Tag Archives: The Gazette

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Montreal Gazette returns to being The Gazette after 9 years as a blue square

Two newspapers, one with a blue square "Montreal Gazette" logo on the front and the other with an Old English-style "The Gazette" logo

The Montreal Gazette’s front page, before (left) and after (right)

The Gazette is The Gazette again.

On Thursday, my employer brought back the familiar Old English-style logo that had graced its cover for decades (until Postmedia’s 2014 design changes that unified layout styles in broadsheets across the country). Friday’s paper was the first with the old logo, combined with a large Aislin cartoon to mark the occasion.

An editor’s note that appears in a wrap around Friday’s edition and was also posted online says the change “is more than symbolic, and serves as a powerful reminder that although the journalism of today is different than in generations past — and even though we tell stories using digital tools that would never have been imaginable in the 18th century — our high standards and promise to seek the truth remain the same.”

Postmedia also issued a press release on the matter. The rebrand (unrebrand?) comes with a new tagline: “There with you then. Here with you now” — which gets added to a long list of Gazette marketing slogans including “The English Language, daily.” “The Gazette IS Montreal” and “Words matter.”

Besides the logo, and a reconfiguration of the skyboxes to fit its new shape, the paper is the same as it was on Thursday. But there’s a bit of a morale boost among its staff.

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The end of the Monday newspaper

If you’re a print subscriber to the Montreal Gazette, you didn’t get a copy delivered this morning.

It’s not an error, it was a choice by my employer Postmedia, which has also ended print distribution of Monday editions of the Sun and Province in Vancouver, Herald and Sun in Calgary, Journal and Sun in Edmonton, and Citizen and Sun in Ottawa.

“The decision reflects the rapidly changing news consumption habits of our readers, the needs of our advertisers and the escalating costs of printing and delivering a printed product,” wrote Gerry Nott, Senior Vice President, Editorial, in a note published in those newspapers.

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| Media, Navel-gazing

For my newspaper, 15 years feels like a lifetime

It was 15 years ago today that I walked into the offices of The Gazette, got trained on how to use their software, and began my career as a professional copy editor.

More than a third of my life has been spent employed by this newspaper. And in that time, I’ve never wanted to do anything else, because there’s always something new.

In the past week, as I’ve been doing some pandemic-related cleaning up of old stuff, I went through some old issues I had lying around from years ago, and it amazes me how much this newspaper has changed in that decade and a half.

Of course, I’ve worked with many people who would tell stories about the good ol’ days of hot type, constantly-crashing computer systems, typesetters, darkrooms, presses in the building, managers working late with ashtrays on their desks and alcohol inside them. But those were long before my time, and those times changed mainly because of technology.

In the past 15 years, though, it’s the business that has changed the most. The revenue side of the newspaper business model has crumbled away, and years of cutbacks have forced a much more efficient newsroom that focuses on its core mission to the detriment of the rest. Meanwhile, the demands of an increasingly online readership (and the hope that digital revenue will take over from print before the business collapses) have meant more resources being focused on digital platforms that didn’t exist back then.

To give you an idea of how things have changed, I figured I’d give you a tour of The Gazette in May 2005.

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Yet more journalists of tomorrow

Concordia journalism bursary winners from 2014-15.

Concordia journalism bursary winners from 2015-16.

On Monday, the Montreal Gazette will be presenting awards in the form of bursaries to students in Concordia University’s Journalism department. As has become sort of a tradition for the past half-decade, I’m so lazy that I’m only now writing up my interviews with the winners of last year’s awards (which to be fair, were given out in January) and the year before (uhh, my dog ate it?).

I chatted with each of them briefly about their origins, their futures, and what they think about journalism. Here’s what they had to say:

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Montreal Gazette loses managing editor to Ottawa Citizen/Sun

Michelle Richardson, who in 2004 was a copy editing intern on the Montreal Gazette news desk, will become the next editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen and Sun, it was announced on Monday.

She succeeds Andrew Potter, who left as Citizen editor to return to academia — funny enough, at McGill in Montreal. Keith Bonnell, who was the Sun’s editor, will be deputy editor for the two papers’ merged newsroom.

The company says it hired her for the job mainly because of her success helping to guide the Gazette through a tough digital transition.

I won’t go into too much detail because she’s a close colleague, but I will say it sucks to be losing yet another strong, young talent, even if she’s staying in the Postmedia family.

Richardson was the copy editing intern the year before I was. So I just assume I’ll also be offered an editor-in-chief position some time in 2017.

UPDATE: Concordia University with a brief profile of Richardson.

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Dave Stubbs leaves Montreal Gazette to become columnist for NHL.com

Dave Stubbs, a veteran sports columnist for the Montreal Gazette who has been mainly covering hockey — with occasional sidesteps into auto racing and other sports where necessary — is leaving the paper, taking on a new job as a columnist for NHL.com.

The new job is pretty well a perfect fit for Stubbs, who has always had a thing for history and statistics and random bits of hockey trivia (particularly when it comes to goaltenders for some reason).

But it’s a loss for the Montreal Gazette, whose parent company Postmedia hasn’t had a lot of great news recently.

There’s no word yet on whether Stubbs will be replaced. The Gazette also counts on beat writer Pat Hickey and columnist Stu Cowan for Canadiens coverage, plus Herb Zurkowsky covering the Alouettes and boxing beats.

UPDATE: Stubbs writes his farewell column on the Professional Hockey Writers Association website, since he could not do so in the Gazette.

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Montreal Gazette adds NP section, makes Basem Boshra columnist

A little over a year after it “reimagined” itself with redesigns on four platforms, the Montreal Gazette — my employer — made some minor changes last week, particularly in print.

The daily “Context” section, which included national and world news stories as well as the editorial and opinion pages, has been eliminated, replaced by “NP in the Montreal Gazette”, a section of content from the National Post.

National Post section in the Montreal Gazette

National Post section in the Montreal Gazette

The NP section, which will be six to 12 pages long, is National Post content presented using the National Post stylesheet. It includes national and world news, opinions and columnists like Andrew Coyne, Michael Den Tandt and Christie Blatchford. Similar sections exist in the Edmonton Journal and Windsor Star, and should follow for other papers.

Doing national and international news this way saves resources because the layouts are identical and can be copy-pasted between the local papers. And it makes it look like you get a free National Post in your Gazette.

The change comes with some challenges though. The A section, which is now just local news plus one page of local editorial, letters and opinion, gets more of the ad stacks that leave oddly-shaped holes for news copy. (Insert joke about ads disappearing from newspapers here.) And since national and international news is in another section, it might be a challenge finding local news copy to fill those spaces, especially around the holidays when there are a lot more ads.

The Saturday paper is changing a bit. In addition to Context being gone, the Saturday Extra section is being retired, and its contents scattered into other sections:

  • The main feature story will occupy clear pages in the A section (and still get that big splash on A1)
  • The weekly Viewfinder photo will go to a page in Weekend Life with Dr. Joe Schwarcz’s chemistry column and Mark Abley’s Watchwords.
  • The Instagram challenge is moving to (usually) Page A2 with Josh Freed’s column
  • Montreal Diary is being discontinued
  • Local editorial, opinion and letters move to the A section
  • Andrew Coyne and other national Postmedia columnists go to the NP section

Saturday Extra has been in the Gazette since Feb. 25, 2006. And I admit to a bit of mourning for the demise of Montreal Diary, a section with short stories about the city. My first freelance story for the Gazette was a Diary story, and many other freelance writers got their start there. But after a decade, these things get old and I can’t honestly say it would necessarily be a bad idea to move on to other things.

Another change: Letters to the editor are no longer being posted online.

People who have comments or complaints are being asked to send them to feedback@montrealgazette.com.

Meanwhile, the Gazette has also added a city columnist, which it has been missing for a while. Basem Boshra, who has had many hats but was most recently the city editor, is now writing almost daily with his take on the news of the day. His first column, re-introducing himself, is here.

The Gazette has also launched its Christmas Fund campaign, including the daily anonymous profiles about needy families written by slightly less needy freelancers.

Oh, and since a bunch of people keep asking:

  • Don Macpherson is on leave, but is expected to return. Dan Delmar is filling in as a columnist in the meantime.
  • Stone Soup isn’t in the daily comics pages anymore because it’s no longer a daily comic. And the Gazette does not have the power to force Jan Eliot to work against her will.

Gazette 2.5 app

UPDATE (Nov. 30): Today the paper updated its smartphone app, combining the pull-full-stories-from-the-web functionality of the older app and the stories-written-specifically-for-smartphone aspect of the 2.0 version. This comes after many users complained that the 2.0 app didn’t let them read all the stories the Gazette published. Like with the NP section, the new functionality of the smartphone app started with the Edmonton Journal.

Confusingly, the app actually updates the 1.0 version in the App Store and Google Play. People who have the 2.0 app installed are being asked to delete that in favour of the other one.

Among the features of the new app, which is being referred to unofficially as “version 2.5”:

  • Live weather, with current condition visible on all pages and a full page of details provided by The Weather Network
  • Ability to turn notifications on and off from within the app
  • Continuous scrolling on stories instead of being broken up into pages
  • Font size preference (3 sizes)
  • A running count of the number of stories (X of YY) on each story
  • Better functionality for photos and videos (tap a photo to read the caption, ability to watch videos from within the app)
  • No more following stories to be updated when they change
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Postmedia throws in the towel on page-designed tablet apps

A final one-page edition of the Montreal Gazette iPad app asks people to download the old app instead.

A final one-page edition of the Montreal Gazette iPad app asks people to download the old app instead.

As traditional media, and newspapers in particular, attempt to deal with the rapidly changing technological universe by overhauling their business models, many experiments are being tried out. Some are successful, some are spectacular failures, and most fall somewhere in between.

It’s normal in a period of experimentation chaos that some of those experiments fail. And it’s with that mindset that Postmedia announced this week it is pulling the plug on new tablet applications it launched with the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette and Calgary Herald, instead reverting to an old application that provides a standardized template for every story, which it simply pulls automatically from the website.

The apps offered evening editions of content from each newspaper, including some national and international news that was done centrally for all three. The original plan was for every Postmedia local paper to get a similar app when it was “reimagined”.

Like the apps from La Presse and the Toronto Star, the “2.0” Postmedia apps involved a lot of work. A professional designer created each page (and most stories were told over multiple pages), which mixed photos, video, animations, graphics and all sorts of other multimedia and interactive elements to create a rich, visually appealing environment.

At its peak, the Gazette iPad app had seven people working on it exclusively full-time, including all of its designers. It was a significant investment (though nowhere near what La Presse or the Star are doing) at a time when otherwise the company was cutting back hard.

In the end, the audience — and advertising revenue — the app generated wasn’t sufficient to keep it going. When it came to Edmonton’s turn to reimagine itself on four platforms, the plan for a new tablet app was ditched. Instead, it would continue to use an older app that was fed stories automatically from the website without the need for human intervention.

The change in the tablet app was reflected in a change in strategy on another platform as well. A smartphone app in which each story was specifically written (or, more accurately, edited) for that platform also changed direction. The Edmonton Journal’s new app is a hybrid, offering some custom smartphone-friendly stories and others that are fed automatically from the website. The other newspapers’ apps will follow its lead, unless there’s another change in strategy before then.

Both tablets and smartphones can also still use the newspapers’ websites, which are responsive and readable on those platforms. The fact that so many of them choose that option is another reason for the change.

Postmedia, like Torstar, Gesca and others, is experimenting. In the big picture, it’s a good thing. But when something of such quality fails, and especially when it’s not clear why (though everyone has their theories), it’s no less sad and frustrating.

I’ll miss you, pretty app.

| Media, Navel-gazing

CROP poll of how anglos and francos drink is garbage, based on sample of 30 people

Breakdown of results of CROP poll show sample size of 31 for anglo Montrealers.

Breakdown of results of CROP poll show sample size of 31 for non-francophone Montrealers.

This morning, Éduc’alcool, an organization devoted to moderation in alcohol consumption, released the results of a poll it commissioned from polling firm CROP related to how people in Quebec drink.

The results were offered to the media under embargo yesterday, and stories appear today in the Journal de Montréal, La Presse, Métro, Rouge FM, Radio-Canada, CJAD and elsewhere that focus on interesting results outlined in the organization’s press release: that there’s a significant difference in how francophones and non-francophones in Montreal drink. Francophones drink more and more often than the rest of the city.

You won’t find a story about this in the Montreal Gazette, despite how relevant this kind of information is to its readership. It’s not because there wasn’t a journalist to cover it — a story was written about it and was set to be given good play in today’s paper. But I had it killed last night.

Well, actually the city editor is the one who made the call, but I’m the reason why, and it sounds cooler to say “I had it killed” than “I noticed something and brought it up to an authority figure”.

The reason is simple: All that data about how non-francophones in Montreal drink is based on sample sizes of 30-40 people, which is laughably small for any survey. None of the conclusions on the difference between language groups could be taken seriously, and without that data there’s really no story here.

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Montreal Gazette hires Quebec City reporter Caroline Plante away from Global

Caroline Plante

Caroline Plante

Good anglophone Quebec City reporters are hard to find. Montrealers don’t want to move because their families are based here and there isn’t much going on for anglophones in the provincial capital. Plus, as the National Assembly reporter, the bar is higher. You need to be an expert (or at least very interested and motivated) in politics, and your French has to be impeccable.

So it’s no surprise that various Montreal anglo media have had trouble filling the position. CTV struggled for a while after the Kai Nagata fiasco before hiring Max Harrold from the Gazette. Now, with Harrold returning to Montreal, they’re back to figuring out what to do with the position.

The Montreal Gazette has been in a similar position since the departure of Kevin Dougherty last year. Young reporter Geoffrey Vendeville was recruited into the role, supplemented part-time by veteran Philip Authier doing analysis.

And then there’s Global News’s Caroline Plante, who has been filing reports for the little-watched Montreal newscast for the past nine years. It’s surprising that she hadn’t been poached by CTV or CBC during that time. (Global Montreal has surprisingly low turnover for a station at the bottom of the ratings — staff point to the feeling of family among its small news staff as a big reason nobody wants to leave for the competition.)

But Plante has finally gotten an offer she’s chosen not to refuse. The Montreal Gazette (my employer) has hired Plante to be its Quebec City bureau chief, effective Aug. 24.

In addition to her reporting duties, Plante is also president of the National Assembly Press Gallery.

The hiring will mean Global needs to find a new reporter in Quebec City. Its newsroom is undergoing other changes, with the departures of Domenic Fazioli, Richard Dagenais and possibly others, and the hiring of former Quebecor Media reporter Brian Daly and former City TV reporter Kelly Greig.