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New owners of Canwest papers targeting business offices after slashing editorial, advertising jobs

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Source: cwa-scacanada.ca

Postmedia Network, having just slashed scores of jobs in editorial and advertising departments across the former Canwest chain, is now turning its sights on the newspapers’ business offices.

The new company’s owners plan to begin centralizing the finance departments’ functions in Toronto and Winnipeg by the end of January. Staff reductions will be accomplished through buyouts and layoffs.

While Postmedia says it does not envision departmental closures, it is unknown how many business office jobs will be lost across the chain, which includes the flagship National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun and Province, and the Victoria Times-Colonist.

Cuts in a newspaper’s business office will undoubtedly reduce local service and mean fewer connections between the paper and the people it serves in the community.

 “While any staff cuts are lamentable, we are particularly concerned about the editorial jobs that have been eliminated,” says Arnold Amber, Director of CWA Canada, which has members at five of the former Canwest papers. “Cutting reporters, photographers and editors certainly does not improve the quality of a newspaper.”

Although Postmedia is justifying the cuts by saying it wants to focus on a move to digital media, getting rid of experienced journalists is a recipe for mediocrity, says Amber.

“Loyal readers of these newspapers, advertisers and business customers expect high-quality local service and news coverage. If all of that is diminished, it does not bode well for the future of that community’s newspaper,” he notes.

The cuts have been swift and deep since Postmedia’s new fiscal year began on Sept. 1. CEO Paul Godfrey, while acknowledging that nearly all of the 11 Canwest dailies are profitable, is looking to recover $40 million to help pay down debt incurred when Postmedia bought the chain from Canwest.

CWA Canada has determined that Postmedia has shed at least 228 employees, including managers, across the chain. While it is difficult to obtain precise figures, the union estimates there have been about 100 cuts in advertising and at least 70 in editorial. Overall, CWA Canada has lost about 50 members as a result of the cuts.

Last year, Canwest chopped almost 800 jobs or 13 per cent of its workforce, while struggling under creditor protection, leaving Postmedia to inherit about 5,000 employees.

The most recent cuts were achieved by either buyouts or layoffs, with the former dominating at unionized newspapers and the latter at non-union papers.

One source told CWA Canada that all the cuts at the non-unionized Calgary Herald were layoffs. “Nobody was offered a buyout in the Herald newsroom; they were just laid off. Management announced that 35 jobs would be chopped, including eight in the newsroom.” The source adds: “The deskers (copy editors) feel like the sword of Damocles is hanging over them because management classifies them as ‘non-content providers’ and considers them expendable.”

This suggests that Postmedia is prepared to have its reporters and correspondents publish directly to the Web, without an experienced copy editor in between, ensuring an article’s accuracy, balance and, in many cases, legally acceptable reportage.

The Cuts
Calgary Herald

Jobs cut: 35 layoffs / 8 editorial positionsEdmonton Journal

Jobs cut: 20 (2 layoffs) / 8 editorial positions

Montreal Gazette

Jobs cut: 27 (23 union) / 10 editorial positions (includes 2 retirements)

Ottawa Citizen

Jobs cut: 42 (17 union) / 10 editorial positions

Regina Leader-Post

Jobs cut: 18 (3 layoffs) / 3 editorial positions

 Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Jobs cut: 9 (unconfirmed)Vancouver Sun The Province

Jobs cut: 50 (48 union) / 20 editorial positions

Victoria Times-Colonist

Jobs cut: 12 (9 Guild members and 3 CEP)

2 editorial positions

Windsor Star

Jobs cut: 8 / 7 editorial positions

Newspapers must find ways to sell content

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John Shmuel, Financial Post · Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010

Source: financialpost.com

Newspapers will certainly survive well into the future, but that survival is going to rely on finding increasingly new and innovative ways to monetize their content — and not just putting up pay walls.

Finding a happy middle was the message that came through most strongly during the Media in Transformation conference held in Toronto Thursday which was hosted by the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Paul Godfrey, chief executive of Postmedia Network Inc., which owns the National Post, and one of the event’s speakers, said right now all eyes are on newspapers such as The New York Times, which will put up its pay wall in January.

“You know, I think everyone is exploring pay walls. Everybody seems to be waiting to see what happens,” he said in an interview after his speech. “The fact is that that’s going to be one of the big questions.”

Keeping readers, and drawing in new ones after a pay wall goes up meanwhile elicited different opinions from a panel that sat down to debate whether readers should be paying for content at all.

One of the panelists, Andrew Madden, who is Google’s head of strategic partnerships, said newspapers risk bleeding off readership if they erect pay walls that make them invisible to search engines.

“You need to think strategically on how to use search engines and pay walls,” he said.

Mr. Godfrey stressed that innovation was an important facet in monetizing the content of newspapers.

He cited an example where a newspaper might have a restaurant review section, and allow other users to comment or submit their own reviews. In order to monetize the content, the newspaper could charge restaurant owners to post their own submissions about their business, or even post their menus.

“Restaurateurs don’t traditionally advertise in newspapers, it’s just too expensive for them,” he said. “But something like that gives them an opportunity to be able to use our platform.”

Mr. Godfrey also said it was crucial that the newspaper industry direct capital spending toward improving digital con-tent, rather than spending it on traditional technologies.

“We can’t be spending it on printing presses because, A, they’re very costly, and you can get a printing press that’s 20 years old and it’s still in great working condition,” he said. “But now printing presses have colour on every page for example, so you’re behind the times five years after you spend millions and millions of dollars.”

And whereas improving the traditional newspaper medium will likely only serve to impress current readers, Mr. Godfrey said increasing capital spending on digital content and delivery will help build an audience, since digital content can engage audiences in ways newspapers can’t.

Of course, funding digital content won’t matter unless people are willing to pay for it. The good news, however, is that most of the event’s speakers believed that readers are willing to pay for quality content.

“If you have exclusive content, niche content — people are drawn to that,” said Lynne Brennan, senior vice-president of circulation for Dow Jones & Company. “If you provide readers with something they want, they’re going to pay for it.”

jshmuel@nationalpost.com

Unionization in Canada rises to 4.2 million workers

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Women experienced disproportionately more gains in unionized jobs.

by NUPGE

Ottawa, November 8, 2010 — Statistics Canada reports that just over 4.2 million employees belonged to a union in Canada during the first half of 2010, up 64,000 from the same period last year.

Union membership rose at a slightly faster pace than total employment. As a result, the nation’s unionization rate edged up from 29.5 percent in 2009 to 29.6 percent in 2010.

The largest gain in rates occurred in British Columbia while the rate was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador (37.9 percent).

The average number of paid employees during the first half of 2010 reached 14.3 million, up by 171,000 over the same period last year.The gap in unionization rates between men and women widened slightly in 2010. Women experienced disproportionately more gains in unionized jobs. Consequently, their unionization rate inched up to 30.9 percent, while the rate for men remained constant at 28.2 percent.Just over 2.2 million women belonged to a union in 2010, compared with just under 2.0 million men.The unionization rate for permanent employees increased to 30.0 percent between 2009 and 2010 while it decreased to 27.3 percent for those in non-permanent jobs. The rate rose in larger firms (100 employees or more), declined among those with 20 to 99 employees and remained constant for firms with fewer than 20 employees.The provincial picture was mixed. Unionization rates fell in four provinces: Nova Scotia, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The largest gain in rates occurred in British Columbia while the rate was highest in Newfoundland and Labrador (37.9 percent).Among industries, rates were highest in public administration (68.5 percent) and education (67.0 percent). Notable declines occurred in agriculture, health care and social assistance and education. Notable increases occurred in transportation and warehousing and public administration.An average of 288,000 employees were not union members but were covered by a collective agreement in the first half of 2010, down from last year’s total of 300,000.In 2009, there were 157 strikes or lockouts that involved a loss in working time of at least 10 person-days. This was the second lowest number on record. At the same time, 67,000 workers were involved in these strikes or lockouts and just under 2.2 million person-days in working time were lost — the highest number of days lost since 2005.

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada’s largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good.Website: http://www.nupge.ca/ 

 

Indicators of a Healthy Workplace

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Canadian Labour and Business Centre Leadership Survey

Management and labour leaders in the public and private sectors, asked what they

considered were the most important indicators of a healthy workplace, identified the

following top five indicators:

Business/Management Labour

Good Working Relationships (70%) Good Working Relationships (75%)

High Morale (69%) High Morale (70%)

Ability to Attract & Retain Employees

(60%)

Balance of Work & Family Pressures

(52%)

Low Absenteeism (59%) Safe/Secure Workplaces (51%)

High Motivation (56%) Manageable Stress (46%)

There was clear agreement among management and labour in both the private and public

sectors that the two most important indicators of a healthy workplace were good working

relationships and high morale. Seventy percent, or more, of management and labour

leaders cited both of these. The figures were generally higher in the public sector: good

working relationships were identified by 76 percent of managers and 79 percent of union

leaders compared to 67 percent and 70 percent respectively in the private sector. High

morale was identified by 68 percent of managers and 75 percent of union leaders in the

public sector. The comparable private sector figures were 70 percent and 65 percent

respectively (Charts 1, 2, 3).

The third and fourth ranked choices differed distinctly between management and labour.

Among management, 60 percent indicated that the ability to attract and retain employees

was an important indicator of a healthy workplace and 59 percent indicated that low

absenteeism was a similar indicator. By contrast, labour leaders indicated that balancing

work and family pressures (52 percent) and a safe and secure workplace (51 percent)

were signs of a healthy workplace (Chart 1). The latter was more important in the private

sector, reflecting the differing nature of production.

Generally, these secondary choices were similar in both the private and public sectors,

with the exception that the fourth ranked choices were different in the public sector

(Charts 2 and 3). Public sector management identified high motivation as an important

indicator, whereas public sector labour leaders cited manageable stress as an important

sign of a healthy workplace.

The differences between management and labour may not be as great as these results

suggest. With their traditional perspectives on the workplace the two parties will attach

importance to different measures. Management may tend to focus on performance

measures (absenteeism, recruitment, retention) whereas labour leaders are more

concerned with the impact on the people who are inputs into the production process

(work and family pressures, stress, and safety). Furthermore, different measures may be

linked (e.g., motivation and stress). Highly motivated individuals tend to be able to

manage the demands of their work; being able to manage stress can in turn promote high

motivation. The two perspectives of management and labour may therefore reflect

similar concerns; but each focuses on a different symptom. Consequently, the reported

results for management and labour may overstate their differences in their overall

concerns at the workplace.

Media Decoder: Traffic Bait Doesn’t Bring Ad Clicks

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 A research company says the most profitable articles engage readers, with topics like unemployment and mortgage rates high on the list.

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: October 17, 2010
Sure, articles about Lindsay Lohan’s repeat trips to rehabilitation and Brett Favre’s purported sexual peccadilloes generate loads of reader traffic, but do they actually make decent money for the Web sites that publish them?   read entire story here

We thought the internet was killing print. But it isn’t

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Peter Preston

The Observer, Sunday 17 October 2010

There is no clear correlation between a rise in internet traffic and a fall in newspaper circulation. Some papers are growing in both formats, others are succeeding in neither, according to new research.
The woe, as usual, is more or less unconfined. September’s daily newspaper circulation figures, as audited by ABC, are down 5.31% in a year: Sunday totals are 6.7% off the pace. And, of course, we all know what’s to blame. It’s the infernal internet, the digital revolution, the iPad, laptop and smartphone taking over from print. Online is the coming death of Gutenberg’s world, inexorable, inevitable, the enemy of all we used to hold dear. Except that it isn’t.
A fascinating new piece of research this week looks in detail at the success of newspaper websites and attempts to find statistical correlations with sliding print copy sales. As one goes up, the other must go down, surely? These are the underpinnings of transition.
But “in the UK at least, there is no such correlation”, reports the number-crunching analyst Jim Chisholm. “This is true at both a micro-level in terms of UK newspaper titles and groups and at a macro-level comparing national internet adoption with circulation performance. Indeed, the opposite case could be argued: that newspapers that do well on the web also do better in print… Understandably worried traditional journalists should know that the internet is not a threat.”
Chisholm’s aim is to prod British publishers into renewed web action – citing the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent particularly for producing the highest ratios of monthly unique visitors to their sites when compared against print circulations. (The Guardian, with a 125 unique-visitor-to-print ratio, is far higher than any other European paper he can find, and also generates over three times the number of UK page impressions relative to its circulation). Moreover, UK national papers as a whole score well on such tests, clear top of the EU league and walloping German performance nine times over.
Could they, and British regionals, do better, though? Indeed they could. “The issue is not one of total audience, but of frequency and loyalty – and online, as in print, newspapers are great at attracting readers from time to time, but they don’t attract them often enough, and they don’t hang around.”
At which point, perhaps, it’s time to look at the flipside of Chisholm’s findings. If the name of one game is frequency and loyalty – via investment, innovation, constant linkages and promotions – might that not also be an answer to drooping print sales as well? If you reject the net as an agent of newsprint doom, then reverse scenarios also apply.
Go back to ABC circulations before newspaper websites really began – say September 1995 – to make the point. One, the Daily Star, is doing better than 15 years ago with no net presence to speak of: 757,080 copies in 1995 against 864,315 last month. The Daily Mail, at 2,144,229 this September against 1,866,197, is well up, with a website growing by more than 60% a year. Some – say the Mirror, down from 2,559, 636 to 1,213,323 – have suffered direly. See: no correlations?
The Guardian, Times and Telegraph are all down by around a third, and the Sun has lost more than a million: but again there’s no mechanical relationship here. Price matters. It always does. But investment and innovation matter as well. They always do. And you can’t help by being struck how little of that goes on in print these days. A pull-out section vanishes, and comes back. Single-theme front pages come and go at the Indy. The Telegraph still looks for somewhere else to put its features. Nothing much changes. Another researcher (at Enders Analysis) calculates that papers have lopped 20% of the pages they put in a decade ago in order to bulwark sharply rising cover prices.
No correlations here, either? Nothing to prove that the more effort and talent you put in, the more you get out? More, more, more … and more research, please.

Times Colonist Employees’ United Way Campaign Kick-Off

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Just a quick note to remind our members that the Times Colonist Employees’ United Way Campaign is fast approaching. In these times of economic uncertainty, those hit hardest are those who can least afford it. We are fortunate here at the Times Colonist in that our regular employees have the opportunity to make contributions through payroll deduction. This makes it much easier to make an impact while minimizing the hit to our pocketbooks. Please give your canvassers a moment when they come around to you. Whether you’re a long-time contributor or a brand new donor this year, any amount will be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

 Sincerely,

Victoria Joint Council of Newspaper Unions.

CEP Local 2000 – Newspaper Guild Local 30223 -TNG-CWA Local 30403 (Mailers)

“United We Bargain, Divided We Beg”