Tag Archives: job cuts

| Business, Media, Video

Goodbye, Rocky


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

The Rocky Mountain News published its final paper this morning. Its owner shut the paper down after no offers were made to buy it. Though the paper’s employees were given less than a day’s notice, they put out a video commemorating the Rocky, which includes interviews with employees. It’s worth a watch despite its repetitive soundtrack.

More coverage from the New York Times and OJR, which seems to think (somewhat naively I think) that someone else could profit off this by starting up a new online-only news source. Poynter also has some analysis of why the paper had to shut down (and couldn’t just go online-only).

What’s truly sad, though, is that this won’t be the last newspaper closing this year. We’ve barely scratched through the tip of the iceberg.

| Media

Courrier Laval loses half its reporting staff

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.

| Business, Media

Metro expects journalists to work for free

In case you needed more evidence that news organizations are taking advantage of the naiveté of young journalism students to reduce their payroll costs, the Metro newspaper in Toronto has fired its paid staff and replaced them with but are keeping their unpaid interns.

One of these days, newspapers (especially crappy ones like Metro) will lose that prestige that allows them to abuse students who are so desperate to get into their dream career they’ll work for free.

UPDATE (Feb. 11): One of those laid-off journalists writes about his bosses escorting him from the building on his personal blog.

| Montreal, Radio

12 jobs to be cut at Info 690

Corus today announced it is cutting 12 people at its Info 690 all-news Montreal radio station, representing about half of its 30 unionized employees. This comes about six months after it decided to effectively shut down anglo sister station 940 News, laying off 18 people.

Corus says it’s reorganizing the station, though it’s unclear if that reorganization will be as severe as what happened to CINW. They hope to avoid layoffs through attrition and voluntary leaves.

Still, those people amazed that a staff of 30 can run an all-news radio station will be even more impressed if a staff of half that can continue doing so.

UPDATE: La Presse has a story about the job cuts, which also affect 10 administrative employees.

| Media

Another day of newspaper pink slips

The Globe got 60 people to agree to buyouts, but that still wasn’t enough, and they’ve laid off 30 more for a total reduction of 90. The cuts were previously announced, but now we know a third of them are involuntary.

Meanwhile, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, which we’ll remind you is newly without competition, is firing a quarter of its newsroom staff, confirming previous rumours.

| Business, Media, Montreal

NDG Monitor to go online-only

NDG Monitor

Less than a year after it relaunched itself, the NDG Monitor newspaper will stop printing as of next week and focus exclusively on its website. The decision results in the layoff of two salespeople and a newspaper manager, but not the editor, reporter or freelance columnists.

The newspaper dates back to 1926, though its downfall began in 1996 when it was acquired by Transcontinental. In an effort to save costs, the community newspaper chain (which owns just about all of the community weeklies in the Montreal area, except The Suburban) cut staff and increased “efficiencies” by having the newspapers share content and design. It even went so far as to rename the Monitor the West End Chronicle, essentially making it a zoned edition of another newspaper (and confusing plenty of readers).

Transcon brought the name Monitor back last year, but by then it was too late. The paper had lost all its personality, and people stopped reading it.

I’d wish it luck online, but the website is so crappy (Transcon cookie-cutter messiness that’s more interested in pushing other Transcon products than featuring local content) that without a significant redesign I’m pretty sure it’s on its way to failure as well.

The Monitor’s final print issue will be Thursday, Feb. 5.

| Business, In the news, Media

Yes We Got Canned!

As expected, various media outlets used the insane hype of the Obama inauguration to take out the trash and announce layoffs, hopeful that the news will be buried in a corner at the back of the business section with all the Obamamania coverage going on.

But the big cuts are south of the border, with Clear Channel cutting 1,850 jobs (9%), Warner Brothers cutting 800 (10%) and the Los Angeles Times planning to cut an unspecified number.

| Business, Media

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.

| Business, Media

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).

| Business, Media

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.