Canada: Home Of Cheap Media Labor

Sources tell CBS 2 the paper is taking steps to cut its unionized copy and layout editors.

They include people who handle things like headlines, who check articles for accuracy, and who make the pages the way you see them.

So who would pick up the slack?

The same sources say the Sun-Times might send the work to a firm in Canada or India.

If it wasn't for the thing about checking for accuracy, I'd say use the gang from Can-West. They're definitely going to need an alternative source of income. I saw one of their staffers yesterday licking the NP front page for the calories in its ink.

Meanwhile, Canoe might dump CP:

What it basically comes down to is a phasing out of the wire. We're told now to avoid using Canadian Press as much as possible and I predict in a year or so Sun Media will no longer be associated with CP, or at least at the smaller daily papers. A couple have already cancelled the service in the past year.

The start of a broader trend?

Is This The Sun's Future?

A TSF reader snapped this gathering of freebee boxes at Yonge and Finch, steps from a TTC entrance. Is this the Sun's future? Free for the taking to pump up circulation figures for the advertising dollar?


There is nothing wrong with free, but don't expect a commitment to competitive local news coverage.

This was posted on January 8th. Tellingly enough, though, on the 9th a commenter wrote that "it was still full today".

Meanwhile, 24, the Sun's free counterpart, which everyone has assumed is making money, appears to be having problems of its own (click on picture left for clarification).

The Future Of Journalism?

Entirely web-based, built from the ground up by MSM cast-offs, covering the kind of local news people want to read, and light on the kind of the opinionizing they don't...

Meet Voices of San Diego, MinnPost, and the St. Louis Beacon.

Mind you, the N.Y. Times piece also points out the short-comings of these endeavours. For example, how healthy is it to rely on funding from one or two wealthy patrons? Do we need hundreds of little Natty Posts, run by tiny Lord Black's, soiling our computer screens?

In any case, a far more likely way forward for the business, as opposed to assuming that bloggers will somehow step in as the traditional news-paper industry fails.