Death of print
In Milton, Ontario, little Jimmy Jones won’t be picking up his Canadian Champions this week to deliver to his neighbours. It’s one of Canada’s oldest newspapers, tracing its roots back to 1858, but it was put to death by its corporate masters last Friday. In Aurora, the Banner will no longer appear on doorsteps to tell citizens what their elected representatives are up to. In Mississauga, with a population of 668,000, you won't be able to pick up the News to shop the flyers to find the best price of groceries.
The same thing—no more news in print—happened without warning the same day across a wide swath of Ontario, in Brampton, Caledon, Cambridge, Guelph, Oshawa, Orillia, Barrie, Whitby, Port Perry, Oakville, Carleton Place, Perth, Huntsville. Orangeville, Stratford, Collingwood, Markham and larger suburban areas like Scarborough and Etobicoke.
Metroland Media Group, Ontario’s biggest community newspaper publisher, suddenly filed for bankruptcy protection and said it will no longer print any of its 71 community newspapers. It’s also abandoning its once-lucrative flyer advertising business. Six hundred and five people were thrown out of work, including 68 journalists. The Canadian Association of Journalists tweeted: “This news, delivered on International Democracy Day, is a total gut punch to Canadian journalism and the public’s right to know. We know how this story goes: Less local journalism = less accountability = weaker democracy.”
According to Metroland’s website, its papers reached 4.2 million customers. The only ones to survive in printed form are six regional dailies.
News of the closures is the latest in a series of devastating blows to the Canadian newspaper industry, caused by a flight of readers and advertisers and competition for both with international social media giants like Meta and Facebook. Publishers, including Jordan Bitove of Metroland’s parent company Nordstar Capital, argue they are so vital to democracy that the federal government should increasingly subsidize them. Yet they hypocritically go about shutting newspapers and robbing their communities of news.
Nordstar says all its cancelled papers will continue to publish news online but that remains to be seen. Only 20 of the 70 papers appear to have websites. There’s also local competition—the most detailed reporting of the closures came in Orillia Matters, a very good online news site owned by Village Media. In any event, online news seldom attracts a large audience, particularly in communities that have been starved of journalistic resources for years by chain owners. Readers are not used to paying for news online and advertisers have more sophisticated ways of reaching their audience.
The mayor of Barrie, which is losing its Advance, was one of the few public officials to speak out. Alex Nuttall called the newspaper "a staple in Barrie for over 35 years ... bringing local news to citizens' doorsteps. Not having access to a print newspaper will have a very significant impact on getting essential information to residents who can't use or may not have access to digital channels ... For many, this is their only means to stay connected."
The 605 Metroland employees who lost their jobs found out by email or a hurried online conference call on Friday morning. There was no warning. Indeed, Unifor Local 87-M, which represents 102 unionized employees, had just reached agreement to merge with other unions to relieve the company’s financial situation. In exchange, the company promised in June not to lay anyone off this year.
Besides breaking that promise, the company will also not be paying its fired employees their collectively bargained severance pay or post-retirement benefits like free drugs. According to the company’s receiver, Grant Thornton LLP, Metroland has “insufficient funds.”
In other words, its owners ran Metroland into the ground.
"The gloves are off," said Carleen Finch, president of Local 87-M. "We will use every and all legal actions at our disposal to fight this inhumane treatment of our members, many of whom spent their whole careers at their paper serving their communities."
"I can hardly express the level of betrayal we feel today," Finch said. "After months of bargaining in good faith and reaching agreements, Metroland is throwing so many of us out of work without a word of notice.”
Most of those fired are not represented by a union. Non-unionized employees in Canada are supposed to receive severance pay—usually for 24 months—when they lose their job due to downsizing or corporate restructuring, so long as the company doesn’t declare bankruptcy. If there is a bankruptcy, the company’s creditors are paid first and employees get whatever scraps are left.
Metroland’s CEO Neil Oliver said the notice of intention his company filed under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act "is not a bankruptcy." It is intended to give "financially distressed businesses like Metroland protection from creditors so that they have time to restructure their affairs and maintain at least some operations."
According to an internal Metroland memo from Oliver, the announcement was precipitated by "unsustainable financial losses stemming from the changing preferences of consumers and the continued financial impact of the pandemic."
Critics, however, say Metroland was terribly managed, clinging too long to an unsustainable business model, relying on expensive advertising flyers, giving away display advertising to block out local online rivals, and being late to mount digital platforms for their news.
Indeed, some of their community newspapers certainly appeared to be robust. The last edition of the Barrie Advance, as an example, ran to 36 pages and was packed with local advertising.
By clinging to its titles and soldiering on, Metroland is preventing more ambitious and entrepreneurial local buyers from serving their community with news.
Don't care about the news? If you’re one of an alarming number of Canadians who have lost interest, think this way: What are you going to use to light your fireplace or mulch your garden now?