|
CONTRACT
EXPIRES
Despite all the gloom and doom about the print
media industry, if there is only one paper in a metro market it will be
profitable, said newspaper analyst John Morton. "It just may not be as
profitable as newspapers used to be."
Analyst: Paywall Subscribers Worth A Quarter Of Print
Readers
Source:
Robert Andrews
Wednesday, September
02, 2010
Even if newspapers migrate every print reader to paying
online, they will still face big losses, according to one analyst.
Annual income per paywall subscriber on TheTimes.co.uk
and WSJ.com is just a quarter that from subscribers to UK quality dailies’ print
editions, Enders Analysis’ Benedict Evans observes in a new note.
Switching off the presses, after a hypothetical future
print-to-digital tipping point, might save newspapers 25 percent of their total
costs—but this is not enough to make up the gap from the smaller online income,
Evans says.
Even adding iPad income to web paywall revenue would only
total half the income newspapers are currently making from print.
This is essentially the quandary of trading physical dollars
for digital dimes. Publishers like Rupert Murdoch may be starting to conceive
of a time, at least in theory, when paid tablet and web editions become popular
enough to consider switching off print…
The problem with that, these numbers would suggest—even
if all digital readers pay, publishers may need to double annual income per
online customer to get there (ie. hike TheTimes.co.uk from £2 to £4 a week,
and the iPad edition from £9.99 a month to £19.99).
How’s this for a corollary?—If that sounds bad, imagine
the situation for publishers whose websites are not starting charging.
But at least those refuseniks can hold on to existing
advertising, which an increasing number of them are considering to be sub-scale
all the same…
One ad buyer from media agency MEC tells Independent.co.uk
that advertisers have responded negatively to TheTimes.co.uk’s paywall: “We
are just not advertising on it. If there’s no traffic on there, there’s no point
in advertising on there. Online, we have far more options than just newspaper
websites – it’s not a huge loss to anyone really. If we are considering using
some newspaper websites, The Times is just not in consideration.”
Newspapers have faced a similar problem before, Evans
says - to counter print circulation decline, publishers have added 20 percent
more pages in the last decade, allowing the quality dailies to drive up cover
prices by 112 percent in real terms.
“But inflating the paper will no longer work: deflation
is now the agenda,” Enders’ Evans says, noting recent newsroom downsizing. “What
would a great newspaper with 200 journalists look like? Delane ran The Times
as ‘The Thunderer’ with 16 pages – a deeply unfair comparison, but perhaps a
relevant one.”
Separate recent estimates by myself and by University
of Central Lancashire journalism researcher Francois Nel had both found TheTimes.co.uk’s
paid strategy could significantly reduce Times Newspapers’ losses, but not entirely.
Alan Mutter
Monday, August 30, 2010
Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media
executive, who fears our news-gathering companies are stumbling to extinction
The local news
sites being developed by Yahoo, AOL, Huffington Post
and a growing number of other online players will dash the hopes of most
newspaper publishers of charging for access to their online content.
While newspaper executives have
agonized for the better part of two years about whether and how to charge for
their costly-to-produce content, every indication is that the portals, local
broadcasters and other media companies have no intention of asking anyone to pay
for access to the increasingly ambitious local sites they are building.
With a fast-proliferating number of
respectable local sites giving away news to build traffic for their ad-supported
ventures, newspapers simply won’t be able to charge for access – especially when
their own stories are likely to become freely available within minutes at any
number of competing sites.
The local news land rush gained a
formidable entrant last week when it became clear that Yahoo is getting ready to
launch a major local news site in San Francisco. As reported first
here
and here,
Yahoo spent some $90 million to acquire Associated Content to begin filling its
local sites with tons of inexpensively produced content.
Yahoo joins such up-and-running efforts as AOL’s Patch.Com, MSNBC’s Everyblock.Com, Huffington Post (example:
HuffPost-New York), and
the ever-more-elaborate local sites operated by television and radio
broadcasters (example: NBC Philadelphia).
This is not to mention the hundreds of local sites
operated by individuals (West
Seattle Blog), funded by philanthropists (MinnPost) and backed by venture dollars (Outside.In). In the San
Francisco area alone, the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of
California at Berkeley has identified more than 250 local sites.
Even the juiciest scoop published
by a paper in print or online will not remain exclusive for long. It will take
only minutes for a heads-up local news venture to match any story appearing in
the local newspaper. The “QuickRead” technique developed by the
Huffington Post is but one example of the how easily content can be cribbed:
A Denver Post story about
accusations of racial profiling by police was featured prominently yesterday on
the HuffPost’s Denver page.
A click on the story led to a one-paragraph summary of the article and a link to
the original piece (see screen grab below). For many readers, the HuffPost
summary would be sufficient, thus depriving the Post of the traffic it otherwise
might have earned. Beyond matching newspaper stories,
AOL and Yahoo intend to leverage citizen journalists to fill their sites with
inexpensively produced original content. In its initial email effort to recruit
writers in San Francisco, Associated Content promised $10 for the first article.
Armies of low-paid writers
Patch-ing together copy like this yarn
about a federal raid on the office of a Connecticut foot doctor likely will
provide enough free local content in many major markets to satisfy all but the
most voracious and discerning news consumers.
With newspaper advertising revenues
this year on track to come in at less
than half the record $49.4 billion achieved in 2005, publishers have been
toying with the idea for quite some time of charging for access to their
websites.
Given that all but the most
parsimonious newspaper pays more than $10 per story, you can’t blame publishers
for wanting to recover the costs of creating content by charging for the online
news that most of them have been giving away for free for 1½ decades.
However, the few brave publishers
who have tried to charge for content have met with less than encouraging
results.
Newsday famously got only 35 takers
when it initially imposed a fee to visit its site (but it did not care,
because it still provides free access to subscribers of the newspaper and the
Internet service provided by its owner, Cablevision Systems).
The Valley Morning Star in
Harlingen, TX, lost nearly half of its web traffic when it started charging for
content in July, 2009, according to statistics published
at Quantcast.Com. Although the paper resumed free web access in
April of this year, its traffic only recently recovered.
Combine consistently demonstrated
consumer resistance to pay with a plethora of plausible free alternatives and
there can be little doubt that charging for day-to-day news coverage – even
sparkling local coverage – is not likely to be a fruitful path for most
general-interest newspapers.
Instead of putting cycles into
exercises like charging
for access to obituaries, publishers need to focus their marketing power,
content-creating resources and ad-selling capabilities on developing unique
print, web and mobile products that will be valued by consumers and advertisers
alike.
For anyone other than publishers of
mission-critical business or government news like the Wall Street Journal and
possibly the New York Times, pay walls will not fly. It is time for everyone
else to move on to more productive pursuits.
Philly
Deal in Jeopardy as Pressmen Reject Contract
By: E&P
Staff Published: August 31, 2010
NEW YORK
The prospective new owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia
Daily News saw continued pushback from some of the newspapers’ unions Monday as
a second group of employees voted Monday against a new labor
contract.
The newspapers’ pressmen, represented by a Teamsters local,
voted 74-9 to reject the offer, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday. The
thumbs-down on that proposal follows Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News
machinists’ rejection on Sunday of a separate contract
offer.
Philadelphia Media Network Inc., which purchased the Inquirer, the
Daily News, and Philly.com at a bankruptcy auction in April for $139 million,
had planned to finalize its purchase of the media outlets Tuesday, when it is
scheduled to emerge from bankruptcy. But if the potential new owners cannot
reach contracts with all the unions — nine of which have already approved new
terms —the purchase agreement allows the new ownership to walk away from the
deal.
The Inquirer reported that attorneys from the two papers’ previous
ownership and executives for Philadelphia Media Network and their lawyers had a
three-hour meeting Monday with Chief Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich.
Following that meeting, none of the participants would speak to the press.
The parties are scheduled appear before Raslavich at 1 p.m.
Tuesday.
A contingent of labor leaders with the machinists also took part
in the talks, the Inquirer reported, and after the meeting said they were still
without a contract.
Conrad Black Case Targets Net Defamation Standards
Courts ponder where it's right to try suits, given Web is
global.
Source: By Michael Geist, Today, TheTyee.ca
Conrad Black's ongoing legal fight in the United States has
attracted considerable attention in Canada, yet there is a side courtroom battle
at home over alleged defamatory content on the Internet that merits closer
attention. The case, named Black v. Breeden, involves postings such as press
releases and reports on the Hollinger International, Inc. website that Black
claims were defamatory. Several Ontario media organizations published the
allegations contained in those releases.
When Black sued the company's directors, advisers and one company employee
for defamation, the defendants in the case brought a motion to dismiss on
jurisdictional grounds, arguing that Ontario was not the appropriate venue for
the case since both Hollinger and Black are located in the U.S. After a judge
dismissed the motion, the defendants appealed to the Ontario Court of
Appeal.
In a unanimous decision this month, the appellate court upheld the ruling by
the motions judge, concluding that Ontario was a suitable venue and that the
defamation case could proceed.
Targeting an audience?
Linkages between defamation and jurisdictional questions are not unusual,
however, a novel issue before the court was how to treat content posted on the
Internet that is accessible to a global audience. The starting point for
jurisdictional analysis in Canada is the real and substantial connection test in
which courts consider whether the connection is sufficient to merit asserting
jurisdiction over the dispute.
In this case, the court was urged to base its analysis on a "targeting test"
(the defendants relied in part on a law review article I wrote in 2001
advocating the adoption of a targeting-based analysis) that would involve
considering whether the postings targeted the forum rather than looking at where
they were downloaded and read.
The targeting test posits that courts should not assert jurisdiction over
online content merely because it is accessible. Rather, there should be evidence
that the site actively targeted an audience within the jurisdiction. The
criteria for determining targeting remains elusive, but courts have referred to
the language and content of the site, terms and conditions posted on the site,
as well as awareness that the site's content may have an effect within the
jurisdiction.
While the court concluded that it did not need to formally decide whether to
adopt the targeting test, it was satisfied that the statements were in fact
targeted at Ontario. It noted that the press releases posted on the Internet
specifically provided contact information for Canadian media and that the
company "clearly anticipated that the statements would be read by a Canadian
audience and invited Canadian media to respond."
Can just downloading defame?
Interestingly, the defendants also raised an alternate argument, asking the
court to establish a new exception to the real and substantial connection test
for the Internet. They argued that downloading the offending content was
effectively the "completion" of the defamation. Given the possibility of
downloads in multiple jurisdictions, the defendants argued that many places
could theoretically assert jurisdiction, leading to widespread legal
uncertainty.
The court rejected the argument, concluding that judges were perfectly
capable of sorting through the issues and ensuring fairness for both sides. In
doing so, it allowed the Black defamation suit to proceed while also providing
Internet users and the legal community with greater insight into when Canadian
courts will assert jurisdiction over defamation that occurs online.
Not on His Watch, USA Today Founder Says
August 30, 2010, 11:36 am
By JEREMY
W. PETERS
Source:
read entire story here
Seven Reasons Print Will Make a
Comeback in 2011
Print can still play an important role in your
overall content marketing mix.
By Joe Pulizzi
08/23/2010 -14:13 PM
Source:
foliomag.com/
Okay...there, I said it.
You'll find no greater supporter of online content
marketing than me, but marketers and agencies are talking up print for 2011.
Yes, in the era or iPads and Apps, there is still a role for print.
Jeff
Jarvis recently
wrote about how media companies need to ignore print.
"The physical costs of production and distribution are killing. The
marketing cost of subscriber acquisition and churn are
hellish."
He's right. And if you are a media company that relies on most of your
revenue for print, you need to post Jeff's article on your forehead.
But
if you are a corporate marketer, there is an opportunity here. Here's
why:
1. Getting Attention: Have you noticed how many less
magazines and print newsletters you are getting in the mail these days? I don't
know about you, but I definitely pay more attention to my print mail. There's
just less mail, so more attention is paid to each piece. Opportunity? Less
traditional publishers are printing magazines today, which leaves opportunities
for content marketers.
2. The Focus on Customer Retention: In a
soon-to-be-released research study conducted by Junta42 and MarketingProfs,
customer retention was the most important goal for marketers when it came to
content marketing outside of basic brand awareness. Historically, the reason
why custom print magazines and newsletters were developed by brands was for
customer retention purposes. We have a winner!
3. No Audience
Development Costs: Publishers expend huge amounts of time and money qualifying
subscribers to send out their magazines. Many times, publishers need to invest
multiple dollars per subscriber per year for auditing purposes (They send direct
mail, they call, they call again so that the magazine can say they that their
subscribers have requested the magazine. This is true for controlled (free)
trade magazines).
So, let's say, a publisher's cost per subscriber per
year is $2 and their distribution is one hundred thousand. That's $200,000 per
year for audience development.
That's a cost that marketers don't have
to worry about. If marketers want to distribute a magazine to their customers,
they just use their customer mailing list. That's a big
advantage.
4. What's Old Is New Again: Social media, online
content and iPad applications are all part of the marketing mix today. Still,
what excites marketers and media buyers is what IS NOT being done. They want to
do something different...something new. It's hard to believe, but I've heard
many marketers talk about leveraging print as something new in their marketing
mix. Unbelievable.
5. Customers Still Need to Ask Questions: We
love the Internet because buyers can find answers to almost anything. But where
do we go to think about what questions we should be asking? I talked to a
publisher last week who said this:
"The web is where we go to get answers but print is where we go to ask
questions."
The print vehicle is still the best medium on the planet for thinking outside
the box and asking yourself tough questions based on what you read. It's lean
back versus lean forward. If you want to challenge your customers (like Harvard
Business Review does), print is a viable option.
6. Print Still
Excites People: I talked to a journalist recently who said it's harder and
harder to get people to agree to an interview for an online story. But mention
that it will be a printed feature and executives rearrange their schedule. The
printed word is still perceived as more credible to many people than anything on
the web. It goes to the old adage, "If someone invested enough to print and mail
it, it must be important."
Whether that's true or not, that is still a
widely-held perception.
7. Unplug: More and more people are
actively choosing the unplug, or disconnect themselves from digital media. I'm
doing this more myself. I'm finding myself turning off my phone and email more
to engage with printed material. A year ago I didn't see this coming. Today, I
relish the opportunities when I can't be reached for comment.
If I'm
right, many of your customers (especially busy executives) are feeling the same.
Your print communication may be just what they need.
Online content
marketing is definitely here to stay. Yes to social media, apps and the rest of
it. But don't forget that print can still play an important role in your
overall content marketing mix.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: You can read more of
Joe at his blog.]
In a World of Online News,
Burnout Starts
Younger
Source:nytimes
Continue
reading...
Canwest Q3 earnings rebound
Source:financialpost.com
Union hopes new owners of Canwest papers
see
value in good journalism
July 13, 2010 / OTTAWA —
With the Canwest newspapers emerging today from creditor protection as Postmedia
Network Inc., CWA Canada is keen to impress on the new owners how important
quality journalism is to the chain's future.
"All
the major Postmedia Networkt papers are making money," says Director Arnold
Amber. "We are relieved to be out of the danger zones of bankruptcy protection.
The hope is that the new owners don't get tied up in the kind of financial
difficulty that Canwest did.”"
CWA
Canada represents more than 800 workers at five of the metro dailies, including
The Ottawa Citizen, The Gazette in Montreal, the Victoria Times-Colonist, Regina
Leader-Post and Windsor Star.
"Our
members have borne the brunt of the budgetary slashing that ensued when the
Asper family made its futile attempt to rescue the debt-laden company," says
Amber, who heads the Canadian region of the largest media union in North
America.
"We'd
like to think the new owners understand that good journalism is the key factor
in the profitability of these venerable newspapers."
Paul Godfrey, who will be
CEO and frontman of Postmedia, has made it clear that he sees the future as
being digital.
But
Amber warns that Godfrey "has to keep in mind that producing quality online
content requires good journalism. Nor can the Internet compete with the
professional local coverage these papers provide, which is not available
elsewhere."
mber
says the union will be seeking a meeting with Godfrey as soon as possible to
discuss plans for the chain.
New report aims to put journalism unions 'in touch' with
industry's future
Source:journalism.co.uk/
Can Anyone Replace the Local Beat Reporter?
Source: theatlantic.com
Canwest's buyers must reinvest in readers to survive. And we
must radically rethink how our media is bought and sold.
Source:.thetyee.ca/
New CanWest owners share Sun connection
Former junk bond manager leads creditor group
Source:.thestar.com
With a salesman's touch, Paul Godfrey claims CanWest
Source:.theglobeandmail.com/
Six union members nominated for prestigious journalism award,
another wins fellowship
29 April 2010
Source:
cwa-scacanada.ca/
Six members of CWA Canada are in the running to claim the
country's most prestigious award in journalism.
The Victoria Times Colonist and The Gazette
in Montreal are two of the six news media finalists for the 2009 Michener Award
for meritorious public service journalism. The winner will be announced on May
27 in a ceremony at Rideau Hall hosted by Governor General Michaëlle Jean.
Julie Ireton, who has already been declared the winner of the
Michener-Deacon Fellowship, is the business and technology reporter in the CBC
Parliamentary Bureau and a member of the union's largest Local, the Canadian
Media Guild. The fellowship will enable Ireton to pursue an investigation
entitled, The Federal Public Service: Middle-men, Double-Dipping and
Cronyism.
Reporter Linda Gyulai, a member of the Montreal Newspaper
Guild, earned the Gazette's nomination with her series of articles examining the
city’s $355.8-million water-meter project, the largest contract in its history.
Gyulai determined that major elements of the project were altered against the
city’s interest days before the contract was closed. After the auditor general
confirmed the Gazette’s findings, the contract was killed and two top city
officials were fired.
In Victoria, a February 2009 series of stories and photos
depicting the deplorable condition of aboriginal housing on Vancouver Island
revealed overcrowding, shoddy construction and threats to health on reserves.
Following the publication of the articles, the federal government pledged $50
million for native housing. B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell also announced that the
province would take action to connect reserves with off-reserve water and sewage
systems.
A team of newsroom staff, including reporters Judith Lavoie
and Lindsay Kines, and photographers Debra Brash, Adrian Lam and Bruce
Stotesbury, who are members of the Victoria-Vancouver Island Newspaper Guild,
worked on the week-long series which examined how government policies, poor
construction and a lack of oversight have contributed to the sorry state of
reserve housing.
“For a small newsroom like ours, the nomination is
particularly welcome,” said Lucinda Chodan, editor-in-chief of the Times
Colonist. “It validates the high-quality work our journalists do every day.”
The series was also a finalist for the 2009 Jack Webster
Awards, which honour the best in B.C. journalism.
The Michener Award was founded in 1970 by the late Roland
Michener, former governor general.
More Upbeat News: Moody's Removes Negative Outlook
on Newspapers
Source:
editorandpublisher.com
By Mark
Fitzgerald
Published:
April 16, 2010
CHICAGO Moody’s Investors Service -- the
big credit agency firm that over the past 18 months cut its ratings of nearly
all newspaper publisher to junk levels -- said Friday it had changed its sector
outlook for U.S. newspapers to stable, from negative.
Moody’s said it expects newspaper advertising to recover well by the
start of 2011, but cautioned that it still believes the industry faces long-term
problems that might result in another negative outlook. And ratings upgrades for
individual companies are not a given, the firm said.
“The change to a stable outlook reflects Moody's expectation that
a
cyclical recovery in advertising spending will moderate
newspaper revenue declines as 2010 progresses and lead to a more stable revenue
environment in 2011,” senior analyst John E. Puchalla
wrote in a
note to investors. “Moody's anticipates that newspaper advertising revenue will
decline in an 5% to 10% range in 2010, but that revenue should be closer to flat
toward the end of the year and in a -3% to +2% range in 2011.”
Moody's said newspapers will benefit from improving advertising
revenue as the economic recovers -- but will “likely continue to lose share” to
other media.
“Moreover, the longer-term pressure
from advertiser shifts in spending to other media and to online channels along
with pricing pressure -- in classified categories in particular -- will likely
prompt a return to a negative sector outlook once the benefit from the cyclical
snapback in advertising subsides,” Puchalla wrote.
Newspapers remain too indebted, Puchalla added: “Moody's continues to
believe the industry cannot tolerate much leverage given the longer-term secular
pressures and high sensitivity to economic cycles.”
Moody’s said newspaper access to capital has “improved meaningfully,”
but the industry remains particularly vulnerable to “negative shifts in investor
sentiment that could impede or raise the cost of funding maturities over the
next 2-4 years.”
Newspaper Guild-CWA calls on President Obama to
investigate killings
Source:
newsguild.org/
09 Apr 2010
The Newspaper Guild
After the release of a government-suppressed video of the
shooting deaths of more than a dozen Iraqis, including a Reuters photographer
and his assistant, the executive council of The Newspaper Guild-CWA calls on
President Barack Obama to order an independent investigation of the
circumstances surrounding such killings. The Guild represents more than 400
journalists and other employees at Reuters.
The 17-minute clip, posted by WikiLeaks.org on Monday, April
5, includes footage of Apache helicopters opening fire on several
people as they stand and walk along a Baghdad street, along with audio of the
pilots' conversation. Among those killed in the 2007 incident were photographer
Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant, Saeed Chmagh, 40. Other casualties
included two children, plainly visible in a window of a van that was shot after
it stopped to assist the wounded. A military investigation, however,
concluded that U.S. forces had acted properly and no disciplinary action
was taken.
"The video is shocking in its display of a callous disregard
for human life," said Guild President Bernie Lunzer. "The 17-minute video shows
no Iraqi provocation or evidence that U.S. forces came under fire. The Pentagon
has claimed otherwise. The American people deserve to know the truth, and the
U.S. military’s role should be fully investigated."
The International Federation of Journalists, whose affiliates
include the Guild and journalists' groups in 150 countries around the world,
echoes the Guild's call for a proper inquiry, noting that the government's
investigations to date appear to have placed a primary emphasis on exonerating
military personnel. The IFJ said it has catalogued 19 cases since March, 2003 in
which journalists and media staff have died at the hands of U.S. soldiers. "In
all of these cases, families and friends of the killed journalists continue to
wait for credible investigations and honest reports about how and why their
loved ones died," the IFJ noted.
The Guild's Executive Council cited the Obama
administration's promise of greater transparency and its avowed commitment to
human rights as reasons to hope that a full accounting finally may be at
hand.
Union tracking former Hollinger employees
to safeguard
benefits, pensions
Conrad Black's holding company in
bankruptcy protection;
future uncertain for Southam, Thomson, Sterling
retirees
Source
cwa-scacanada.ca/
CWA Canada is enlisting the help of Locals across the country
in its search for former or retired members who worked for a newspaper in the
Southam, Thomson, Sterling or Hollinger chains.
More than 3,000 former employees of Hollinger Canadian
Publishing Holdings (HCPH) have to be tracked down by a Toronto law firm that is
representing their interests in bankruptcy court proceedings involving their
benefit and pension plans.
Arnold Amber, director of CWA Canada, says the national union
is working with Koskie Minsky LLP to protect the rights and livelihoods of
former and retired members who worked at any of the newspapers purchased by
media baron Conrad Black. They include major dailies such as the Vancouver
Sun, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen and The Gazette in
Montreal.
HCPH, which sold off those newspapers and is now essentially
an empty shell, was recently granted an extension of its bankruptcy protection
to April 15 to restructure an assortment of benefit and pension plans.
Ernst & Young, appointed by an Ontario Superior Court
judge to oversee the restructuring under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement
Act (CCAA), reported that HCPH administers two unfunded retirement plans, other
post-employment benefit plans and six registered pension plans.
The accounting firm, in a letter to retirees just before Christmas,
said all pension and benefit payments were continuing in their normal
course.
Amber says there is a "general belief that the main Hollinger
pension plan is in good shape and has enough funds to meet all its ongoing
commitments. But there are other smaller Hollinger pension plans that might not
be adequately funded. They are the HCPH pension plan for employees of newspapers
formerly owned by Thomson, two other plans for employees of Sterling newspapers
and the Journal Publishing Employees' Pension Fund."
CWA Canada will be following the court proceedings closely,
says Amber. "We want to make sure everything is being done to protect our former
members, but we also have concerns about the health benefits our retirees may
get in the future. They could be reduced or, even worse, eliminated."
Koskie Minsky will deal with any issues that affect
post-employment and post-retirement benefits, other than registered pension plan
benefits. The law firm has set up a web page for HCPH retirees which it will
update as information becomes available.
"Pension benefits from the registered pension plans are a
separate issue from health benefits and supplemental pension benefits," the law
firm explains on the web page. "We are advised that the pension fund of the
registered pension plans is part of a trust fund which continues to operate even
though HCPH filed for CCAA protection. We have been advised that the company is
currently obtaining an updated actuarial valuation of the registered pension
plans to determine the funded status of the pension plans. We will be provided
with that valuation when it is complete and will report further to all retirees
at that time."
Does Journalism exist?
Source:
guardian.co.uk
read
story here
Source:
observer.com
read
story here
Local retirees caught in Hollinger CCAA filing
Source: CEP
2000
Some retired former Local 2000 members may be adversely affected by the
restructuring of Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings Co. that is currently
underway.
Based on documents filed with the Ontario Court of Justice as part of an
application under the Companies Creditors’ Arrangement Act (CCAA), it appears
that some Medical Service Plan and other payments for medical benefits paid on
behalf of Local 2000 retirees by Hollinger Canada could eventually be reduced or
eliminated.
Any former Local 2000 member who receives a pension through the Hollinger
Canadian Publishing Co. Retirement Plan can take comfort from the healthy
financial shape of that plan. It is fully funded.
It is also important to note that the PNG pension plan is healthy and not
affected by the Hollinger CCAA filing or Canwest’s current financial problems.
The PNG plan is a standalone entity that is jointly administered by the trustees
appointed by Local 2000 and the company.
However four smaller Hollinger Canada pension plans have significant unfunded
liabilities. These are:
- The Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings Co. Pension Plan for the
Employees of Newspapers Formerly Owned by Thomson Newspapers;
- Sterling Newspapers Company Pension Plan for the Employees of Newspapers
Formerly Owned by Thomson Newspapers;
- The Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings Co. Plan for Employees Formerly
Owned by Sterling Newspapers;
- The Journal Publishing Company Limited Employees’ Pension Plan.
Any former Local 2000 member who is receiving a pension from one of these
four plans is at risk of having their pension reduced as a result of the CCAA
process. Please contact Gary Engler at the union office if you are a member of
one of these four plans.
(In addition, two Hollinger management retirement plans are unfunded. These
are: The HCPH Co. Executive Retirement Arrangements and HCPH Co. Divisional
Allowances /Top-Up Plan.)
Anyone affected by the Hollinger Canada restructuring should have received a
letter from Ernst & Young dated Dec. 18, 2009, informing them of the
company’s CCAA filing. The letter states that the court has appointed the
Toronto law firm Koskie Minsky LLP to represent the interests of over 3,000
former Hollinger employees whose benefits payments may be affected by the CCAA
filing.
Local 2000 is currently planning a joint strategy with our National Union
regarding this CCAA filing. Please check this website regularly for updates.
Good news - yes, good news - for newspapers
Canwest newspapers are making money, the circulation slide may be over and
newspaper stocks are outperforming the Toronto Stock Exchange, writes
Kelly
Toughill. Who
knew?
Source-http://www.j-source.ca/
Canwest newspapers are making money, the circulation
slide may be over and newspaper stocks are outperforming the Toronto Stock
Exchange.
Recent news about the Canadian newspaper industry has sparked
welcome confusion among those accustomed to charting the demise of ink on
paper
After all, isn't news-on-the-stoop an anachronism soon to follow
typewriters to the museum? Aren’t high-quality newsrooms being sacrificed to the
Internet, niche publications and bloggers who have more free time than skill?
Yes and no. The newspaper industry is still in peril, but for the first time in
a long time, there are also signs of hope.
John Honderich, chair of
Torstar Corporation, pointed out recently (during a speech at the 2009
Joseph Howe Symposium) that newspapers are far from money losers, despite
the red ink that has washed across the bottom line of most newspaper companies
in recent years.
Even Canwest, which filed for bankruptcy protection in
early October, has a good-news story hidden in its last quarterly financial
statements. The document filed in July shows that Canwest newspapers were
still coughing up modest amounts of cash.
The
newspaper segment of Canwest Global Communications had an operating profit of
$152 million in the first nine months of the company’s fiscal year. That is down
from the year before, but shows that the company took in more revenue from
advertising and subscriptions than it spent on things like reporters, newsprint,
computers, sales people and telephones. The red ink showed up after the company
paid interest on its huge debt, and after it wrote off the declining value of
its operations.
The good news is that the Canwest newspapers themselves
are still viable businesses, if they aren't forced to service a huge debt as
well as cover their own costs. According to Honderich, every single newspaper in
the Canwest chain is showing an operating profit, with the exception of the
National Post.
The Torstar financial statements tell a similar story, with an operating
profit of $20 million in the newspaper segment in the first six months of the
year.
Maybe that's why investors seem to be turning back to newspaper
companies after deserting the sector.
Canadian newspaper companies have
outperformed the S&P/TSX 60 substantially over the last three months.
Torstar stock is up roughly 50 per cent. Quebecor is up 30 per cent. Even
Canwest's penny stock briefly rose faster than the S&P/TSX 60, before it
filed for bankruptcy protection and halted trading.
The most interesting
and important news is what has happened to readership and
circulation.
The most recent Nadbank
study shows that newspaper readership is largely stable and that online
newspaper readership is up 10 per cent.
But the bigger story is in
circulation.
An analysis by Ken
Goldstein, president of Winnipeg’s Communications Management Inc., suggests
there may be a natural floor that newspaper circulation won’t fall
below.
In 1950, as many daily newspapers were sold in Canada as there
were households in the country. Even though circulation continued to grow for
four more decades, it didn't grow as fast as the population. By 1990, the paid
circulation of Canadian newspapers was only 60 per cent of Canadian households.
Today it is less than 40 per cent.
The big question is whether
circulation will decrease forever, until newspapers disappear, or will there be
a natural leveling off where newspaper circulation will
stabilize?
Goldstein segregated the results of English language and
French language newspaper circulation. He found that the circulation of French
language newspapers dropped further than English language newspapers, but then
it leveled off.
French language newspapers in Canada have held their
market for 10 years, selling roughly as many newspapers as 30 per cent of the
households in Quebec every year since 1999. Goldstein suggests the same
phenomenon might be seen in the rest of Canada soon.
The good news of
operating profits, higher stock prices and circulation stability do not point to
a solution for the crisis. The problems are very severe. Goldstein’s study also
shows continuing declines in newspaper revenues. But the good news does inject a
bit of hope into the debate over how to forge a new business model for public
service journalism in the 21st century.
Kelly Toughill is an associate professor in the
School of Journalism at the University of King's College, Halifax and a
contributing editor for the J-Source Business of Journalism J-Topic.
GRIEVANCES/ ARBITRATIONS/ ISSUES as of THURS. OCT. 1, 2009
click here to go
to our GRIEVANCES/ ARBITRATIONS/ ISSUES page
Unions as relevant as ever
Posted: September 22nd, 2009 | Author: blunz |
source
http://glogg.org/log/The predictable onslaught of anti-union articles about the crisis at the
Chicago Sun-Times has already started. My favorite is the one that contends the
paper deserves to die because ungrateful Guild members rejected sweeping
concessions demanded by a potential buyer. Why aren’t they happy just to have a
job?
Many of those Guild members won’t have jobs even if they do accept the
concessions, so the more relevant question for us has to be what kind of
contract they’ll have. The Guild has negotiated concessions all over the country
during this bleak period, with no two resulting agreements alike. Our goal has
been to bargain what is needed, given the reality of the particular
situation.
So why, then, would multiple bargaining units in two separate locals vote
four-to-one not to accept the concessions demanded by Jim Tyree, a Chicago
billionaire and power broker who is making noises about buying the Sun-Times?
Tyree’s deal was put forward on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but the specifics
weren’t disclosed for weeks–and then it turned out he was demanding much more
from the Guild than from any of the other Sun-Times unions, raising questions
about why someone claiming to be union-friendly insists on gutting the
Guild.
At the core of the disagreement are severance and job security, which under
Tyree’s ultimatum would be negligible. The gun-to-the-head proposal comes
amazingly close to employment-at-will, with all employees vulnerable to being
tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave at any moment. But Tyree, in numerous
interviews, has explained he needs complete “flexibility”–that without such
carte blanche he might have to meet with union representatives to do what he
wants. Which, when you think about it, is a strange point of view for someone
who claims to respect unions and who also invests a lot of union money in his
core business, at Mesrow Financial.
In truth, the Guild has had many conversations with Tyree and his
representatives, working diligently toward that elusive balance between
management flexibility on one hand and workplace protection and dignity on the
other. But because we won’t agree to “complete flexibility” on a
take-it-or-leave-it basis, we’re accused of arrogance while Tyree publicly
laments that after working for six months and spending half-a-million dollars in
putting together his bid he should be able to get everything he wants.
Compare this one-sided approach to recent events in Portland, Maine, where
the Portland Press-Herald and three other media properties were sold in a
package that includes an employee stock ownership plan. More than a year of
negotiations resulted in employees exchanging significant workplace and wage
concessions for an equity stake in the company, while their unions won seats on
the board of directors. Among the happy results: a recent round of buyouts may
make layoffs unnecessary. Joint labor-management committees meet regularly to
improve the product and to revitalize the business model.
Critics of newspapers and other traditional news organizations claim that
newspaper people have only themselves to blame for the current mess. There is
some truth in this. Many newspaper organizations have been rigidly hierarchical,
their lack of flexibility entrenched by years of fat profits. But when all that
ended, with ad revenue migrating to the internet and the economy plunging into
recession, the reflexive response too often was to shed front-line workers. Few
of the critics, meanwhile, have questioned the vitality of a business in which
all wisdom comes from on high while creative front-line workers are regarded as
commodities. Those businesses are doomed to failure. Portland, on the other
hand, is an attempt to try something different.
Sadly, things don’t feel all that different at the Sun-Times.
All mass media are rapidly restructuring, for better and for worse, and no
one really knows what success will look like. But I’ll venture that whatever it
is, it’ll come from the “creatives” who actually gather, edit and disseminate
information–the ones getting kicked out the door by people with too much money
and not enough sense.
So contrary to what our critics say, the Guild is not trying to hang on to
the past–precisely because it’s mired in that self-defeating, top-down
mentality. We’re more interested in building the future. We’re prepared to be
flexible and to help management succeed. We believe there is still value in news
organizations that have a critical mass, enough to provide quality news. We also
know that smaller products and independent journalists have a vital role to
play. Our goal is to follow the work and to advocate for those workers who
provide quality content.
So when you see those stories that castigate the Guild for being hidebound
and unwilling to change, don’t believe them. Instead, take a hard look at the
facts and decide whether something new is being created, or whether it’s just
one more attempt to perpetuate the old, unsustainable model.
And let’s hope that reasonableness prevails at the Sun-Times. We’re all in
this together.
Times Colonist/Canwest Wasting Money
As
Guild Wins Unpaid Leave Of Absence
March 31, 2009
Arbitrator Stan Lanyon has ordered that an
editorial deskperson will be able to start his one month unpaid
leave of absence effective April
1st, 2009
The Arbitrator gave this brief ruling with
full details to follow in his written decision.
The member is pleased with the ruling as is
the Guild with the Arbitrator upholding the provisions of our collective
agreement.
During these difficult financial times for
Canwest, the wasting of Times Colonist profit (and Guild money) on an
unnecessary arbitration flies in the face of sound financial practices.
We will report more details when they become
available.
Guild
Forced To
Arbitration
Over Denial Of
An
Unpaid Leave Of
Absences
Wednesday,
March 4, 2009
On March 11,
2009, the Guild will be representing,
at Expedited
Arbitration, a Guild member who was denied a
one-month
unpaid leave of absence.
The decision
by local management to deny this unpaid leave of absence is in direct violation
of
Article 15,
Section 1 of our contract
and
a
past arbitration won by the Guild.
The member’s
request for an unpaid leave of absence for the month of February, 2009 was made
on November 25, 2008. At the time of the
request only one other member of the department was scheduled for time off in
the month of February,
and that was
for just two days.
The Guild is
at a loss to understand why local management is prepared to throw away Company
money (as well as ours) on this Arbitration; this decision flies in the face of
a memo recently issued to all CanWest newspapers by President & CEO, CanWest
Publishing, Dennis Skulsky, and Executive VP & Chief Financial Officer,
CanWest Publishing, Doug Lamb, to grant unpaid leaves of absence requested by
employees as a
cost-savings
measure.
The Guild
finds this attitude by local management cavalier and odd in these difficult
financial times for CanWest.
Canada's Newspaper Readership High, But Not on the
Web
By Jennifer
Saba - Source: Editor
and Publisher
Published: March
25, 2009 11:31 AM ET
NEW YORK Almost 75% of Canadian adults
read a print edition of a newspaper each week, according to the Newspaper
Audience Databank (NADbank).
However, online
readership is still very small. Only 4% of adults read newspapers online
exclusively. Less than 20% of adults read a newspaper online during the week, a
13% increase over 2007.
The total reach of
newspapers -- print and online -- in Canada is 77% on a weekly basis.
NADbank conducts readership studies on behalf of
Canadian newspapers, advertising agencies, and advertisers.
As in the United States, more adults tend to read newspapers in
smaller markets. NADbank reported that highest weekday readership of newspapers
is in Cape Breton.
In the top 10 Canadian markets,
Winnipeg has the highest readership.
Online
newspaper readership is highest in Halifax: 30% of adults in that market have
read a newspaper Web site each week. In Toronto, 23% of adults have read a
newspaper Web site each week.
The Toronto Star --
both print and online -- reaches the most adults in Toronto weekly at 49%.
Thirty-eight percent of adults in Montreal read Le Journal de Montreal on a
weekly basis, more than any other newspaper in that city. The Ottawa Citizen
reaches 49% of adults weekly in Ottawa-Gatineau. And in Vancouver, The Province
narrowly beats the Vancouver Sun with 47% of adults reading the former. The Sun
reaches 45% of adults.
A previous version of
this story said La Presse had the highest total weekly readership.
It's Not Newspapers in Peril; It's Their Owners
Dailies Still Make Good Money, but Debt-Laden Publishers Post Losses
Read
entire story here Article Soucre - adage.com
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