Rhino's Ramblings - The Death Of Local Media
By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary
It came as a double blow as Postmedia - the company that owns the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix - announced the virtual shutdown of a dozen newspapers in Alberta and making the move of employees working from home a permanent one.
MJ Independent is not the only newspaper produced on a kitchen table.
Then just over a week later the announcement was made 11 percent of the editorial staff at Postmedia will be losing their jobs.
No Postmedia newspaper is going to be spared in the upcoming layoffs.
Reporters system wide are gone.
The only details not released is how this will impact individual newspapers.
Will the cuts be equal across the Postmedia network or will some newspapers - especially the flagship newspapers in Regina and Saskatoon be cut deeper than 11 percent?
What is known now is Postmedia has said at the present time there will be no newspapers shuttered.
What happens in the future is yet to be determined.
But what is known is Postmedia has stated they cannot afford to buyout senior staff who might want to retire with a decent cheque.
Such a move would allow younger reporters the opportunity to stick around and continue to work for years to come. But Postmedia cannot afford it.
The moves by Postmedia are part of the change going through the entire newspaper industry with PostMedia trying to ultimately move from a physical newspaper to an on-line publication.
It’s the only way if you want to be realistic how Postmedia will survive.
The reason for it all is changes in the industry have rapidly evaporated the advertising revenues for PostMedia and other newspapers as well.
The cutbacks and potential deaths of newspapers is a major blow against not just local news but also democracy itself.
The closing of newspapers and death of local news coverage is not something new in Saskatchewan but has happened throughout the Saskatchewan including right here in Moose Jaw.
We have seen a gaping hole left with the closure of the Moose Jaw Times-Herald just over five years ago. It’s nothing new in Moose Jaw.
And yes, in response to people who have asked, MJ Independent will be closing its doors permanently either this year or next.
It’s a far cry from Saskatchewan a decade ago where there was a seeming shortage in journalists and 75 percent of grads from the University of Regina's journalism program had fulltime jobs prior to graduation.
New journalism grads were literally turning down jobs.
A decade later the U of R's journalism program is on hiatus for at least a year and when it was running it was easy to get into.
The reason giving is the lack of professors and the need to teach more digital content.
Even the U of R has made a tacit agreement the newspaper industry and media itself is changing.
It’s also an admission that the jobs plentiful a decade earlier are now gone.
And my guess in the newspaper industry the jobs are not coming back.
The good news though is there are plenty of lucrative jobs in the PR industry as governments, private industry and non-government organizations are hiring to ensure their message gets out.
The media who would ask the tough questions are over stretched, over worked and to be honest don’t have the time to do those extra work and ask the difficult questions.
And with further media cuts npw and likely looming in the future it’s only going to get worse.
The cutbacks in the media are not a made on Saskatchewan phenomenon
It’s everywhere in Canada as well as worldwide.
People are looking for their news elsewhere and it’s something traditional media has not been able to adapt to.
In the end though it’s not just the death of newspapers that’s happening but at the same time so has the in-depth coverage they are known for.
The issues - especially local ones in smaller markets - are lost as news becomes more centralized and syndicated.
It’s the death of the local media and there isn’t at the present time seem to be a way to stop it.