Friday 13 March 2009

Say what?

Sun Media, confirm or deny this startling WTF comment from an anonymous TSF reader:

"Apparently, Sun Media is about to do all desk duties in Barrie. Seriously . . . every page of every Sun Media paper.

"All desk editors are gone."

TSF is reduced to a "wow" on that note.

Do you think PKP would accept an open TSF invitation to explain his grand plan for Sun Media in a memo to this blog or any other source?

What is his business vision for Canada's largest newspaper chain? What and where will Sun Media be when all is said and done?

Ten years of Quebecor and two years of blogging have left us in a Twilight Zone fog.

7 comments:

  1. It's a useless exercise asking PKP to comment on this rumour. Even if he did deign to respond to this rumour on this site, and stated that his plans were to keep the Sun Media deskers on into the forseeable future, that assurance could make a 180-degree turn within 24 hours of his making it. Such is the nature of the arbitrary, knee-jerk leadership we've been working under for years.

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  2. Wow, scary situation for deskers. There will be some funny typos once Barrie starts doing all the local pages. What does a chap in Barrie know of Edmonton or Winnipeg? By the way, are all the big Sun papers going to survive as print editions? When will plugs be pulled on these places? Any rumours on that?

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  3. As we're all learning, if it's on TSF, there's more than a grain of truth to it. So until Barrie happens, we'll have many more workers focused on how they'll cope when they soon get axed. There's a cliche that says a company is only as strong as its people.... if that's the case, we're already a very weak company that will get even weaker. Maybe PKP has a plan involving steroids that will come down the pipe next

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  4. There was a story out this week tghat Sun Media would be pulling out of CP and doing a Canwest-stle boilerplate newsroom operation to send canned copy to the papers. This scenario would fit.

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  5. Seriously, would enough deskers have the balls to refuse this? Knowing most aren't unionized, would PKP rescind or just fire them all and just hire more college grads to do the pages.

    Seriously, how could they even consider this? How can an editor (say student) know correct spellings, names, places of another community, etc.

    This is absolutely depressing and as each day passes, I'm debating whether I want to stick it out.

    This latest rumour makes no sense whatsoever... so expect to see it in a month or so.

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  6. Generic news pages spread across the country - ain't that swell ...

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  7. There's already generic pages across the country through the actual Sun papers and now the former Osprey papers are being forced to take generic content. And the problem with the Osprey papers is that some have more pages to fill than generic pages that come in. So what do editors/deskers do? They turn to CP to fill the gaps, but next year CP is gone and how will the gaps be filled? Even if Barrie were capable of cranking out more pages, wouldn't they need more deskers there, thus defeating PKP's scorch and burn policy? Unless of course PKP plans to contract out to one of those news/page services in India.

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