Was it deja vu all over again at the Calgary Sun yesterday, when four senior reporters and editors were called aside one by one and fired?
The firings at the non-union tabloid came several weeks after Chris Nelson, the Calgary Sun's editor in chief, suddenly resigned.
Jim Jennings, editor in chief at the Toronto Sun, resigned in September, several weeks before the paper was hit with another round of layoffs.
Did the Toronto and Calgary editors in chief and other senior Sun people who have resigned in recent years just tire of butting heads with Quebecor and its Sun Media cutbacks?
We don't know. Nobody's talking.
It is really quite amazing how most of the Sun staffers who have resigned, or have been turfed since Quebecor bought Sun Media in 1999, have opted to remain mute about their experiences.
The rise and fall of the Toronto Sun and its sister tabloids is a major Canadian media story, but incredulously most of the people with stories to tell are failing to communicate. That is a peculiar trait to be saddled with in the communications business.
Their silence is deafening.
I can't begin to imagine the atmosphere in the newsroom at Calgary ... morale was bad enough before the cuts started happening.
ReplyDeleteI was laid off last summer after three years with the Sun.
My heart broke with the news of the four terminated yesterday. They were good people of a dying breed ... you know, the ones who actually cared about the product and not just the paycheque.
When I was Showcase editor at the Toronto Sun, Kit Poole was one of the kindest, most professional people I had the pleasure of dealing with. To see her, and so many others, leave, take buyouts or fall under the axe makes whatever voodoo spin-doctoring they'd like to put on the latest NADbank numbers moot. The product cannot survive without good people. It's that simple.
ReplyDeleteBob Bishop