Post Media layoffs

[Slava]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

A good friend is the editor in chief of a daily newspaper. He's already lost one job in Ontario due to cuts so he moved to Alberta. He says every obituary represents a lost reader. Younger folks don't read papers like their parents did.

Originally Posted by Locke

Wow. No way! Is he sure?

I think that I'm the only person I know who is a newspaper subscriber at this point. I know the days of them literally printing a book every day and dropping it off at my house are limited. I realise that I can find these articles online for free, but the other issue is that some of these people are just good at what they do. One of my clients who worked for the Herald told me a few years ago how the classified section used to pay for the whole paper; all of the ads and subscribers fees were basically profits. Obviously with kijiji and other sites that ship has long since sailed.

[Senator Clay Davis]

I'm sure this will be easy to do...



http://www.j-source.ca/article/postm...sroom-meetings

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Locke

He can be bitter, but I imagine hes going to get an unreal payout.

Will they get any severance would be my question.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Dion

Will they get any severance would be my question.

Why wouldn't they unless they were on contract?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Dion

Will they get any severance would be my question.

Oh yeah, Post Media is a Union shop. They're going to get PAID!

I did the taxes last year for a few Post Media workers, even the unskilled low- paid guys got huge severances.

I'm talking a couple year's wages.

[TheScorpion]

George will be missed, great writer.

Wonder about Francis?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

George will be missed, great writer.

Wonder about Francis?

About what? Will he be missed? I doubt it.

Probably not the greatest time to flush his morning show career.

[TheScorpion]

Originally Posted by Locke

About what? Will he be missed? I doubt it.

Probably not the greatest time to flush his morning show career.

I wasn't questioning whether Francis would be missed - wondering whether he still has a job.

[Nammer403]

Damn, I liked his content

[morgin]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I'm sure this will be easy to do...



http://www.j-source.ca/article/postm...sroom-meetings

How hard can this be? Take a herald article, sprinkle with copious uses of the phrases silly hall, bikes lanes more like socialism hipster lanes, NDP hates Alberta, LEAVE ROB FORD ALONE, and bam, sun article.

[TheScorpion]

So wait a minute.

Are the Herald and the Sun forming one big newspaper, or will the two continue to operate as separate entities?

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

So wait a minute.

Are the Herald and the Sun forming one big newspaper, or will the two continue to operate as separate entities?

If I'm reading this right, there is going to be one generic article produced for both papers, and then the editor of the specific paper will splice in a few things to add their own style to them (like the Sun adding Silly Hall in or whatever). There's basically no competition at all now, everything you read is from one source but slightly manipulated.

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

So heartwarming to hear the company refer to its product as "content"

[SofaProfessor]

I used to freelance for a newspaper until they decided they wanted to lower freelancer rates. There are countless places online where a half decent writer can make twice as much as a newspaper will pay. So they're seeing a pretty steady rise in wages for even decent writers, never mind top talent. They're also seeing reduced readership and advertiser dollars. It's a perfect storm and we're basically all just watching the slow death of an entire industry.

What a bunch of newspapers are doing now is hiring the cheapest freelancers they can get, often not even based in Canada, to repurpose stories from the wires like Canadian Press. Well, if you want to read Canadian Press stories I can think of dozens of websites where you can do that immediately after the story drops. Or, I guess you can wait until tomorrow for the traditional newspaper to be printed and delivered in order to read the exact same thing that's online for free.

It sucks to see people lose their jobs like this because management has failed to modernize their industry in a meaningful way. And by modernize, I don't mean put your repurposed Canadian Press stories behind a pay wall on your website.

[Hack&Lube]

The Herald has been trying for years to sell or lease their monstrous building full of giant printing presses. The entire industry was designed for a different century. I read more compelling investigative journalism, introspectives, and human interest stories from people who post daily on Reddit.

I feel like the future of journalism is collaborative communities like that and here to an extent, where people collaborate to investigate interest stories or people in positions of knowledge and access leak information out to the web.

The leviathan of newspapers and print media putting ink on paper in formats that no human being can hold or read comfortably should face natural extinction.

[Matty81]

Too bad he is a good writer in my opinion, I always enjoyed his stuff.

So far it seems like mostly herald/journal staff getting laid off. I saw they canned the edmonton journal's editor as well. So is the strategy is to make the herald and journal read more like the sun?

Last I heard the herald had about 4x as many readers, so from a business point of view that would be a quick way to drive your business into the gutter even more.

[Matty81]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The Herald has been trying for years to sell or lease their monstrous building full of giant printing presses. The entire industry was designed for a different century. I read more compelling investigative journalism, introspectives, and human interest stories from people who post daily on Reddit.

I feel like the future of journalism is collaborative communities like that and here to an extent, where people collaborate to investigate interest stories or people in positions of knowledge and access leak information out to the web.

The leviathan of newspapers and print media putting ink on paper in formats that no human being can hold or read comfortably should face natural extinction.

I agree that newspapers as a business model are done for but relying on reddit for journalism is scary. You are taking in a lot of unsubstantiated bull#### on there, and rarely are you seeing both sides of a story which a professional journalist has an onus to do. Most of the time you're not even fully getting one side of a story, who is going to answer an e-mail or phone call from a redditer and comment on a story? It's not that professional journalists are perfect but to compare unfavourably to redditers is harsh.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Matty81

I agree that newspapers as a business model are done for but relying on reddit for journalism is scary. You are taking in a lot of unsubstantiated bull#### on there, and rarely are you seeing both sides of a story which a professional journalist has an onus to do. Most of the time you're not even fully getting one side of a story, who is going to answer an e-mail or phone call from a redditer and comment on a story?

That's only a problem if you believe everything that you read. The people who cry foul about Wikipedia's accuracy are the kind of people who lack the ability to understand how to separate BS from truth or check the clearly marked references to validate the information prior to digestion. There are nuances and biases to every piece of information you come across. One good thing about internet forums is that even if you have a hack come along posting something widely inaccurate, that people will come along to either point out the errors or slowly add more nuance and push the information back in the right direction. Everybody who reads it is free to comment, correct and expand the topic. You take all the knowledge and generate your own understanding of things, not simply consume and digest original stream of information.

I would rather have a wide breadth of information, collaborated on and contributed from a million expert users than something a minimum wage journalism major writes which was then processed through an editor in a tweed suit and then permanently printed onto a piece of newsprint to be flushed down the toilet. The resulting CP thread about clogged office toilets was likely more informative and compelling than the original content was.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I read more compelling investigative journalism, introspectives, and human interest stories from people who post daily on Reddit.

I feel like the future of journalism is collaborative communities like that and here to an extent, where people collaborate to investigate interest stories or people in positions of knowledge and access leak information out to the web.

You're right that the old model was bound for extinction. But let's not kid ourselves that what replaces it will be better. Cheaper? Certainly. Can't get much cheaper than free. But I'm enough of a dinosaur to believe that you get what you pay for.

So how will we get information about how our governments and businesses are behaving? Opinion columns spit out by independent bloggers while they sit at home in their bathrobe are no substitute for hard news. You need to know actual stuff. Talk to actual people. Do research that is not fun. And be held accountable professionally and legally for what you write. These 'people in positions of knowledge and access' will be insiders motivated by vendettas and private agendas. Of course, those sorts of people often acted as sources under the traditional news model. But professional journalists exercised scepticism and care dealing with them, and had enough expertise on their beat to know when they were being played.

Essentially, I think hard news will die along with the newspaper industry. What we'll be left with is partisan opinion-pieces spackled with a veneer of cherry-picked data. Our public policy and civic engagement will be based on sources of information with as much legitimacy and credibility as internet forum flame-wars.

[heep223]

I should have known that this topic would prompt a lot of old men yelling at clouds.

Even if they have some good points.