Monthly Archives: February 2013

Transcontinental Media squeezing freelancers: why this matters to us all

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Source  CMG  •  POSTED ON  February 20, 2013

Transcontinental Media, publisher of magazines such as Elle Canada and The Hockey News as well as dozens of community newspapers across the country, is trying to impose a harsh new contract on freelancers. The conditions Transcontinental is seeking undermine everyone in the sector.

Transcontinental wants the same rights it gets for the work of employees and highly-paid contractors. The catch? It wants to keep paying low editorial freelance rates.

Freelancers are being asked to sign over all rights to the pieces they contribute, on all platforms and all brands the company owns, in all countries, forever. Transcontinental is also seeking the right to change the work in any way it wants and either leave the freelancer’s byline off – or, perhaps worse, leave it on.

Please spread the word about this – especially if you know anyone who freelances for Transcontinental. The Guild is organizing with fed-up freelancers to fix the contract. Write to Keith Maskell (keith@cmg.ca).

There’s more to this story, which you can find on Story Board here.

Black Press Lower Mainland bargaining suspended

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Source: mediaunion.ca

Bargaining between Local 2000 and Black Press Lower Mainland was suspended Tuesday after company negotiators, for the second time, presented the union with a proposal for a five-year contract with no general wage increases.

The company has proposed a one-time lump sum payment of 1% effective April 1, 2013, but only to employees at the top of their pay scale, prorated on an employee’s fulltime equivalency. In addition the company has proposed a one-time lump sum payment of 1.5% effective April 1, 2014, but only to employees at the top of their pay scale, prorated on an employee’s fulltime equivalency.

Under this company proposal there would be no general increases to the wage grid in the five-year period between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2015.

The company is saying it needs this freeze in the wage grid in order to compete with wages paid at Glacier Media.

The company did agree to getting rid of the bottom rung of the bindery wage grid, which would have the effect of changing the starting rate from $10.58 per hour to $12.08 per hour. This would only affect new bindery employees and those currently paid $10.58 per hour.

The company also agreed to change the Shipper/Receiver rate to the same grid as General Clerk. This change would see the top rate for that job increasing from $17.98 per hour (after 2 years) to $19.74 per hour (after 4 years).

Under the company proposal there would also be a few minor concessions. The joint composing room board for Tri-City/Maple Ridge/Burnaby/New West would be split into three boards. As well the company is asking for a weakening of our “hot goods” clause in the contract.

Your bargaining committee believes the company’s general wage proposal to be unacceptable. It has decided to spend the next two weeks consulting with the membership.

Please email Vice President Gary Engler at gengler@mediaunion.ca with your comments or questions or talk to one of the bargaining committee members.

Members of your bargaining committee are:

Debbie Irvine — Abbotsford bindery

Jessica Unger — Campbell Heights bindery

Channy Dhillon — Abbotsford pressroom

Eileen Jarrett — Peace Arch News composing

Rich Weldon — Langley composing

Bonnie Pierotti — Abbotsford classified

Phil Melnychuk  — Maple Ridge editorial

Copy editors laid off more than other newsroom staffers—but can newspapers’ credibility afford the cut?

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Source: j-source.ca

Kim Covert remembers the “dead silence,” broken by muffled crying.

She and two dozen other copy editors were clumped around the large central table in Postmedia Network Inc.’s newswire office in Ottawa. The group, which gathered national and international news and copy edited it for use in Postmedia newspapers across the country, gaped at the company’s vice-president of editorial operations, Lou Clancy, as he announced Canadian Press was taking over their jobs. It was cheaper; they were fired.

“We all kind of looked at each other and thought, ‘What the fuck?’ because most of us hadn’t expected any such thing,” says Covert. “My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, my mortgage,’ and my stomach just fell.”

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Newsosaur: Why Digital Natives Hate Newspapers

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Source: editorandpublisher.com

by: Alan D. Mutter

Several years ago, The Washington Post convened a series of focus groups to learn why most people younger than 45 did not subscribe to the newspaper — a problem persisting to this day throughout the overwhelmingly print-centric industry.

It’s not that people didn’t like the Post, reported the American Journalism Review in a 2005 article describing the research project. The problem was that the respondents — many of whom happily consumed news on digital devices — drew the line at piles of old newspapers cluttering up their lives. According to a Post executive quoted by the AJR, more than one respondent declared: “I don’t want that hulking thing in my house.”

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