Newspapers hiring reporters

Newspapers hiring reporters

Postby kal » Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:03 am

There's a headline you haven't seen of late. Apparently the Metro brand newspapers are rebranding and revamping, along with the hiring of new reporters. Perhaps some laid of in radio will find their way to print.

However, it should be noted that Postmedia is being investigated by the competition bureau for having purchased, and then immediately shut down, a number of community newspapers.

https://www.bnn.ca/torstar-hiring-20-reporters-as-it-revamps-metro-urban-dailies-1.1044373
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Re: Newspapers hiring reporters

Postby Richard Skelly » Mon Apr 02, 2018 5:07 pm

Globe and Mail business columnist David Milstead neatly summarized the back-scratching deal between Postmedia and Torstar. In his March 23 column, Milstead documented how executives of both companies got caught lying about not knowing each other’s plans to shut down swapped papers. Thanks to a CBC expose, the Competition Bureau is retroactively involved.

Trump buddy David Pecker, CEO of American Media is also involved in the scandal. He and two other directors were placed on the Postmedia board by a New Jersey hedge fund that owns a chunk of the floundering Canadian chain’s debt. American Media, of course, is accused of trying to bury the tale of Stormy Daniels and Trump by paying off the porn star with allegedly unfulfilled promises of columns in the National Enquirer.

The hedge funds and a dwindling number of Postmedia executives have profited immensely from creating the corporate entity to run assets purchased out of CanWest’s bankruptcy. In my opinion, Postmedia itself was doomed from Day 1 of its over-indebted existence.

That Torstar comes out sullied is surprising. The flagship Toronto Star newspaper has always wrapped itself in capital L Liberal virtue. Seems like some of the parent corporation’s bigwigs are more like villains in one of those Harlequin Romances that used to be an ancillary unit of the chain.

One can sympathize with all media striving to survive in the Internet Age. But there are still standards of good and bad behaviour. So far, the corporate suits appear to be the heavies in this piece.
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Re: Newspapers hiring reporters

Postby paterson » Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:59 pm

Yes this initiative appears to be from Torstar and it looks like all of the reporting jobs will be going to the Metro papers in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. One report claimed Metro was hiring 20 new reporters and another said 15 with additional support staff. This will pretty much double the reporting staff at these three papers. So this is good news.

The executives at Torstar and Postmedia are really playing fast and loose if they are claiming that they were unaware that newspaper closures were planned by each other.
That was the whole purpose of the buyouts! They closed either a Torstar or Postmedia paper in a community where they were competing; mostly weekly or community papers. They likely kept the paper that was more profitable and closed the other that either was losing money or had minimal profits. In some of the markets it is possible that both papers were losing money. Small community newspapers have always been run very skinny so there hasn't been much to cut over the years. Like the larger papers, advertising especially classified and national advertising has dried up.

And community newspaper websites are not usually profitable since the monthly traffic is light. This is a real challenge to sell to advertisers, when you are trying to track click thru's or giving the client data on how many people have seen the ad.

Daily newspapers across Canada have good to excellent viewership on their websites but the money generated is only a fraction of what has been lost over the years from the downturn in classified and national advertising. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And of course circulation is way down for most if not all daily papers.
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Re: Newspapers hiring reporters

Postby paterson » Mon Apr 02, 2018 8:22 pm

I thought another good news story was from last Thursday and Bell Media buying controlling interest in the Pinewood Studios in Toronto. This site is not huge by Hollywood standards but it does cover 33 acres and currently has 11 soundstages with the largest at about 46,000 square feet. Bell said they are going to build more studios for television and movie production starting almost immediately. Maybe Bell has learned that content is king, and there is a lot of money to be made when you produce the content, so I am thinking they will be ramping up co-productions in every form and more original programming for Crave TV and their many specialty channels.

Toronto lags far behind Vancouver which has always been the true Hollywood North. I have a college friend who has been in the movie business for years and he said Vancouver and Toronto are busting at the seams with movie and TV productions and both cities need more studios and facilities. I guess the low dollar and all the tax break help too!! Must be a good time to be in the movie business.
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