph PM" PDF paper. So I was off by a few days...

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