Thursday 8 October 2009

Niagara -1

The sports editor at the Niagara Falls review is leaving the paper, says a TSF tipster.

"He not only writes, but takes a lot of photos used by the Sun Media dailies in Niagara," says the tipster.

"This is a sign of employees leaving before they lose their jobs in cuts. This will leave a big gap in sports coverage in Niagara."

16 comments:

  1. Wonder if they'll fill the hole left by sports reporter/editor Dan Dakin, seeing as he is the sports department.

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  2. And so it continues... and I bet the position won't be replaced either, leaving another paper scrambling and pissing off readers.

    Smart move on the reporter, get out while you can.

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  3. I'm sure they won't replace him. We lost our sports reporter back in February and we were told there was no money to replace him. We also have no money for freelancers either. I just wonder where that reporter's salary went? Probably in PKP's pocket.

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  4. OK, so I'm confused - is Niagara Falls a one-man department (i.e. sports editor/reporter) or a two-man department (i.e. editor AND reporter)?
    If it's the latter, well, his position might not be replaced.

    If it's the former, then yeah, he'll be replaced. No doubt about it. And I'm pretty sure he didn't leave because he was worried about his job being cut. Not even Quebecor/Sun Media/Osprey/Bowes is dumb enough to cut a one-man department down to a no-man department - especially something as touchy as sports.

    If he was a one-man show, he left because he was burned out, plain and simple. It's torture being a one-man sports department at a weekly, I can't imagine doing it at a daily.

    But the bigger question is whether or not Niagara Falls can actually find someone willing burn himself/herself out working 60 hours a week and only getting paid for the first 36 ... and not well, at that.

    The answer is: Of course, they will. That's why there are one-man sports departments at dailies. It never changes.

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  5. Noticed this on The Peterborough Examiner website, don't see it on others, a popup add which takes you to a reader survey:

    https://www.yournewsviews.ca/

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  6. Typical.

    I know of another sport editor (see: demoralized yet smart) who is preparing to leave the industry completely at a sister newspaper.

    How sad.

    Can you imagine what would happen if a newspaper paid their workers well, provided a great working environment for them to thrive in creatively, and produced a beautiful product by investing in suitable technologies, instead of stifling all creative input, leaving them constantly in fear of losing their jobs, and then producing shoddy rags with poor design and even poorer printing?

    Let's hope representatives from those startup Ontario weeklies are reading this.

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  7. That ad is on the western websites as well. It's a survey on where readers want to see their paper go. It gives you 3 choices for a front cover and 3 for the inside pages. None of them are spectacular.

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  8. The Falls sports department is a one-man department - no one to replace him there at all

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  9. The 6:30 p.m. deadline doomed poor Dan.
    How can a newspaper with an Ontario Hockey League team even pretend to cover its OHL team with a deadline like that?
    I feel awful for that newspaper.

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  10. Uhhh... yes, there are in fact no-man departments in the chain and worse, nobody appears to care. Oh wait, our readers care but they apparently don't matter

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  11. You wait until newsroom regionalisation begins in 2010. You think there's a dearth of staffers now?... You 'aint seen nothin' yet, folks.

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  12. I had a feeling newsroom regionalisation was going to happen soon. Our publisher had to put together a spreadsheet of every free and paid freelancer we had and the publisher counted every story and photo each reporter did in four weeks. I figured it was a way to weed people out for when our pagination gets regionalized...just not sure when and I hope I'm gone before it happens.

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  13. Timmins is the model: Two reporters, two editors and a one-man sports department to cover a city of 50,000 and land that extends 900 km north.

    That's the future of our newsrooms.

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  14. That survey pops up periodically on many Ontario websites.
    I tried to take it to say the local content of the newspapers was good, but stopped when they insisted on asking which design looked better. As there was no option which said "I like the look of my community paper as it is, leave it alone", I simply closed the window. I'm not going to give these corporate suits any ammunition when it comes to unnecessary changes to local newspapers. Once again, these people don't understand their marketplaces.
    Of course, the only reason the survey opened on my screen was the fact that even when you click "Close" on the unwanted pop-up ad, it opens anyway. Even in unwanted pop-up ads, Sun Media and Quebecor aren't really listening to anyone and forcefeeding things down everyone's throats.

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  15. So how would regionalisation work for weeklies? Would it be similar to what happened to dailies where they can only put local content on certain pages? I don't see how these small communities would approve.

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  16. Regionalization wouldn't work at weeklies. That won't stop them from ramming it through, however.
    Who cares what readers want?
    Who cares communities want?
    Who cares about the staff's knowledge of their own communities and papers?
    It's all about how to cut costs and how to print a rag under the banner of a once-proud newspaper.

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