90 jobs lost as company merges papers in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa
Approximately 90 jobs across the country were lost on Jan. 26, 2016 as part of a merger across a number of Postmedia Network’s daily newspapers. The Ottawa Sun and Ottawa Citizen now share a newsroom and resources, while a central rewrite desk is responsible for altering stories for different brands and platforms.
Tabloid and broadsheet newsrooms in Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton now all share the same office. However, both of Postmedia’s Toronto papers, the Toronto Sun and the National Post, remain separate.
A total of 35 jobs in Edmonton, 25 in Calgary, 12 in Ottawa, and five at the National Post have been downsized.
The merger comes as a result of financial decline at Postmedia for the past several quarters. Coupled with a large debt, which accumulated following the purchase of the entire Sun chain of newspapers from Quebecor in late 2014, for approximately $316 million, the merger was a necessary restructuring move to remain financially solvent.
Veteran Ottawa Citizen reporter Chris Cobb spoke to The Ontarion via email to explain what the merger means for the Citizen and the Sun. He also discussed the future of journalism as a whole.
The Ontarion: How will the merger and layoffs affect your paper’s ability to do their jobs in exposing wrongdoing and bringing forth relevant issues through stories?
Chris Cobb: It depends how the staff is deployed. The Citizen and Sun staffs are now one unit which, to be positive about it, has resulted in a small increase in the number of people in the newsroom. It’s important to emphasize that this amalgamation only happened days ago. The Editor-in-Chief of the Citizen had already announced his intention to move on, and the City Editor, to whom all reporters report, has also announced her resignation. So the short answer to your question is: We don’t know what the incoming newsroom administration will want, but the types of stories you describe are a vital part of the role these major newspapers have. It’s also important to remember that, despite the cuts, the Citizen/Sun has the biggest newsroom in Ottawa—including the CBC. The same applies in Edmonton and Calgary.
TO: A week ago, the Guelph Mercury announced that their final published print edition will be released on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Is the move to digital the future of news? Or is the decline of print just a reaction to our struggling economy?
C.C.: Yes to your first question. Yes and no to your second. Print media has been negatively impacted because of the proliferation of alternate digital news sources, many of which are aggregators—meaning that they invest little or nothing in the gathering of news, but spread the work of others. Google is one example, but there are others. These are perceived as symbiotic relationships because the audience Google (for example) can generate is obviously massive. For better or worse, news organizations tend to be happy [pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]…share a newsroom and resources…[/pullquote]
[about], and even crave, this attention. The vital thing to remember is that someone, somewhere has to create the content, whether it’s presented in original form or aggregated by others. It’s also important to know that when something significant occurs—a 9-11 or Parliament Hill shooting—people always turn first to their trusted source. They don’t go to bloggers or others who would have no outlet for their views if it wasn’t for a computer. They won’t go to Google, or BuzzFeed, etc., but to the Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, CBC, etc We know this from the website traffic and the demand for the printed product. For example, the Citizen was just one of dozens of daily newspapers in North America that had to print thousands of extra copies to meet demand in the post-9-11 days. It was the same after the Parliament Hill shootings. So this tells you that maintaining the bond of trust between an established news source and its readers, listeners, [and] viewers is precious.TO: For an aspiring journalist, the decline of print is frightening. Could you comment, or perhaps give advice, to an aspiring journalist trying to break into the field of journalism despite its evolving realities?
C.C.: As I said above, the one reality is that “content is king.” Someone has to research and write the stories or there is nothing to sell (…) People often lose sight of that reality. And delivery systems have to have something to deliver—reliable, ethically gathered, and well-produced and written content. So my advice to journalism students is this: You are entering a profession in transition. Find a good weekly newspaper and learn the craft of gathering and writing news. Learn how to shoot and edit video and watch the business evolve. Then move on and take your skills and experience with you. The market will ultimately welcome you.