More Sun cuts - say goodbye to Neil Waugh

I was very saddened today to learn that my former colleague Neil Waugh was cut by the Sun today after a long career there. Neil and I worked together for 10 years at the Sun (including a span where I his editor), and while was an old grump at times, he was our old grump, dammit, and we loved him for it.

Seriously ... beneath his tough exterior, Neil was a great guy to know. He had a steel trap memory for the goings-on in provincial politics, and loved his role as the irascible outsider looking in.

The shocked faces in the press gallery today said it all - he was well loved by his co-workers and colleagues in the media and at the Legislature and he'll be missed. An era has ended at the Alberta Legislature.

Sun Media cuts today?

Toronto Sun Family: 1971 - 2008: TorSun cuts?

Could (today) be Black Tuesday for the Toronto Sun?

Tipsters say an undisclosed number of employees who arrive at work Tuesday will leave as the latest victims of Quebecor's hatchet.

"It ain't over," one Sun vet said of the cutbacks that have ravaged the Toronto Sun since Quebecor bought Sun Media in 1999.

"No one knows who yet, but it is supposed to be big," said another newsroom staffer.

Another TSF tipster said staff could be cut by 10%.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, this story is entirely true..

Sun Media Announces Workforce Reductions

Last update: 10:45 a.m. EST Dec. 16, 2008
TORONTO, ONTARIO, Dec 16, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- As a result of the fundamental transformation under way in the newspaper industry in recent years and the accelerated deterioration of economic activity affecting its print media revenue sources, Sun Media Corporation, Canada's largest publisher of newspapers, has announced that it will reduce its workforce by approximately 600 full-time equivalent positions as part of a major restructuring of its operations in Western Canada, Ontario and Quebec. The staff reductions, the vast majority of which will occur by the end of the year, represents about 10% of the Company's workforce, excluding mail room operations, for which staff count fluctuates based on volume.
This initiative is expected to result in restructuring costs of approximately $14 million.

UPDATE:

As a point of comparison, in 2001, Sun Media cut 300 jobs in May and another 125 jobs in October, which absolutely crippled the newspapers. I remember how bad it was there after those two rounds of cuts. Since then and before today, there were at least two additional rounds of job cuts (including the one that ended my time there), and now they're coming back with 600 more cuts. Unbelievable.

UPDATE: The Toronto Sun Family Blog has all the gory details.

This pretty much sums up my feelings about leaving newspapers

Fading to Black: 'Thank God I got out'

Only I didn't get out to write a book.

Halifax Daily News kaput

Read all of the bad news here.

I suspect in the not-too-distant future people will look back on the death of the Daily News as the first of many major daily newspapers to be euthanized in favour of the slimmed-down free paper instead.

Free advice for newspaper executives

I suppose this comment is a tad hypocritical as my wife sits at the breakfast table beside me reading the newspaper at 7:29 a.m. on a Saturday, but ...

As newspapers struggle with falling circulation, which results in staff cuts (ahem!), and, in Alberta, are having a tough time finding adult carriers due to the labour crunch ... have they considered that perhaps the morning publishing and delivery model isn't working for them anymore?

As a teenager, I delivered the Winnipeg Free Press after school because the Freep, like pretty much every other paper, delivered in the afternoons so that people had their newspaper when they arrived home at suppertime.

The Sun chain, which published in the mornings and emphasized single-copy sales rather than delivery, changed the entire model for the industry. Now everyone delivers in the mornings. In Alberta, this has resulted in massive turnover of carriers - teens can't deliver the paper at 5 a.m., and not many adults want to, either.

Plus, when you get your paper at 6 a.m., it's news from 10 o'clock the night before, and more often than that, news from mid-afternoon the day before. It's not news ... it's history. You've already seen the same stuff covered on the supper-time news or on the late-night news.

And for all the talk in the newspaper industry that newspapers bring context to yesterday's news that the TV news folks don't ... well, it's largely bunk. Particularly when everyone is or has been cutting staff. There's no one left in newsrooms to bring that context.

Maybe the Sun chain or the CanWest chain should experiment with turning themselves into an afternoon paper. That would bring news to people's doorsteps in a much more timely fashion - read: before the 6 p.m. TV news - and would bring teenagers back into the newspaper delivery system, which might help the industry's current labour woes on the delivery side.

I'm not guaranteeing that circulation would go up (particularly when newspapers seem hell-bent on putting all of their content on the Internet for free anyway - why would anyone actually pay for a hard-copy newspaper these days?).

But going back to delivering in the afternoon is not going to harm circulation any worse than the business decisions of the last few years have killed circulation (as newspapers also seem hell-bent on competing with all of the free content on the Internet by reducing staff, thereby insuring they have less content for their few remaining paying customers.)