A dozen posts will be cut shortly in the newsroom of the Montreal Gazette, the last English-language daily in the metropolis. The news, announced to employees on Wednesday, raises fears for the survival of the newspaper.
Several employees who requested anonymity, for fear of facing disciplinary measures, confirmed this to The Press in the evening. “Everyone is in shock. The very survival of Gazette is at stake. It’s a real possibility that this newspaper will stop publishing by next year or two, especially if we plunge into a hard and deep recession. It is an existential threat to the survival of everyday life, ”says one of them.
According to our information, it was the editor of the newspaper, Bert Archer, who confirmed the news to employees on Wednesday during a meeting. Eight positions for unionized journalists and two for managers from the newsroom are at stake. Layoff notices should be sent very soon, in the coming weeks.
On Tuesday, newspaper publisher Postmedia – which owns the Montreal Gazette but also the National PostI’ottawa citizen and the Vancouver Sun – had announced that it had to lay off 11% of its newsroom staff. The company had already announced last week that it had sold the daily newspaper building Calgary Heraldas well as the migration of a dozen of its Alberta community newspapers to digital-only formats.
In Montreal, the 10 positions likely to be cut represent approximately 25% of the newsroom’s workforce, which has the equivalent of 40.5 full-time unionized employees. “11% was one thing, but here, 25%, we are all very surprised. It’s already very difficult to take out a newspaper with the number that we are. It will become complicated, ”fears a second journalist, on condition of anonymity.
“Next time, it’s really going to be bankruptcy, we’re closing the doors,” says a third on the phone. He too fears that these new layoffs “sound the beginning of the end” for the English-language newspaper.
Experience in danger?
On Twitter on Wednesday, the daily’s former journalist, Christopher Curtis, was the first to publicly deplore the news. “This will not only affect the English-speaking community in Quebec, The Gazette publishes stories that lead to policy change and benefit all Quebecers. And they do it with a fraction of the budget of their competitors,” he argued, also speaking of a “coup de grace” for several English-language dailies belonging to Postmedia.
“When I started in 2011, we had over 100 employees in the office. This is a devastating blow to our community,” insisted Mr. Curtis, who left the outlet in September 2020 to start his own outlet, The Rover.
A veritable institution in the metropolis, the Montreal Gazette was founded in 1778 by Fleury Mesplet, a Quebec printer of French origin. Internally, there are fears that the newspaper’s expertise will be “strongly affected” by the layoffs.
“Probably it will affect very good experienced journalists. And afterwards, we fear that it will create a vicious circle of a drop in income which will be followed by other cuts, and which will end with bankruptcy, ”sums up a journalist.
The management of Montreal Gazette had not answered our questions, at the time of this writing. Ditto for that of Postmedia.