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Hamilton key to new CanWest tack
Hamilton key to new CanWest tack
GRANT ROBERTSON
Globe and Mail Update
November 11, 2007 at 10:42 PM EST
When CanWest Global Communications Corp. bought into the newspaper industry in 2000, an easily ignored piece of the deal was a small operation in Hamilton that produced prepackaged sports statistics, television listings and weather for the papers involved.
Now called CanWest Editorial Services (CES), the 11-year-old business has grown since then to 20 full-time employees and several more part-time staff. It also sells such content to dozens of papers across Canada and the United States, which prefer to buy the data rather than spend to produce it themselves.
But the Hamilton operation is now being given a larger role inside CanWest, rankling some of the company's newsrooms, which have been faced with job cuts and buyouts over the past two weeks.
As Winnipeg-based CanWest looks to cut newspaper costs and shift more resources to producing news for the Internet, a larger number of news pages from its 10 city papers will be produced at the CES offices in coming months.
Several of CanWest's papers – which include the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun – will have portions of their national and international news pages assembled there, along with auto and travel sections.
The new strategy has caused a string of job cuts and buyouts, which have trickled out paper by paper in the past two weeks. Taken in full, the reductions could total between 80 to 100 jobs, marking one of the larger cutbacks the industry has seen of late, next to 120 layoffs at Quebecor Inc.'s Sun Media chain last year.
CanWest officials say the company is waiting to see how many editorial employees accept buyouts at some papers to determine the total number of layoffs.
Jamie Pitblado, vice-president of promotions and community investment at CanWest's two Vancouver papers, the Sun and the Province, said the decision will allow CanWest to invest more resources in its Internet-based news operations, which could include adding positions on its websites. “I think we're seeing a transition from a newspaper to a news-gathering organization. By moving some of this work out of here [to Hamilton], it will provide us with an opportunity to focus more energy and resources on driving local content, both online and in the paper.”
Focusing on the Web has become the mantra of media operations as online audiences multiply. CanWest wants to staff its Web properties around-the-clock, or at least 18 hours a day, at most papers. One official cited a massive residential fire in Edmonton this summer that began overnight. The event caused a surge in traffic on the Edmonton Journal's website in the early morning, but the online story was delayed due to staffing, the official said.
The impact of CanWest's move on its newspaper operations is significant though.
The restructuring will see 20 to 30 positions bought out in Vancouver, while as many as 10 positions are being eliminated in Calgary through layoffs. About 15 positions could be affected at the Montreal Gazette's 155-person newsroom, with similar numbers expected in Ottawa and Edmonton. The Victoria Times Colonist, a smaller newsroom with roughly 80 people, may not be affected as much.
In terms of dollars, the Montreal paper is faced with buyouts worth roughly $2-million from a total newsroom budget of about $12-million, according to the guild representing editorial employees.
Peter Murdoch, vice-president of media for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, which represents the two Vancouver newsrooms, said he isn't confident that shifting layout and headline writing on national news pages to Hamilton is good for local papers. “This centralization is just slowly eroding local coverage in a whole variety of ways.”
CanWest has been reducing costs throughout its operations. It cut 200 jobs from its television business this year, shifting production work in smaller markets to larger cities where camera work on newscasts can be done by remote. In all, the reductions in print and television could reach 300 jobs at the company, Mr. Murdoch said. “That's a significant amount that's going to show up on their bottom line.”
CanWest disagrees with Mr. Murdoch's suggestion that the company is centralizing its news production. Unlike Quebecor's Sun Media chain, which last year began producing news pages that run in all of its tabloids across the country, Mr. Pitblado said the Hamilton-produced pages will be different for each market. “The decision-making on content and all of that will remain with the newspapers.”
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