courtesy CBC News Posted: Mar 24, 2017 11:34 AM PT
.
A man walks past newspaper boxes containing the Vancouver Sun and the Province in downtown Vancouver. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press )
.
Postmedia began handing out layoff notices to 54 employees today at the Vancouver Sun and Province, including 29 journalists.
“Today is going to be a tough day for all of us,” wrote Unifor Local 2000 president Brian Gibson on the union website. “For those that receive notice today just know we are all so very sorry.”
Plans for the layoffs were first announced two weeks ago and come on the heels of 38 additional buyouts at the newspapers in January.
According to Gibson, the Pacific Newspaper Group division of Postmedia made $18 million in profit last year while five Postmedia executives received $2.3 million in bonuses.
READ MUCH MORE BRITISH COLUMBIA NEWS HERE AT THE CBC NEWS WEBSITE
Ambulance chasing, disease of the week and cute puppy stories don’t need journalists.
Give the people what they want – twaddle and tweet.
So let it be written…
Reconsidering my near-lifelong Vancouver Sun subscription following this round of layoffs.
These businesses are still making money. Maybe our government should enact a law that corporations have to publish their financial statements if they want to lay people off.
Postmedia is existing on fumes. Even after restructuring and reverse-splitting their stock, the firm’s shares are again heading into penny status. Here, in BC, it can only be a matter of time until The Vancouver Sun and The Province formally merge. They’ve already combined newsrooms which is why you see the same bylines in both papers. Reducing printing costs by publishing a single Sun-Province paper seems inevitable.
To his credit, rock impresario Bruce Allen has long used his Reality Check platform on CKNW to sing praises for newspapers in general and to note, with growing alarm, the diminishment of the province’s paper of record, The Vancouver Sun. I’ve long thought Bruce should run for the Vancouver mayoralty. Wouldn’t it be great if he could assemble a group of likeminded and uber well-heeled burghers to buy Postmedia’s Vancouver assets and restore some city-centred first-class journalism to readers? (Right now, I’d say the Globe and Mail’s Vancouver supplement matches or beats the Sun and Province on most major stories.)
May I have an up to date copy of the Vancouver Sun to line my bird cage with ? Buuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaa!
The fact that many forms of msm have survived as long as they have with the 20 plus years of www are surprising. Network TV, radio, news papers all struggling. Just like a good old smith corona typewriter they are irrelevant. Advertising dollars have found other places to spend money and even retailers are dying off because of www Goodbye Sears hello Amazon.. Short of government intervention by way of imposing some sort of tax or user fees on the www we have created a medium that devours jobs at an alarming rate.
Never mind that many service sector jobs will vanish soon due to technological change and we are looking at a pretty gloomy future.
The Sun and Province are just two more victims of the internet.
Always wondered why The Sun publishes an entire section every Friday with TV listings. No one reads them and a waste of resources. I asked this question, in email form, of Editor. Of course, no response.