Print - Written by Alfred Hermida on Friday, January 9, 2009 13:04 - 1 Comment

Globe and Mail looks to cut 10% of its staff

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Journalists at The Globe and Mail are gearing themselves for a rough few months, with the newspaper’s publisher warning of job cuts in the future.

In an e-mail to staff, published by J-Source, publisher Phillip Crawley announced that the company was offering voluntary redundancies.

Crawley wrote that:

The sharp downturn in print advertising revenue in the last six months leaves me with no alternative but to reduce staff costs. Helped by your suggestions after the last Town Hall in November, we have made substantial progress in cutting spending across the company, but not nearly enough to offset the loss of sales revenue.

Unfortunately the Globe does not expect enough people to take voluntary severance, with the possibility of layoffs further down the line.

UPDATE: More details have emerged about the cuts at The Globe and Mail. The newspaper wants to cut about 10% of its staff of 800 people.

The editorial department is the largest with just under 400 people:

The newspaper’s publisher, Phillip Crawley, told staff the Globe is looking to cut between 80 and 90 jobs, and will offer voluntary buyout packages over the next few weeks. Should that target not be reached, layoffs will be needed to reach that figure, Mr. Crawley said.

The Globe says it needs to make the cuts to survive the economic downturn, expecting ad revenue to fall by $40 million this financial year.

The media sector in Canada is clearly hurting, with cuts at the Sun Media chain of newspapers, CanWest Global and CTV, leading to concerns about the decline of quality journalism.

About the author: Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer, digital media scholar and journalism educator. The BBC veteran journalist leads the integrated journalism programme at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.


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Ted
May 26, 2009 10:42

Ever wonder why there are job shortages, doctor shortages, money shortages, housing shortages etc etc……

Our financial model is not sustainable. Let me explian. Imagine there is no money in circulation so the bank issues the very first money in the world (lets say the amount is $100) and that’s all that exists on earth. Now the bank wants that full amount back in one year plus 10 percent interest so the bank wants back $110. See the dilema? There is only $100 in circulation but to complete this transaction and pay the bank back is impossible unless another $10 dollars is created to pay off the interest. So they keep printing more and more money. It could even be said all credit is debt. There is in fact a shortage of (REAL MONEY) in circulation. It’s no wonder the world is in so much trouble. The TD bank is predicting a big jump in Bankruptcies this year. There were 10,578 personal bankruptcies filed during March of this year, up a staggering 57% from 6,736 in March 2008. Banks run this country and our elected members in office are just front men for the bankers. The USELESS regulations FLAHERTY passed to curb credit card interest rates are a classic example of how politicians WHIMP OUT and COWER IN FEAR when having to face greedy financial institutions.

CanWest and Global have shown a conservative bias in all their reports so I am not surprised their poll suggests a Conservative lead. It’s my first hand opinion the EI crisis is REAL. 370,000 people have lost their jobs since last October Today I heard that Stats Canada BUNGELED the jobless stats. They didn’t even counting new grads entering the work force. The full report is scheduled to come out next month. This only validates what I have been saying all along which is (the jobless rate is much worse than the government and media are telling us) I am even hearing a new breed on ads on the radio telling us (everything is fine, the sky is not falling so run out and buy a new car, any car.. the jobless rate is only 6% and thats a normal rate for your area…( in other words don’t worry be happy) These are new generic ads and I am not sure who sponsors them but it’s a little scary since the average intellegent thinking person knows it’s worse than they are telling us. These are the kind of ads they played in Russia before Russia fell

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