Canada’s Globe and Mail Announces Layoffs
It is bad news for one of Canada’s leading national publications. The Globe and Mail informed its employees that there will be layoffs forthcoming:
“…The memo said a voluntary buyout plan will be offered to employees and warns that further cost-cutting measures will be required.
“I regret to say that voluntary severance alone is unlikely to produce a large enough response to avoid layoffs,” wrote Mr. Crawley in the memo.”
link: Globe and Mail likely to lay off unspecified number of staff
The loss of advertising revenue to the internet, coupled with the poor economy, has placed the Globe and Mail under financial pressure. The announcement lacks specifics and it comes at the very end of the work week. The business model going forward must create high anxiety among the Globe and Mail staff. Where does one find work in the newspaper industry when the whole sector is struggling to maintain profitability?
Catherine Forsythe
One Comment
Garry Stamm
January 19th, 2009
at 6:17am
Advertising is stimulated by high readership numbers. As a subscriber of 30 years who “stopped” cold a few months ago, I suggest that the Globe look at itself, rather than blame outside forces.
Over recent years its content has steadily eroded with:
(a) much less attention to informative factually-based in-depth analysis and “insight”,
(b) much greater attention to mind-numbing repetition of ideologically driven “comment” (e.g. Lawrence Martin columns), and,
(c) a remarkably biased imbalance in selection of opinion letters, both geographically and politically,
With letters on national issues from Mr. Cornish in Ottawa and favoured residents of Port Hope preferred, and letters supporting the Harper Government absolutely banned; and proportionately very very few from outside Ontario the appellation “Canada’s National Newspaper” ceased being valid.
Gradually it became clear that for insight and perspective, the subscribing reader would have to go elsewhere.