Author Topic: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down  (Read 2356 times)

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Offline Warren Toda

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Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« on: November 27, 2017, 05:26 PM »
Today Torstar and Postmedia announced they will swap 41 small newspapers and all but five(?) will be closed almost immediately. It was a property swap with no cash changing hands. About 290 jobs will be lost.

Essentially what happened is that Torstar and Postmedia got together and decided that it wasn't worth competing in certain areas. Torstar and Postmedia each took ownership of their respective competitors is various locations and shut them down.

Postmedia got the free Metro papers in Ottawa and Winnipeg which compete with current Postmedia papers in those cities. Those Metro papers will be closed. Postmedia also got various newspapers near Ottawa, Kingston and London, all of which compete with Postmedia papers in those areas

Torstar got 24 Hours Vancouver and 24 Hours Toronto both of which compete with Torstar's existing Metro publications in those two cities. Both 24 Hours will be closed.  Torstar also got various papers that compete with its Metroland weeklies in southern Ontario and most of those will be closed.

Torstar spun the swap by saying it wasn't shutting down the competition and reducing the number of newspapers available in each area but rather that Torstar "will be able to put a greater focus on regions where we believe we can be more effective in serving both customers and clients." 

Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey was more direct. "This is a crisis situation. Most deals you make, you want them to be win-win. Unfortunately this is a lose-lose. You lose brands and you lose people."


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Offline Warren Toda

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Re: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2017, 08:48 PM »
On an unrelated note, yesterday Time Inc. was, as expected, sold and layoffs are expected.


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Dominic Chan

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Re: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2017, 11:26 PM »
The Torstar and Postmedia deal is nothing but an accounting procedure to reduce layoff cost and all cost around it including evasion of tax.

If they had shut down those paper and do a swap, they will have to record the sales revenue and end up paying tax on them. Doing a swap has zero revenue but tons of potential write off due to the shut down.

#sad



Offline Kenneth Armstrong

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Re: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« Reply #3 on: November 28, 2017, 10:14 AM »
Not sure if accurate, but someone on Twitter mentioned the Toronto Sun/Sun Media photo archives are stored in boxes at the now shuttered Barrie Examiner?

https://twitter.com/pxw13/status/935488550811860997


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Offline Ken Gigliotti

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Re: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« Reply #4 on: November 28, 2017, 02:41 PM »
This is not the bottom. It is sad that over 200 mostly young people lost their jobs. It feels like the 1980 shut down of papers across Canada but without the drama. It is almost expected. Like 1980, people and companies are drowning.
It reminds me of a story , A WW II vet was asked about all the men around him who were killed during a bloody campaign, he said (paraphrasing) at first you felt bad, but as it went on ,I was just happy it wasn't me. This is survival.



Steve Russell

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Re: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2017, 07:26 PM »
Not sure if accurate, but someone on Twitter mentioned the Toronto Sun/Sun Media photo archives are stored in boxes at the now shuttered Barrie Examiner?

Paul Woods might know,
The Toronto Star donated their photo archive to the Toronto Reference Library years ago,
at first I was outraged but now the Library does a show a year with that archive so they at least get to see the light of day!



Offline Ali Ledgerwood

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Re: Many Ontario newspapers to be shut down
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2017, 07:45 PM »
Hi,

I'm sorry for the delayed response, but here is NPAC's official position on this subject.  It was distributed via CNW and was posted on social media as well.