Information Co-ops | The six dailies have delivered their latest paper edition

For the very last time this Saturday morning, Quebecers will be able to leaf through the pages of Sunof There Tribuneof The Voice of the Eastof Rightof News writer and Daily. The six regional dailies of the National Independent Information Cooperative (CN2i) will hit the new year by switching to all-digital. Small glimpse of a big transformation.

An end, a beginning

Reached by telephone in the offices of Sunthe voice of Valérie Gaudreau, who piloted the last printed issue of the Quebec daily on newsstands this Saturday, contains inflections of both mourning and celebration.

The joyful wine poured this Friday afternoon celebrates 127 years of history which will no longer continue to be written in ink, but exclusively in pixels, with a “very young”, “responsive” and digitally savvy room.

The sad wine will be shed like tears for the departure of precious artisans who have decided to leave the stage at the same time as the paper. It is also a support carried by the same wind which blew on the printed newspapers of The Pressweekdays from 2016 then Saturdays from 2018.

“It’s the end of an object, of a craft which is to produce a newspaper every day, but the information, the team, everything remains,” adds Valérie Gaudreau, former editor-in-chief of the Sun who will sign the municipal chronicle replacing François Bourque from January.

In Sherbrooke, the pace of work in the premises of The gallery, founded in 1910, was overall “soft” on this Friday morning. “We have worked really hard in the last few weeks, especially in the last two, three days,” explains the editor-in-chief, Chloé Cotnoir, in an interview with The Press. “Today are the last corrections. Several colleagues will come and join us for a little happening when we send the last headline to print. »

An inevitable passage

CN2i’s six regional dailies had already dropped the weekday paper at the end of March 2020. Since then, these newspapers, which rely on subscriptions, have continued to increase their digital presence; In the middle of last April, they launched a new web platform and revamped applications for phones and tablets.

“It was quite a gymnastics to support paper and digital at the same time,” observes M.^me Cotnoir, from The gallery. It’s not the same readership, it’s not the same way of producing news. »

“We will be able to think 100% digital,” agrees Valérie Gaudreau, in Quebec. “Paper dictated production; our responsiveness was a little captive. But here, we will want to experiment, for example in the way of presenting the information. »

If the COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated the abandonment of the paper format, journalists from Sun are today in “acceptance”, she believes.

In order to successfully complete its digital transition, CN2i had established a voluntary departure program in spring 2023, an operation which made it possible to avoid layoffs. Some 125 worker members of the Information Co-ops raised their hands, or about a third of the network’s information workers.

Souvenir copies

The copies of the six dailies which will stain readers’ fingers for the last time this Saturday will not contain any trace of burning news. For The sun And The galleryit will be a question, in some 100 pages, of remembering more than a century of history and stories.

“It’s really a plunge into the past,” illustrates Chloé Cotnoir, editor-in-chief of the Sherbrooke daily. We look back at the 114 years of the newspaper; technological developments, the professions which contributed to the production of the paper newspaper, whether pressmen, peddlers, distribution people, etc. We also gave space to former journalists and columnists who agreed to take up their pen again to recount memorable moments or funny facts. »

At Sun, the final edition, punctuated with retrospectives, photos and caricatures from archives and reader testimonies, will be printed in 40,000 copies, enough to reward subscribers and allow 5,000 curious people to buy their copy on newsstands. Work on this historic example began at the beginning of the fall.

Fears for the sustainability of regional information

Local news from major cities like Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Granby and Trois-Rivières will lose their main paper medium. The difficulties of written media in recent years raise fears not only for the container, but also for the content, underlines Colette Brin, director of the Center for Media Studies and full professor at Laval University.

She points out that the transition to all-digital regional dailies has led to a reduction in teams in both production and editorial departments. “Digital technology makes it possible to make certain efficiency gains, for example in research, but it is certain that for local information, there is a tendency to reduce the number of journalists in the field,” laments -she.

She remembers a time when the offices of the Sun welcomed around a hundred journalists, compared to around thirty today. Due to the drop in advertising revenue, the Quebec daily had to say goodbye to around thirty employees in March 2020, then to around twenty others in 2023 in view of abandoning paper.

Despite a reduced team, “there are no sectors of activity that we are going to abandon,” assures Valérie Gaudreau, until recently editor-in-chief.

The gallery for its part lost 13 employees, including 7 in the newsroom. “Of course it comes with a reflection on the reorganization of work and on how to continue to offer quality content with a reduced team,” notes the editor-in-chief, Chloé Cotnoir.