The Globe and Mail is rearranging the deck chairs reinventing itself to create a sustainable future, and just days after excitedly launching a redesigned website, Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon has been fired, replaced by Report on Business editor John Stackhouse.
In a memo to employees from publisher Phil Crawley that’s filled with corpspeak, there’s lots of talk about a new focus on digital (I thought they were already focused on digital), and the news that he will be adding another senior executive to take on technology responsibilities that were under the VP of operations.
So as the paper cuts 90 staff in response to a recession, it is adding a new employee at the top.
Sadly, the Globe is not unique in thinking that guys in suits writing memos about synergy and “reimagination-inspired teamwork” are solutions to their problems instead of expensive wastes of offices and salaries.
Since they apparently know sh*t about didgital, they need somebody who does, and that person has to be hired from elsewhere. Then he (they are always men) can re-organize the workforce and maybe lay-off some old farts and maybe (very maybe) hire some gen-Y that used computers since they were 5.
The Globe, like most major newspaper newsrooms, is unionized, and that means you can’t easily fire someone with high seniority. And since the paper is already cutting staff, it’s unlikely to be hiring anyone new soon.
Sounds like they’re taking a page out of the CBC mangement playbook. The layoffs going on at the CBC are being refereed to as workforce adjustment by the mandarins.
More managers less pesky full time employees who demand benefits.
Let’s just cycle folks through contract after contract.
Quick more champagne for the upper management
“On a faxed note, Stursberg’s executive assistant, Cathy Katrib Reyes, writes, “Please be sure not to mention the champagne toast to anyone!!!””
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/MediaNews/2009/04/22/9200261-sun.html
Truer words were never spoken.
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