Fagstein » Transcontinental http://blog.fagstein.com Can you think of a better name? Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:54:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 A new front in the Transcon-Quebecor war http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/06/23/quebecor-papers-repentigny-joliette/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/06/23/quebecor-papers-repentigny-joliette/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:03:37 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=9360 The all-out war between Quebecor and Transcontinental continues. Only a few months after announcing new community weeklies in Laval and the north shore, Quebecor is opening up two other free weekly newspapers northeast of Montreal:

  • L'Écho de Repentigny (59,000 copies), serving Le Gardeur to Lavaltrie and competing directly with Transcontinental's Hebdo Rive-Nord
  • Journal de Joliette (62,000 copies), serving Joliette, Berthierville and St-Michel-des-Saints and competing directly with Transcontinental's L'Action

Quebecor says it will create 120 jobs with these new papers, which sounds like a lot, even from a company that is looking for creative ways around Quebec's anti-scab law to get cheap content for the Journal de Montréal.

So far, there's been no counterattack from Transcontinental in areas that Quebecor has historically covered, like the south shore. It remains to be seen if they will raise the stakes and create real competition in community newspapers, or if they'll just give up and watch the media giant slowly erode what's left of Transcon's readership.

UPDATE: Seems I've missed the Rive-Sud Express, which was launched in April and competes directly with Quebecor's Courier du Sud. Last week, Transcontinental added Point de vue Sainte-Agathe and Point de vue Mont-Tremblant, and Abitibi Express, that compete with Information du nord Sainte-Agathe, Information du nord Mont-Tremblant and La Frontière, respectively.

The Point de vue papers are actually a split-up of the formerly independent Point de vue Laurentides, which Transcontinental has acquired and turned into two weeklies, each running with a single journalist, a freelancer and a shared photographer, and a bunch of people doing ad sales.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/06/23/quebecor-papers-repentigny-joliette/feed/ 1 Can the West Island Chronicle be saved? http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/04/17/david-yates-on-west-island-chronicle/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/04/17/david-yates-on-west-island-chronicle/#comments Sat, 17 Apr 2010 08:20:34 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=8884

West Island Chronicle's Talk of the Town: Advertorial or business section?

If you haven't read it already, this piece by David Yates (former Gazette business editor, and one of my journalism professors at Concordia) is worth reading. It appears on Thursday's Business Observer page in the Gazette, and takes direct aim at another newspaper, or perhaps more accurately its owners.

Yates sets his sights on the West Island Chronicle, which used to be much larger than it is now. Many eons ago, people used to pay to get it, it used to have a reporting staff. Now, he says, it "is barely a shadow of its former self, as are other community newspapers taken over by Transcontinental Inc. ... almost indistinguishable from the advertising fliers for grocery stores and other retail outlets that it accompanies.

Yates doesn't pull his punches. He accuses it of running advertorials, of running pictures of its publisher with advertisers to keep friendly with them, and of contributing to its own demise by slashing its quality and inviting competition. He says similar papers like the Westmount Examiner are doing the same thing, which is why we now have independent papers in Westmount and the West End.

Yeah, it's true

This piece comes as the Chronicle is struggling to get back on its feet editorially. Just before Christmas, news came down that its editorial staff of two would be reduced to one with the dismissal of reporter Raffy Boudjikanian. Editor Albert Kramberger refused to be demoted to reporter and left the paper, leaving it with an editorial black hole.

(Since then, Boudjikanian has been seen heard working for CBC radio in Montreal, while Kramberger has had freelance pieces in the West Island Gazette.)

Announcement welcoming Sarah Leavitt in April 7 issue

After a rough few weeks, in which stories were borrowed from other papers (some translated from Cités Nouvelles, which covers the West Island in French), they hired Concordia journalism student Sarah Leavitt as the new reporter.

"I'm going to try my best to bring the Chronicle into the Web 2.0 world and make it better than David Yates thinks it is," she tells me, figuring out that my email inquiry about her new job was in part related to Yates's piece.

Even without the dramatic staff turnover, the paper is struggling. People within Transcontinental agree with that (though, of course, they asked me not to identify them). People simply aren't going to pay for a community newspaper anymore, and declining ad revenue means less money to spend on staff, which means the quality goes down, which means fewer people read it, which means less advertiser interest, and the spiral just gets worse.

Transcontinental is looking to fix that, in part because of competition from Quebecor. But the threat Yates talks about is from a mom and pop organization.

Let freedom reign

With the NDG Monitor reduced to online-only status and the Westmount Examiner barely worth reading anymore, newspapers have moved in to steal the readership. One is the Suburban, which publishes separate editions for the West Island, the central city and the East End. Two others are published by David Price, the weekly Westmount Independent and twice-monthly NDG Free Press. Both claim a distribution of about 13,000, have more high-end ads (mostly from real estate agents) and a lot more editorial content that ruffles feathers instead of placating businesses.

Yates's suggestion about a similar thing happening in the West Island (where it would also go up against a weekly section of The Gazette) comes at the same time as a rumour that Price is starting up a third newspaper to focus on the West Island.

Price denies such a thing is in the immediate future. "Fun as that sounds, there is no expansion plan at this time," he tells me.

Ethical lapse?

As for those standalone photos of business leaders with the newspaper publisher, a Transcontinental insider tells me that the Chronicle's "Talk of the Town" page and similar pages in other newspapers doesn't involve a quid pro quo with advertising. In other words, there's no requirement to buy anything to get covered. Instead, the purpose of the pages seems to be to allow the newspapers to tell businesses that "yes, we had something about your Subway franchise opening in the strip mall" without actually wasting a reporter on the story.

Whether that's a big enough distinction for you is up to you. Smaller papers have a particular problem with keeping the walls between advertising and editorial separate.

Awards season

All this controversy also comes just after the nominees finalists for the Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards are released (PDF), showing a lot of honours for the Chronicle's two departing staff. Reporter Boudjikanian got seven nods, Kramberger one, and the paper a total of 12, second in total behind the Low Down to Hull and Back News (still my favourite name for a newspaper) at 17.

Though Leavitt is no doubt a capable journalist, it is expected that the paper will sink in quality compared to its peers over the next week or two as it re-establishes its institutional memory. The Chronicle, which has often been a dominant force at the QCNA awards, could come into them next year without making a very big splash.

What do you think?

Is there room for a new West Island paper with the Chronicle, Suburban and West Island Gazette already fighting over the anglo market? Have Trancontinental's papers, like the Chronicle and Westmount Examiner, gotten so bad that there's no journalistic value in keeping them going? Could a community paper that invests in staff become profitable before it's run out of business?

Can the Chronicle be saved? And if it could, should it?

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/04/17/david-yates-on-west-island-chronicle/feed/ 20 Chronicle, Cités Nouvelles editors refuse demotions http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/01/09/chronicle-cites-nouvelles-editors-refuse-demotions/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/01/09/chronicle-cites-nouvelles-editors-refuse-demotions/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:54:04 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=8108 On Friday, the West Island Chronicle and Cités Nouvelles, the two Transcontinental-owned weeklies covering the West Island, each had two full-time editorial employees - an editor and a reporter.

On Monday, they may have none.

Layoffs announced just before Christmas of the papers' reporters (Raffy Boudjikanian for the Chronicle, Olivier Laniel for Cités Nouvelles) took effect on Friday. Technically they're not permanent, but for an indeterminant period. But Boudjikanian doesn't expect to return to the job and is now unemployed. Laniel was a temporary worker, replacing a reporter on maternity leave.

Albert Kramberger

Hearing about the job cuts and their own demotions from editor to sole reporter (and sole journalist), Chronicle editor Albert Kramberger and Cités Nouvelles editor Marie-Claude Simard told their employer on Christmas Eve that they would refuse their demotions and wouldn't work for their papers if they were expected to do so solo.

Their superiors "seemed shocked to get the news", Simard said, and they have been holding meetings this week with the union to discuss the matter.

Whether those meetings will go anywhere is another matter. A decision could be weeks away, and the demotions take effect on Monday.

As far as Kramberger is concerned, unless some stunning reversal on the employer's part takes place, he's already worked his last shift at the Chronicle, and he's looking for another job.

Wayne Larsen, who was also demoted from editor of the Westmount Examiner, saw the positive side of his new role and is expected to stay on.

The emptying of the Chronicle is particularly distressing. Only five years ago, I spent a week there as an intern, and it had a skeleton staff, but still a staff. News reporters, a sports reporter, an editor and a photographer. The Chronicle was a perennial winner at the Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards, mostly because they had more resources than the other papers.

Now they're all gone.

Transcontinental might choose to hire a new reporter at each paper, perhaps some kid straight out of university or a laid-off journalist who's desperate to make ends meet. But the loss of institutional memory would be huge. They would end up as shadows of the shadows they once were.

With the Chronicle and Cités Nouvelles on their last legs, a void opens up for West Island community coverage. The best of what's left is the weekly West Island section of The Gazette, which has four full-time editorial employees and relies on the resources of the larger paper. Beyond that, there's little. Unlike Westmount or NDG, there's no mom-and-pop paper running out of someone's basement trying to compete with the big guys. Even The Suburban hasn't really reached out to the West Island yet.

Transcontinental may have seen this as just two layoffs, but they've essentially abdicated their responsibilities to the West Island.

Now, who will fill that void?

Other coverage from CTV Montreal and The Suburban

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2010/01/09/chronicle-cites-nouvelles-editors-refuse-demotions/feed/ 5 Transcontinental and the freelance union oxymoron http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/10/03/transcontinental-and-the-freelance-union-oxymoron/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/10/03/transcontinental-and-the-freelance-union-oxymoron/#comments Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:10:34 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=7079 Over the past few years, a group of Canadians fed up with increasingly restrictive standardized freelance contracts from large print publishers (combined with stagnant or even declining freelance fees) has been toying with the idea of starting up a union.

It's not clear what form such a union would take, since the entire point of being "freelance" is to negotiate deals on your own. But the media environment that has developed, with just about every magazine and large newspaper owned by one of only a dozen or so major media companies, has meant that freelancers face a take-it-or-leave-it proposition that leaves no room for negotiation. Groups of professional freelancers have been looking at banding together to get these standard contracts changed so that publishers have to pay if they want to re-use freelance content on other media, particularly on the Internet or in electronic databases.

This all came to a head this week when the Canadian Writers Group, the Periodical Professional Writers Association of Canada and a bunch of other similar groups called on all freelancers to boycott Transcontinental, which publishes Canadian Living, Elle Canada and dozens of regional newspapers. The press release is here (PDF).

The groups argue that the so-called Master Agreement (PDF) that Transcontinental is forcing all its writers to sign is over-the-top, even to the point of licensing TV rights for free.

The move prompted reaction from Transcontinental, which said it was surprised and it thought the contract was fair. It argues that the language is misunderstood, and that the rights grab is only for properties tied to a particular brand, and that Transcontinental can't re-use content across brands (read: magazines and their associated websites) without paying an extra fee. The writers' groups dispute those arguments.

So the campaign has begun, and writers are asking people to boycott anything published by Transcontinental. They're even asking people to unfollow The Hockey News on Twitter, since it's a Transcontinental publication.

This is all coming at the same time as Transcontinental is considering a lockout of its employees at community weeklies in and around Montreal. Not a good week for the company.

Freelance for free

The problem with this boycott campaign is the same one that has caused these contracts to be put forward in the first place: writers are a dime a dozen, and so many of them are willing to work for peanuts that publishers find they can demand more rights for less pay and still have people climbing over each other trying to get a byline.

The erosion of freelancer rights has already hit newspapers, where Canwest, Sun Media and others have forced their freelancers to accept these terms or stop contributing. Now Transcontinental is trying to move this to the magazine world (with a contract that's still much more generous to freelancers than the newspaper freelance contracts), and the professional writing community has said it's not going to take it anymore.

Even with a writers' boycott in place, expect plenty of journalism school students, part-time writers and others to jump at the chance to take the place of the professional freelancers for the few bucks an article that Transcontinental will offer them.

This slide to mediocrity won't end because of a boycott by the cream of the crop, it'll end when either publishers decide that the content they're paying peanuts for is too crappy to justify the savings, or when young status-hungry writers figure out that an eight-point byline nobody will remember and a cheque for $100 isn't worth all the work they've spent crafting a magazine feature.

Don't hold your breath waiting for either of those to happen, unfortunately.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/10/03/transcontinental-and-the-freelance-union-oxymoron/feed/ 2 Print media isn’t dead yet, SF Chronicle hopes http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/07/06/print-media-isnt-dead-yet-sf-chronicle-hopes/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/07/06/print-media-isnt-dead-yet-sf-chronicle-hopes/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:11:27 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=6137 The San Francisco Chronicle's 15-year deal with Montreal-based Transcontinental to print its newspaper officially began today, and the paper heralded the new (outsourced) presses that allow for more colour. That, of course, is being mocked in the usual places.

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.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/07/06/print-media-isnt-dead-yet-sf-chronicle-hopes/feed/ 0 Courrier Laval loses half its reporting staff http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/02/24/courrier-laval-loses-half-its-reporting-staff/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/02/24/courrier-laval-loses-half-its-reporting-staff/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:07:07 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=4277 Transcontinental

The fallout from the cuts at Transcontinental are starting to trickle down. The Courrier Laval has lost two of its four reporters, leaving two people to write all the news from across the island.

One of the reporters losing her job is Nathalie Villeneuve. You might remember her as the person whose story TVA picked up without attribution. Now what will TV news report on?

Meanwhile, the union representing employees at Transcon's community weeklies is bemoaning the situation at papers in the centre of the island of Montreal (Villeray, Rosemont, Ville-Marie, etc.) who have even fewer journalists and can't do much journalism of their own.

I can attest to that. There's plenty of syndicated content (mostly about cars), but very little of local interest comes out of those papers.

UPDATE: Voir's Steve Boudrias calls this cut "absurd", with some thoughts on the state of community journalism.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/02/24/courrier-laval-loses-half-its-reporting-staff/feed/ 0 Transcontinental cuts 1,500 http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/02/18/transcontinental-cuts-1500/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/02/18/transcontinental-cuts-1500/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:13:17 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=4238 The press release issued this morning is being rewritten at media outlets all over the place. Transcontinental is cutting 1,500 jobs, requiring unpaid vacations and forcing senior managers to put in unpaid work, all in an effort to cut costs.

There are 28 cuts coming to Canadian magazines, but so far no word on newspapers. Transcontinental owns Metro as well as dozens of community weeklies.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/02/18/transcontinental-cuts-1500/feed/ 2 Globe thinks colour will solve newspaper crisis http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/08/26/globe-transcontinental-deal/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/08/26/globe-transcontinental-deal/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:06:59 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=2475 The Globe and Mail and Transcontinental have signed a $1.7 billion, 18-year deal for the Montreal-based printer to print the newspaper everywhere but the prairies.

The highlight of the deal (from the Globe press release) is a promise from Transcon to buy new presses capable of printing full-colour on all pages. Currently newspapers have to budget which pages get colour and which stay black, mainly because colour is a four-plate process (CMYK) and black requires only one plate and one colour ink. (The change will also mean a shorter paper and another redesign)

That sounds pretty cool. But spending $200 million on new presses to satisfy an 18-year deal (2010-2028) when we're not even sure that newspapers are going to last that long?

Like the New York Times and other larger papers, the Globe will probably weather the crisis a bit longer than most (the fact that it hasn't drastically cut the number of journalists recently certainly helps). But 20 years is a long time in the future, especially when you consider where we were 20 years ago. In 1988, newspaper staffs were at their peak, television production values practically nonexistent, and nobody knew what the Internet was.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/08/26/globe-transcontinental-deal/feed/ 2 Maisons Neuves http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/05/08/maisons-neuves/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/05/08/maisons-neuves/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 01:07:40 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=1733 Ever hear of Maisons Neuves magazine? It's a French-language ad magazine from Transcontinental, showing nothing but ads for people looking for new homes on the south shore.

Transcontinental can feel free to waste glossy paper and ink printing up ads that nobody will look at. But doesn't the name of this magazine sound suspiciously similar to another local magazine we all know and love?

I can't help but wonder if some ad sales rep introduces herself over the phone as being from "Maisons Neuves magazine" (or, since it's in French, "magazine Maisons Neuves") and causing confusion among a hapless advertiser.

But that's just because I'm paranoid, I guess.

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]]> http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/05/08/maisons-neuves/feed/ 1 Your distinctiveness will be added to our own http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/01/26/transcontinental-buys-corriere-italiano/ http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/01/26/transcontinental-buys-corriere-italiano/#comments Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:57:21 +0000 Fagstein http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/01/26/your-distinctiveness-will-be-added-to-our-own/ Transcontinental has bought up the Corriere Italiano, a Montreal Italian community weekly, and the monstromerate's first third-language newspaper.

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