Station C, the Montreal coworking space I wrote about a year ago (and which got some attention in La Presse as it nears the first anniversary of its opening), has apparently spawned a similar effort in Joliette. Copartage Bureau Joliette opened this week to great local fanfare.
Category Archives: Business
Globe to publish on three Sundays, layoff staff
The Globe and Mail today gleefully announced that during the 2010 Olympics, it will produce special Sunday editions for the first time in its history. Unfortunately, they’ll only be distributed in British Columbia, where the games will be hosted, and they’ll only go out on three days: Feb. 14, 21, and 28, 2010.
Naturally, the article rams down our throats that these will be collectors’ editions and that people should buy 150 copies each.
What it didn’t so gleefully announce, according to J-Source, is a “voluntary separation” program to reduce staff at the paper. The email also threatens non-voluntary layoffs if not enough people choose to leave, which it suggests is likely. No hard number is given as far as the number of reductions the Globe needs. UPDATE: The Globe says between 80 and 90 people need to go, representing about 10% of the total workforce. Other coverage from AP and Reuters.
This appears to be unrelated to the 105 jobs CTV cut in November, as those were at its television assets.
For those who may know someone facing less-than-voluntary separation, Globe blogger Craig Silverman has some suggestions on how to deal with them.
Le Devoir says goodbye to its printing plant
Le Devoir has changed printing plants, from a Quebecor-owned plant in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to two other plants also owned by Quebecor Media.
One, Imprimerie Mirabel, prints the Journal de Montréal, Ottawa Sun and some Quebecor-owned weeklies, and will print Le Devoir for the western part of Quebec, including Montreal. The other is the Journal de Québec, which will print Le Devoir for the eastern part of Quebec.
Rather than just note the change or have an editor’s note with marketingese about how excited they are with all the changes, the paper wrote a day-night-in-the-life piece as a thank you to its former plant. (via J-Source)
The biggest change that readers will notice with the change is that the early edition (distributed outside Montreal) has a later deadline – 10:45pm instead of 8:50pm. That puts it in line with other daily papers, including The Gazette, and will make a huge difference for things like election results. Later deadlines for papers distributed in the city are unchanged.
Besides being owned by a competitor, the two printing plants have both been in the news in the past year. Imprimerie Mirabel was the centre of a dispute between former corporate siblings Quebecor Media Inc. and Quebecor World Inc. (the latter a commercial printer which is under bankruptcy protection). QMI thought it had a deal on shared use of Imprimerie Mirabel, but QWI never signed the deal and bought its own press. QMI sued and lost.
The Journal de Québec printing plant, of course, went on strike to join locked-out editorial workers on the picket lines.
The Internet borders are closing
It’s telling that a website that intentionally closes itself off to all non-U.S. traffic has been named Associated Press’s website of the year.
What does this say about the future of media online?
Ici on tue personne
The Office québécois de la langue française, always looking for fun ways to spend money making anglos feel unwelcome, has started a new campaign to get store owners to place stickers in their windows reassuring people that yes, they speak French. They even got comedian Louis-José Houde to lend his voice to radio ads (because some unfamiliar voice telling you your language is in jeopardy just isn’t good enough).
The campaign is focused mainly on Montreal, but also Gatineau and the Eastern Townships, which are the three places you’re most likely to find anglos in Quebec.
I don’t quite get the point.
By law, all Quebec merchants should serve customers in French. So this sticker would be at best redundant.
The supposed idea is that merchants who don’t show the sticker would not see any francophone customers (or at least no card-carrying members of the St. Jean Baptiste Society). But that would only work once a majority of businesses got the sticker, which won’t happen any time soon no matter how free they are. Indeed, anything that smells of the OQLF would probably be rejected by Montreal businesses who don’t want to rock the boat and make things political for no reason.
Not to mention that searching for stickers would also annoy hard-core francophones who think all businesses should serve people in French (which, again, they’re required by law to do).
Besides, it would be fairly simple to just lie, put up one of those stickers and then promptly ignore it. People do that with alarm system stickers all the time.
So this campaign, which encourages retailers to unnecessarily affirm that they follow the law, and which annoys francophones and anglophones alike, is good for what exactly beyond wasting a bunch of taxpayer money?
Journalist unions win big in Journal de Québec decision
In a decision handed down Monday by the Commission des relations du travail, Quebecor Media and the Journal de Québec were found to have illegally used scab labour to replace locked-out and striking workers during the 15 months they were on the picket lines.
The decision is a huge victory not only for the Journal de Québec workers’ union, but for journalist and other unions in general. It sets a precedent for what qualifies as “workplace” in Quebec law, extending its definition beyond the physical building where offices are located.
For those unfamiliar with the story, editorial workers at the Journal were locked out in April 2007 after negotiations on a new contract were stalled over the issue of convergence (having journalists do multimedia jobs). Immediately, press workers went on strike, and the Journal was left with just over a dozen managers to put out a daily newspaper.
Shortly after the labour conflict began, we started hearing about news content providers that appeared out of nowhere: Keystone Press, a photography agency, and Agence Nomade, a wire service. In addition, reports that news conferences in Quebec City started seeing reporters from “Canoë”, which is Quebecor’s web portal and shares content with its newspapers.
The union complained that this was essentially scab work. The decision finally got resolved after the conflict ended, even though the issue had become moot by then (the Journal fought to get the issue dismissed after the labour conflict ended, but the union pushed to get a judgment).
The details
Among the findings in the judgment (50-page PDF) concerning the scab labour:
- Keystone Press, dubbed a scab company by the union, tried unsuccessfully to pitch its freelance services to the newspaper until the day after the lockout, when it was contacted by the president of Sun Media. Up to that point, the photography company had no office in Quebec, but had three photographers in the region the next day, taking photos of news events. The Journal would ask Keystone to cover specific events, and would then have exclusivity over the photos for a 36-hour period. Keystone in turn signed agreements with its photographers (in English) which paid them a set rate per hour of work. The commission singled out Geneviève Larivière, Antoine Leclaire and Pierre Gauthier as scabs.
- Ferron Communications, a PR company, was hired by the Journal to provide news articles. It hired two journalists, Bernard Plante and Dominic Salgado, to cover news for the Journal. This continued until about June when the Journal found this method of operation too expensive.
- Canoë, Sun Media’s web portal, had no journalists in the Quebec City region before the labour conflict (for that matter, it didn’t have much of a news operation at all – it was an aggregator of Quebecor’s newspaper and TV content which it would throw online). A few weeks after the lockout began, they put out ads looking to hire journalists in the region on a temporary basis. The group of journalists inluded Plante and Salgado, as well as Geneviève Riel-Roberge, Hubert Lapointe, Marc-André Boivin, Reine May Crescence and Mélanie Tremblay.
- In August 2007, all these journalists were told they were working not for Canoë, but for a company called Agence Nomade. This company, a wire service, was actually an idea by Quebecor CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau. It was ostensibly setup by Sylvain Chamberland, one of PKP’s friends, to compete against Presse Canadienne (Canadian Press’s French equivalent). It offered its content exclusively to Quebecor Media (including TVA, 24 heures, Journal de Montréal, etc.). Because Nomade retained no rights to its content, Canoë and Quebecor could pretend it was theirs. Again, the Journal would “ask” that certain events be covered, and Nomade would “decide” what it would cover based on that. Journalists would file to Nomade, who would forward texts to Canoë and the Journal.
- Despite these changes, the journalist scabs would always present themselves as being journalists for Canoë.
- The journalists, who had to work exclusively for Nomade (and hence, Quebecor and hence, the Journal de Québec) as scabs on repeating short-term contracts got a salary equivalent to $40,000 a year for their troubles.
The issues
In the end, the judgment came down to three questions:
- Were these journalists working for the Journal? The commission ruled that no, they were not. They weren’t being paid by the Journal, and were not taking orders directly from the Journal.
- Was the Journal using the services of these workers to replace locked-out workers? The commission ruled that yes, the Journal was actively making use of these workers’ services to replace their own. They assigned stories and photos which were then filed directly to them for use in the newspaper. Though technically the scabs were working for Agence Nomade, which in turn worked for Quebecor Media, the work they were doing was mainly for the benefit of the Journal.
- Were the journalists at the workplace of locked-out workers? This one was where the commission broke new ground. The idea of workplace wasn’t an issue in the days of factories with big pieces of equipment. You couldn’t work as a scab unless you were on the premises. But journalists with the Journal did most of their work outside the building, and so the commission ruled that wherever they did their work, either at the courthouse or at news conferences or at the National Assembly, these scabs were at their workplace.
What this means
Two unions are going to be very happy with this news: the union representing journalists at the Journal de Montréal (who will hold a press conference Tuesday to discuss its own contract negotiations as its current one expires Dec. 31) and the union representing journalists at The Gazette (their contract expired June 1 and they’re back at the negotiating table in January).
Had Quebecor won this case, it would have been a manual for other companies on how to get around Quebec’s liberal anti-scab laws. Have the journalists be freelancers, working for a separate company, and filing mainly for the website. But the commission threw a wrench in that setup, and that puts the unions in a much better bargaining position.
There’s still some room to maneuvre if someone wants to try this again. A lot of the focus was over the fact that the Journal asked for specific news events to be covered. Not to mention the fact that all of this was setup after the labour disruption started. Had those things been different, the decision might have been a little more murky.
But it’ll be much harder for a media company to get around a labour disruption in Quebec by outsourcing work to a third party. And that creates a huge shift in the balance of power away from newspaper owners and toward newspaper unions.
In case you’re interested, there are press releases from the union and from Sun Media.
Coverage elsewhere
UPDATE (Jan. 7): The Journal is appealing. The union says it’s not surprised.
Mix 96 to become rebranded as Virgin Radio station
UPDATE (Jan. 12): Read the latest about the switch here.
Astral Media announced on Friday that Mix 96, the anglo FM station that tries so desperately to please everyone it ends up pleasing no one, will be rebranded as a Virgin Radio station, so it can start “challenging the norms of conventional stations and shaking up the radio landscape with a fresh sound and unique new programming formats; delivering a new voice with first class entertainment value to each market.”
In other words, The Mix sucks, and they’re hoping Virginization will help that. (Their ratings have remained relatively stable over the past few years: Third in the Montreal anglo market behind CJAD and Q92, reaching about 18% of the market, or 200,000 listeners).
Stations in Vancouver (95 The Crave) and Ottawa (106.9 The Bear) will also be rebranded.
The Mix’s format will still be “adult contemporary” music (and The Bear will keep its rock format (though it will be “re-energized”, whatever that means). I’m at a loss, in fact, to point out a single major programming difference that will result from this change.
Still, the rebranding alone (and the perceived de-localization of radio control) is enough to get a Facebook petition up already.
CBC Ombudsman clears reporter Erickson
The CBC’s Ombudsman released his report on Friday concerning Krista Erickson, a reporter who was accused of “planting” questions with the opposition to use during Question Period in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party found out about this and complained to the CBC, and CBC management disciplined her by deciding to transfer her from Ottawa to Toronto.
Erickson successfully fought the disciplinary measure and had it reversed in a mediated settlement in June. She has resumed reporting from Ottawa (she never was transferred), and has already filed some political pieces.
The report from Vince Carlin largely clears Erickson of intentional wrongdoing, and places blame on the CBC for having an inexperienced reporter assigned to Parliament Hill.
Among the specific points in the report (PDF):
- The CBC does not have a direct written policy concerning this type of journalistic activity (prompting politicians to ask questions during Question Period, or feeding them information that could embarrass their opposition). The Ottawa bureau did, however, have an unwritten rule that this should be avoided. Carlin blames himself partially for not putting that rule in writing back when he was running the bureau and the CBC drafted its journalistic guidelines. He also notes that the Globe and Mail has a direct, written policy prohibiting this.
- Before it was banned, this type of activity was commonplace. Carlin also hints that other networks may still engage in this practice, though that has no bearing on CBC policy.
- Erickson is a good reporter and her motivation was journalistic zeal, not partisan strategy. No one has accused her of being inaccurate in her stories.
- Beat reporters and their subjects have a “symbiotic” relationship which is necessarily informal. A “give and take” of information is normal in this relationship and helps journalists in their job.
- Erickson joined the Ottawa bureau in 2006 having very little political reporting experience. Normally reporters assigned to Parliament Hill have experience covering local or provincial politics, where the subtleties of journalism ethics in dealing with politicians is learned.
- Erickson came forward to her superiors when other journalists suggested that her providing direct questions to the opposition might have been unethical.
In short, Erickson did not violate policy, but she did cross the line. But she didn’t know she crossed the line, and that’s the CBC’s fault for not training her enough.
Erickson, who alerted me to the judgment via email, wouldn’t comment on her reaction to the report, on whether she agreed that this kind of thing should be unethical and whether she agreed that she was unqualified for a job on Parliament Hill. She referred questions to the Canadian Media Guild (the CBC’s union), which said it was “satisfied with the report”.
The Ombudsman’s report is clear, honest and makes a lot of sense (in fact, it sounds a lot like what I wrote in January). Little of it is surprising (except perhaps the part where this exact issue was discussed and decided upon by both the CBC and Globe long ago), and it makes clear that while Erickson made a mistake, her intentions were honourable.
Political activists will, of course, view the report through the filter of their partisanship, which will tell them before they read the report whether they approve or disapprove of it. But it’s hard to argue with the points made in it. And other journalists should take note of those points, to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
UPDATE (Dec. 9): The National Post’s Jonathan Kay posts thoughts about this as well, calling it a “quasi-exoneration.”
Debt crisis hurts HugeMediaCorps
After Canwest announced it was cutting jobs and CTV announced it was cutting jobs, Rogers is now announcing it is cutting jobs, about 100 of them, including staff at Maclean’s, Sportsnet and CityTV.
You know what these three megacorporations have in common? They all thought they could get rich by acquiring other media companies.
Canwest was still paying off the debt it took on when it bought the Southam newspaper chain (which includes my employer, The Gazette) when it decided it needed more cable channels and acquired Alliance Atlantis. This gave them channels including Showcase.
Bell Canada responded to Canwest’s consolidation by planning a megacorporation of its own. Bell acquired CTV and the Globe and Mail and eventually most of CHUM’s assets. In exchange for the latter, BCE sold shares in the company to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Torstar and the Thomson family, and BellGlobeMedia became CTVglobemedia.
A lot of Rogers’s acquisitions have been in the form of CTV’s sloppy seconds (oh wait, can I not use those words?). This includes Sportsnet, which CTV had to dump when it acquired TSN, and City TV ($375 million), which CTV had to dump when it acquired CHUM. It also acquired the Blue Jays, Fido, as well as specialty TV networks and radio stations within the past decade.
I’m no financial expert, and I don’t have a very clear idea of the balance sheets of these three companies, but this is a really bad time to have debt, especially risky debt (say, holding a bunch of assets in an industry that might disappear entirely in 10 years). The economic downturn that the mortgage debt crisis precipitated is certainly affecting these companies and worrying their management, but I think the debt problem is more significant here than the advertising or subscription revenue problems.
Perhaps this might serve as a warning that consolidation isn’t always the best way to go.
Or perhaps not.
UPDATE (Dec. 9): The New York Times, which I can only assume got the idea from this blog post, has a similar analysis of U.S. newspapers (though in that case, it was taking on debt to acquire other newspapers that got them into trouble).
Customer support in three letters
I should probably unsubscribe from this job listing service that sends me occasional emails (since I currently have a job and all), but then I’d miss gems like this one:
Position title: POS Customer Support Agent – Level 1
– Geographical area: Quebec, Montreal (Region)
– Type of position: Permanent
– Job field: IT and multimedia
“Point of sale” has always resulted in an unfortunate abbreviation.
Koodo: We don’t mean what we say in our ads
Paul Jay at CBCNews.ca called Koodo out over the fact that they call fixed-term contracts and system access fees “sleazy” in an ad when Telus, which owns Koodo, has fixed-term contracts and charges system access fees.
A day later, Koodo responded, saying they don’t really mean that the others are “sleazy” but they just needed to attract people’s attention in the ad:
I don’t think here we have any belief that there is anything really being done by any of the other carriers to trick or to be sleazy…
So there you go. Don’t believe Koodo’s ads, because Koodo doesn’t even believe them.
CTV cuts 105 jobs in Toronto
You all knew this was coming: CTV lays off 105 people in Toronto. The cuts are mainly at specialty channels including MuchMusic and Star!, as well as in its entertainment program eTalk, but it’s losing three on-air journalists as well.
The good news is that they’re not cutting jobs at CTV Montreal. Let’s hope they can breathe easier now.
UPDATE: Bill Brioux has more on layoffs at CTV, and points out that even though what started this wave of layoffs in television was the CRTC’s decision not to force cable companies to hand over money to conventional TV networks, it’s the specialty channels that are seeing the biggest cuts.
CRTC roundup: new rules for converging newsrooms
The CRTC has given final approval for the “Journalistic Independence Code” proposed by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a self-regulation body of Canada’s private broadcasters.
The code is designed to replace CRTC rules about the independence of TV and newspaper newsrooms, which affect Canada’s three largest private TV broadcasters:
- Global TV (owned by Canwest which also owns a newspaper chain including the National Post and The Gazette – which includes me)
- CTV (owned by CTVglobemedia which also owns the Globe and Mail)
- TVA (owned by Quebecor Media which also owns the Sun chain, 24 Hours/Heures and the Journal de Montréal)
Currently, the CRTC has rules that the television newsrooms and the newsrooms of affiliated newspapers cannot be mixed or merged. They must be completely independent of one another.
As if to underscore how bureaucratic everything is at the CRTC and CBSC, only three of the ten points in the code actually deal with rules for broadcasters. The rest deal with how the code itself should be administered.
The new rules are:
- There must be completely independent “news management and presentation structures”
- Decisions about journalistic content must be made “solely by that broadcaster”
- TV news managers may not sit on newspaper editorial boards and vice versa (but news managers may “sit on committees or bodies intended to co-ordinate the use of newsgathering resources”)
The CRTC’s rules on cross-media ownership date back to 2001, when Quebecor Media bought Videotron, which then owned TVA. The transaction meant that Quebecor would own the largest private television network in Quebec, the largest newspaper (the Journal de Montréal) and the largest cable TV company. The CRTC decided that some journalistic rules would need to be in place to protect the diversity of voices in the newsroom.
Those rules were just as vague as the new ones proposed. Newsrooms and news management decisions must be separate.
Though they sound simple, the application of those rules is all about interpretation. For example, while newspapers and TV stations can’t decide on the other’s coverage, nothing prevents the parent company of both from dictating news. In fact, under the new rules, nothing discourages TV stations and newspapers from “co-ordinating newsgathering resources.” This could mean, for example, having TV journalists file both TV packages and newspaper articles on stories that have video, and having newspaper journalists file texts to both newspaper and TV on stories that don’t.
Journalist unions, who also protested the original Quebecor takeover, also spoke out during hearings about this code, saying it didn’t do enough to really separate newsrooms. But it seems the CRTC thinks it’s enough for them, and with the new code approved it is allowing networks to modify their licenses to remove the original rules (TVA was first off the bat)
We’ll see over the coming years how many loopholes can be found to cut down costs and introduce “efficiencies” by reducing “duplication” in the two media.
UPDATE (Nov. 25): TVA’s union has objected to the request to use the new rules, saying it threatens journalistic independence.
In other news
- Star Choice got slapped for not including RDI in its basic package for satellite TV customers. Star Choice’s defence seemed to be that it had multiple “basic” packages, one anglo, one franco and one bilingual. The CRTC saw through that silliness and ordered it to put RDI on everyone’s lineup (and pay appropriate mandatory fees, though retroactive fees will be left up to the courts). Despite this, the CRTC is asking what kind of services should be mandatory for linguistic minorities (anglos in Quebec and francophones elsewhere).
- The Asian Television Network is asking the CRTC for permission to add Indian lifestyle channel NDTV Good Times to the list of networks that cable and satellite providers can offer to Canadians
- Rogers has asked to add the Fox Business Network to the list of importable non-Canadian networks. I guess Rogers is bullish on the channel which has been cursed with low ratings even during the current economic crisis.
- Astral wants to amend the licence for the MPix movie channel to reduce the time between when movies are made and when they can air on that channel from five years to three.
- TVA has applied to create an HD version of LCN.
- MuchMusic will now be allowed to add game shows to its lineup, provided they are less than 10% of the total and are “music-related” (you know, just like Discovery’s game shows are science-related).
Oh, and Pauline Marois is flapping her gums again about creating a Quebec CRTC, further needlessly duplicating government institutions and burning through our tax dollars.
Bell wins throttling case
Bell Canada has won a case that went to the CRTC about peer-to-peer throttling.
In April, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers complained to the CRTC because Bell was using traffic shaping techniques to slow P2P traffic on both its network and the networks of DSL Internet resellers (because of Bell’s telephone monopoly, it is required to sell wholesale net access to companies at government-set rates).
The CAIP argued that this was unfair and unnecessary. Bell argued the opposite.
The CRTC took Bell’s side on the case, in a decision which is pretty well uninteresting otherwise. The only caveat: Bell will have to inform its resellers at least 30 days in advance of similar changes in the future.
Despite the apparentloss to net neutrality advocates, Michael Geist says it’s not the last word on the subject, and there’s still hope.
UPDATE: Geist has some quick reactions from Bell and the CRTC.
CTV slashes too
Canwest isn’t the only major media company that’s using that recent CRTC ruling against them as an excuse to take a giant axe to their staff. CTV has implemented a hiring freeze, cut budgets and is asking managers to find “efficiencies” so they can start laying people off.
The Tea Makers has a copy of the memo.
Let’s see if the Globe and Mail (which is owned by CTVglobemedia) has a long schadenfreudian story about this latest announcement like they have about Canwest’s recent difficulties.