When we learned of PostMedia’s buyout of Saltwire, we figured layoffs weren’t far off. That appears to be exactly what happened.
It is pretty much routine these days. A large acquisition or consolidation happens, then the pink slips start flowing. It happened with the Rogers Shaw merger with their wave of layoffs (along with funding cuts for good measure). So, when we learned of PostMedia buying Saltwire, we made the following prediction at the time:
Now, why is a financially troubled conglomerate spending all this money on a financially insolvent chain of newspapers? Who knows? Is there a plan to improve those newspapers? That’s anyone’s guess.
In all likelihood, all of this will just lead to further shutdowns and layoffs. That would certainly track with a vast majority of other major acquisitions.
Now, I wouldn’t call myself a psychic by any means, but sometimes, what I end up saying has this habit of coming true. Sure enough, we learned that the waves of layoffs have begun. From the Canadian Press:
About 30 per cent of newsroom jobs have been cut at a 145-year-old daily newspaper in St. John’s, N.L., following a takeover by Postmedia.
Keith Gosse, head of the union representing workers at The Telegram, says staff learned Wednesday that four of the paper’s 13 newsroom positions will be eliminated.
As well, Saturday will be the paper’s last daily print edition, as it is moving to a weekly print version beginning next week with daily news online.
One of the things we were told repeatedly over the years during the Bill C-18 debate (now called the Online News Act) is that if Bill C-18 was passed, then it would usher in a brand new era of journalism filled with massive amounts of new hiring and an overall sense of renewal.
In fact, that was one of the main talking points pushed by the Australian foreign interference effort in Canada as Australian lobbyists pushing Canada to pass this stupid law wildly claimed that if Canada just passed this law, the news sector would be “saved”. The reality is that once Australia got their link tax, mass layoffs happened anyway, proving that this legislation was never going to save jobs nor was that ever the intent. In fact, to a degree, the link tax was basically a license to fire more than anything else.
While our tip to senators led to some serious questions over what passing the bill really means, the serious questions was met with shrugs from lobbyists while other lawmakers pretty much buried their heads in the sands and insisted that everything the Australians said about a massive renewal is true and layoffs don’t exist.
Ignoring reality, however, won’t really change much. Following the passage of Bill C-18 and the massive media bailouts, history repeated itself with massive waves of layoffs followed by even more layoffs. Entire newspapers began shutting down on top of it all and those that survived the consequences of the Online News Act found themselves either slowing down operations or watching their online traffic getting gutted. Ultimately, the Online News Act caused chaos in the news sector, proving to be the straw that broke the camels back in some instances.
Arguably, the widespread damage caused by the Online News Act only helped fuel the situation employees at these newspapers are facing today. With losses being run up in the news sector, it’s probably not a surprise that this helped fuel the move to issue these layoffs in the first place. Would these jobs have been saved had it not been for the Online News Act? That’s debatable. However, you can’t say the Online News Act really helped matters here.
Either way, this serves as the latest development that shows that Canada was never in for a new news media renaissance following the passage of the Online News Act. If anything, it helped fuelled it’s demise more than anything else. So, don’t expect this to be the last round of layoffs either. More is destined to come.
(Via @HowardALaw)
