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Determined to be more Toronto-centric, the Toronto Star cuts 120 Torontonians
Posted on April 24, 2008 by Douglas Bell
What with the heavy artillery in New York’s newspaper war continuing to boom and crash (the Journal’s managing editor, the unfortunately monikered Marcus Brauchli, has pitched himself over the side to leave room for Murdoch’s handpicked capo, Robert Thomson, to run the show), now might be the moment for a quick review of one of Canada’s somewhat more tepid skirmishes. The latest “news” concerns the Toronto Star’s recent round of layoffs. Included in the 120-odd who were shown the door was the entire Internet production staff. This in turn led a snarky union rep to spit back,“[The Star’s] message to the world is that they’re all dedicated to the Internet, but then they lay off the whole department.” Well, yes. Despite the element of futility after the fact, the rep’s got a point.
Layoffs like these likely mean that the production load will now fall on journalists, requiring them to add Internet production to their skill set. A Torstar employee—one who’s been through the Star’s vaunted “Web U”—was quoted in the latest issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism, revealing that Star journalists are thrown in “the deep end. They’re used to being fantastic at what they do, and we’re asking them to do something they don’t know how to do yet.” This leaves them less time, one supposes, to do, er, journalism.
And let’s face it, journalism isn’t exactly the Star’s strong suit these days. The same Ryerson Review article describes the Star’s most recent iteration as “bulleted information, numbers in large type to express headline-like information and sidebars designed to look like pull quotes.” Even long-time Star columnist Richard Gwyn observes that “everybody is struggling to find a niche” in a paper that is more Toronto-centric and “less intellectually ambitious than it used to be.”
More Toronto-centric? This is the Toronto Star he’s taking about—a paper that, one wag suggested, should carry a logo on the front page that reads “proudly parochial since 1892.” And describing the Star as less intellectually ambitious is like complaining that circus midgets aren’t short enough. Take Tuesday’s front page: I dare you to distinguish the bland Earth Day headline and accompanying flower photo (see above) from the Beamsville Gleaner. (I’m not sure there is a Beamsville Gleaner, but you know what I mean.)
Earlier in the decade, driven by Torstar prez Rob Prichard, the Star pursued a more ambitious agenda, beefing up both its national coverage and relevance. They even tried re-conceiving the Sunday paper as a Sunday magazine (full disclosure: I wrote regular features for then Sunday Star deputy editor Peter Scowen). All of this went for naught, having to do with the complications of the Star’s ownership—a bevy of five coupon-clipping trust-funded families. Now they’re a long way back from where they started. More on this in the coming days.
• Brauchli's Letter to WSJ Staff [Wall Street Journal]
• Torstar cutting 160 jobs, including Internet jobs, takes $21-million restructuring charge [Yahoo]
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Lit_200 April 25, 2008 at 8 a.m.
The newspaper game is in it's final quarter but I'm surprised that the coupon-clipping owners don't see that the future of news gathering and dissemination is via the internet.
If you want to know what's going on in business or sports, particularly, you go to Bloomberg and MSN. And if you want insight, you go to blogs like this one.
It's a pity that, with such an intelligent and provocative head, this particular blog drags along such a dense and sluggish tail... and yes, I am thinking of those who use the blog to vent their fixed ideas... the same old stuff... day after day.
January April 25, 2008 at 9:24 a.m.
In the early 1980's, I learned that Torstar owned Harlequin. That made me really question their commitment to the cause of quality journalism. I prefer G&M to the Star any day.
As far as laying off the entire internet dept, I wonder what they are going to do when their server crashes? That's not something reporters can fix, and reporters won't be able to report anything until it is fixed.
Fintan April 25, 2008 at 10:06 a.m.
"It's a pity that, with such an intelligent and provocative head, this particular blog drags along such a dense and sluggish tail... and yes, I am thinking of those who use the blog to vent their fixed ideas... the same old stuff... day after day." - Lit the twit.
Like Lit's fixed idea that His Lardship did no wrong, could not do any wrong, was railroaded by the American justice system, would never be convicted, would never spend a day in jail, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I can't wait for a year from now to see what Lit will be telling us some weeks after Bubba and His Lardship celebrate their first anniversary. LOL
GravityLevity2 April 25, 2008 at 10:36 a.m.
The Star has seemed to me to be in slight decline for the last 2 or 3 years. A lot of columnists have left (retired or went elsewhere); others have been reassigned to areas they are not suited for. The redesigned Saturday tv listing is not as good as what it replaced. And now they seem no longer to be carrying Doonesbury.
Well at least they still haven't hired Christie Blatchford, who (I think) continues to be given a platform for her, ahem, "quality journalism" at the Globe.
Given what Lit says about the future of journalism, it makes sense to me that journalists in general should be expected to have facility with the Internet. This appears to be what the Star is expecting of its journalists. Black and Radler would be proud of the wholesale sacking, while expecting those left behind to take up the work of those sacked.
charley April 25, 2008 at 11:56 a.m.
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask reporters to learn a new skill set seeing as it's the trend of the future and a way of keeping the paper functioning a little longer(i.e. I think it's doomed eventually). It makes more sense to have your talented writers learn computer skills than trying to have your technical experts try and turn out articles and columns too. I've had several jobs where keeping the company afloat entailed me and others having to switch to new roles which we had to learn on the fly.
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