Tuesday 14 September 2010

Peterborough -2

The ever-shrinking Peterborough Examiner lost another reporter and its sports editor to layoffs Monday, TSF tipsters report.

" It may just be a coincidence that collective bargaining begins this week," says one tipster. "The last contract expired in August.

"There's talk there could be more layoffs on the way."

No names were provided by tipster, but the Examiner sports editor is listed as Greg Davis. Updates would be appreciated re the names and years on the job.

We see the thinning Examiner out this way occasionally and the paper has always taken pride in its local sports coverage. Sports without a rudder doesn't bode well for readers.

A common complaint on smaller Sun Media dailies and weeklies is the amount of content coming from Toronto and other locales, reducing space for local news and sports.

The Examiner, once a proud city daily, is dying a slow death.

5 comments:

  1. Greg had only been there a couple of years but already had a great reputation in the community. He brought an awful lot to that newsroom. Probably one of its strongest people. Same could be said about the reporter they let go. Kennedy Gordon was a great editor who was let go when all the cuts were made in December 2008. They hired him back as a reporter, and now he is gone again - victim of being low man on the totem pole, I guess. He had tons of experience and tons of talent. He was carrying the bulk of the big stories in The Examiner each day. Huge loss in each case.

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  2. A townhall meeting has been called for today by our publisher Gordon Brewerton. More cuts of some kind are expected to be announced. As of yesterday we no longer have a retail sales manager and last week the circulation manager was walked out the door. We will likely lose publishing days.

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  3. The Western papers are also dying. PKP's hiring freeze has community papers struggling to produce with one or two staff members at the helm, as more sales assistants are hired in their place. Why PKP doesn't have a hiring freeze when it comes to sales points to the obvious that quality means nothing.

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  4. "PKP's hiring freeze has community papers struggling to produce with one or two staff members at the helm, as more sales assistants are hired in their place. Why PKP doesn't have a hiring freeze when it comes to sales points to the obvious that quality means nothing."

    You just pointed out a growing trend at Sun Media owned newspapers (and Canadian newspapers in general). While editorial, production and other staff are being shown the door at a rapid rate, there is a limited exodus of sales people. You may also find that many of today's managers come from a sales background.

    These sales managers think the number one way to increase sales is to throw more salespeople at the advertiser.

    When that fails they boast about the large circulation numbers of their free products.

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  5. I worked with both guys and I can vouch they are class acts and solid journalists and it's a damn shame we're losing them. The paper just continues a slow and painful death.

    Kennedy was an editor and reporter at the Sudbury Star and Examiner with about 20 years of experience overall. Solid writer, great editor and was always a quiet but effective leader in the newsroom.

    I believe Greg has been in the business for a decade, maybe longer. He started in Newfoundland where he grew up and was also sports editor and city editor at the daily in Timmins before he came to Peterborough. Everyone said he was a breath of fresh air in the sports department.

    After an editor quit last year and wasn't replaced, Greg then had to also manage all the wire pages along with his sports section.

    I'm guessing more work will be piled on now that they're gone. Typical PKP plan of attack - overwork and underpay your employees and tell them to count their lucky stars they still have a job.

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