Category Archives: Newspapers

BC’s Local News Monopolies Grow with Recent Closures

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Source: thetyee.ca

Glacier’s Kamloops paper shut down despite company profit margins above 30 per cent.

Vancouver-based Glacier Media, which recently gave notice it will close the long-publishing Kamloops Daily News, enjoys profit margins above 30 per cent, according to financial reports available on its website. It also reportedly pays its top executives millions of dollars a year and pays its directors $1,000 for each meeting they attend.

Glacier, which publishes 37 newspapers in B.C., including six other dailies, served the required 60-days notice of closure under Section 54 of the B.C. Labour Code, according to Unifor Local 2000, which represents about 45 of its workers.

In a front-page story, the Daily News blamed its demise on financial pressures. “The reason for the closure is economic — revenues have declined and The Daily News has been unable to reduce expenses sufficiently to continue as a viable operation.” Daily News publisher Tim Shoults attributed the pending closure to a persistent inability to make ends meet.

“We have struggled for the last several years, worked tirelessly and taken many difficult steps along the way which were designed to ensure our future,” he was quoted as saying in the article. “Unfortunately the realities of our industry, our local advertising market and our labour situation were too great for us to overcome.”

Unifor Local 2000 president Mike Bocking declined comment, saying the union is currently in talks with the company on behalf of its members. A source at the Kamloops Daily News told The Tyee that the newspaper could be closed as early as this week after an agreement is reached with the union on severance pay for terminated workers. Shoults did not respond to a voicemail request for comment.

Move to monopolies

Its latest quarterly report, however, shows that Glacier posted earnings of $66 million on revenues of $219.5 million through the first nine months of 2013, for a profit margin of 30.1 per cent. That was down from earnings of $70.7 million on revenues of $219.9 million in the same period during 2012, for a profit margin of 32.2 percent.

In November, Glacier announced a program of “Value Enhancement Initiatives” designed to “enhance its operations and financial position.” Among the listed measures were real estate sales and the sale of non-core assets, including two money-losing community newspapers. “Given the softness currently being experienced in the Company’s community media operations, a variety of significant cost reduction measures have and are being implemented to reduce overall operating costs.” Included in the cost-cutting measures,according to the Vancouver Sun, has been the contracting out of advertising production to companies in India and the Philippines for several of its newspapers, including the Kamloops Daily News.

In 2010, Glacier sold 11 of its newspapers to Victoria-based Black Press, including the Nelson Daily News and Prince Rupert Daily News, which competed with Black Press newspapers in those markets and were immediately closed, giving Black Press two lucrative local monopolies. Late last year, Glacier also sold Black Press its Abbotsford/Mission Times, which competed with the Black Press-owned Abbotsford News. Black Press promptly closed its new acquisition, giving it another monopoly.

The pending closure of Glacier’s Kamloops Daily News, which began life in 1931 as the Kamloops Shopper, continues the trend toward consolidation and monopoly in B.C.’s community newspaper industry. The competing Kamloops This Week, which now enjoys a monopoly, announced plans to increase its publication frequency to three times a week in the wake of the Daily News closure. Kamloops This Week is owned by Kelowna-based Aberdeen Publishing, a small chain that owns about a dozen community newspapers, including in Prince George and Fort St. John, where Glacier publishes dailies. It is operated by the low-profile Bob Doull.

Less-than-glacial growth

Glacier has grown rapidly to rank as one of Canada’s largest publishers of small and medium-sized newspapers. In addition to B.C., where it also owns Business in Vancouver, the Vancouver Courier and the suburban Now newspapers, Glacier also owns newspapers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. It began life as a bottled water company in 1988 before moving into the newspaper business a decade later.

Glacier grew in 2000, when it bought several newspapers, including the Kamloops Daily News and Prince George Citizen from Conrad Black, who had acquired them a few years earlier in his takeover of Southam Inc., Canada’s largest newspaper publisher. Glacier grew considerably in 2006 by buying another 25 newspapers and 73 magazines from Black’s imploding company Hollinger International.

It grew again in 2011 by purchasing 23 newspapers from Postmedia Network (the latest incarnation of Southam) for $86.4 million, including the Victoria Times Colonist. Glacier is controlled by Vancouver real estate magnate Sam Grippo and operated by CEO Jonathon Kennedy, a former investment banker and Harvard MBA.

According to the B.C. Reporter, a blog on community journalism in Western Canada that was discontinued in March, Glacier’s top three executives were compensated with salaries and fees exceeding $2 million each in 2009. According to the blog, which cited figures gleaned from the company’s 2010 annual report, the company’s directors were also each paid $1,000 for every meeting they attended. Neither Kennedy nor Orest Smysnuik, Glacier’s chief financial officer, returned calls after more than 24 hours.

Newspapers healthy despite Kamloops Daily News closure, industry spokesman says

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Source: vancouversun.com

The Kamloops Daily News is closing due to declining revenues and high costs, but the industry says this does not signal distress in the daily newspaper business as a whole.

“This is the first major market paid daily that we’ve seen close in recent memory,” Newspapers Canada president and CEO John Hinds said.

Read more: 

Black Press shuts down Abbotsford/Mission Times

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Source: j-source.ca

Black Press Media has shut down the Abbotsford/Mission Times, a little more than a month after purchasing the B.C. paper from Glacier Media. The company also took down the newspaper’s website and closed its Twitter account.

When asked why the company was shutting down a newspaper it considered a worthy purchase in October, Rick O’Connor, president and CEO of Black Media, told J-Source the newspaper was losing “too much revenue” and not making enough money on advertisements.

“The losses were far greater than we had expected,” he said. “We’re not miracle workers … there is only so much we can do.”

O’Connor said most of the Times staff took the severance package offered by Glacier Media, leaving only four of the original 13 staff. “You can’t do the same work when a significant majority is gone.” Black Press will discuss future options for the remaining staff within the company.

As part of the sale from Glacier Media, Black Press also purchased the Chilliwack Times, which O’Connor said continues to operate for now alongside its competitor, Chilliwack Progress. He would not, however, comment on its financial viability.

“It was our belief that it didn’t make sense for readers to receive two community newspapers in the Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack markets on the same publishing days with tremendous duplication of content,” said Randy Blair, president of the Black Press Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island divisions, in a statement. “In light of this, Black Press has harmonized publication days in the Chilliwack market so that the Chilliwack Times and the Chilliwack Progress will publish on different days.”

Black Press also owns the Abbotsford News, which will continue to publish.

‘OC Register’ President: It’s a Mistake Not to Invest in Print

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Source: mashable.com

Over the past eight years, newspapers have seen budgets cut and newsrooms shrink as readers — and more crucially, advertisers — have shifted from print to digital devices. To combat those shifts, publishers have drastically cut costs, reduced (or in some cases, completely halted) publication of their print editions, redirecting resources to digital editions and ad products instead.

read the entire story here

Pacific Newspaper Group wants to reset image for readers and employees

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Source: j-source.ca

Postmedia Network’s B.C. papers have suffered a spate of bad news recently—a large number of employees took buyouts from The Province and the Vancouver Sun, and there were rumours the two brands would be merged into one newspaper. Then there was that memo from Pacific News Group president Gordon Fisher that riled many, putting two floors of its building up for lease and the sale of its B.C. printing plant.

“PNG has been in the news in Vancouver this year for a variety of, shall I say, wrong reasons,” The Province’s editor-in-chief Wayne Moriarty told J-Source.

Now, the two newspapers want to “reset” the conversation. Collectively, 86 per cent of Lower Mainland adults read the Sun and The Province every month. That’s a 10.3 per cent increase from a year ago, according to statistics in an editorial note Moriarty wrote.

read the entire story here

Union says Globe and Mail must stop blaming employees for financial troubles

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Source: j-source.ca

The union representing Globe and Mail employees said the company must stop pointing the finger at them for its financial struggles.

“There is no denying The Globe is struggling, perhaps failing financially. We get it. But a blame-shifting approach won’t fix The Globe’s very serious problems,” said Sue Andrew, unit chair at the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild in a memo obtained by Christine Dobby at the Financial Post. “Characterizing Globe employees as having a sense of entitlement and suggesting that the collective agreement is somehow impeding the company’s success is negative, confrontational and counterproductive.”

click here to read the entire story

US Hedge Funds Squeezing Profitable Postmedia: Union

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As media giant makes 17 per cent profit, Sun, Province publisher says more fat to cut.

Source: TheTyee.ca

Faceless foreign ownership is behind newspaper publisher Postmedia’s push to cut costs at Vancouver’s duopoly dailies, according to the head of the union that represents workers at the Sun and Province. “One of the big problems with Postmedia is it’s controlled by U.S. hedge funds,” said Mike Bocking, president of Unifor Local 2000. Click here to read entire story

Postmedia to close Kennedy Heights plant

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Source: mediaunion.ca

The Kennedy Heights printing plant will be put up for sale immediately and operations there will cease sometime in 2015, the union was told today by Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia.

The company presented two possible options going forward. One is contracting out the work currently done at Kennedy Heights. The company has “entered into a contract with Transcontinental” to print papers effective early 2015, Godfrey told Local 2000 representatives.

The other option is the union and company reaching an agreement to open a new plant that would cost substantially less to operate than Kennedy Heights. Godfrey explained that the contract between Postmedia and Transcontinental will not go into effect if the company and union reach a deal before Nov. 18, 2013 that reduces costs at a new plant by 70-75 percent.

Our current contract language says “there will be no involuntary loss of employment of any regular employee during the life of the contract as a result of” contracting out.

Union officers will be consulting with our legal counsel and meeting with members to discuss our next steps.

The company said it was hoping to have further discussions soon.

Postmedia also announced today that it is selling the Calgary Herald building and land and will be contracting out printing beginning in November.