{"id":6051,"date":"2012-05-29T18:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T22:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6051"},"modified":"2012-05-29T13:12:17","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T17:12:17","slug":"ottawa-citizen-cutting-staff-and-sunday-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/05\/29\/ottawa-citizen-cutting-staff-and-sunday-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa Citizen cutting staff – and Sunday paper"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Local papers, delivered daily - for how much longer?<\/p><\/div>\n

As if we needed it, here’s more bleak news for print newspapers. The Ottawa Citizen says it will cut jobs and eliminate its Sunday papers after July 15.<\/p>\n

Outright closures and “daily” papers dropping days are now commonplace events, unfortunately. David Carr of the New York Times recently lamented <\/a>that a beloved\u00a0 New Orleans institution, The Times-Picayune, is going to publish papers just three days a week: Wednesday, Fridays and Sundays.<\/p>\n

The Citizen’s announcement<\/a> is just part of chain-wide restructuring for its parent company, Postmedia Network Inc. The change is being presented as not necessarily all bad news:<\/p>\n

By the end of summer, the Citizen will have shifted almost all of its page production to a central editing operation in Hamilton, Ont., leaving its editing and reporting staff to focus more sharply on local coverage and the newspaper\u2019s online products, publisher and editor-in-chief Gerry Nott said.<\/p>\n

Even with 20 fewer journalists \u2014 and a newsroom of about 80 staff, down from roughly 200 a decade ago \u2014 Nott believes the Citizen\u2019s \u201clocal reporting array\u201d will be wider and stronger than it is now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Montreal Gazette stopped printing a Sunday paper two years ago. It reports pending cuts and shifts<\/a> too:<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cThe editorial department will be undergoing \u2026 transformation in the next few months and more than 20 positions will be removed from the newsroom,\u201d said Alan Allnutt, publisher and editor in chief of The Gazette.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll roles, from managers on down, will be redefined with a digital focus. We are also looking at changes to the weekday paper sectioning, as well as the number of presses we use to print it each day.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

For anyone who values local print journalism, this is all retrograde, rearguard action. But reducing output in response to shrinking revenue strikes many as inevitable. Quoting once more from the Citizen article<\/a>:<\/div>\n

Nott said the decision to drop the Sunday paper after 24 years was difficult, but is in keeping with trends across the industry in North America. Two other Postmedia papers, the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal, also announced Monday they will eliminate their Sunday papers, while the National Post will cut back to five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday, during the summer. It will publish a Monday edition again in the fall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interviewed by CBC news<\/a>,\u00a0 Chris Dornan, associate professor of journalism at Carleton University called the announcement a “significant move.”<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly now what\u2019s happening is that the costs associated with actually publishing a paper-and-ink edition of a newspaper is becoming so burdensome that the newspaper industry is trying to rid itself of costs.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Plans are afoot to start charging for digital access for a number of Postmedia papers too, as publishers increasingly realize they cannot survive by giving content away.<\/p>\n

That’s the big picture. On a household level, it’s easy to see this coming. I grew up on the Honolulu Advertiser<\/a> (established in 1856, now defunct). Sunday papers there (then) were big and fat, full of the long features, op-eds and the semi-sacred Sunday comics. Imagine my surprise to find that in Ottawa all that happens in the Saturday edition!<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Sunday paper here is so thin and unsatisfying that I recently tried to just subscribe Mon-Sat. (But that is not an option.) Truth be told, I’ll miss this<\/em> particular Sunday paper far less than the concept of a good daily paper.<\/p>\n

I do fear losing broad reporting on issues of local significance. It seems like society is largely forgetting how crucial this is for an informed citizenry and responsible governance. Where will that come from, if local papers dry up and die?<\/p>\n

It is to be hoped that so-called new media and digital delivery platforms will step up to that plate.<\/p>\n

Do you think the role of newspapers is hopelessly obsolete? Or is the same basic function still available, in different forms?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As if we needed it, here’s more bleak news for print newspapers. The Ottawa Citizen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[880,6805,4011,4814,6804,6803],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6055,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6051\/revisions\/6055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}