New CUPE video

CUPE has released a 23-minute bilingual documentary on the 16-month Journal de Quebec lockout, with an inside look at how the 252 employees published their free and popular MediaMatin tabloid.

MediaMatin was published weekdays and handed out on Quebec City streets by the locked out employees throughout the dispute. Circulation was about 40,000 daily.

Meanwhile, the 253 locked out Quebecor's Journal de Montreal employees are approaching the first anniversary of their January 2009 lockout.

The Montreal employees have a web paper, Rue Frontenac.

Comment balance

For Toronto Sun readers finicky about symmetry, the execs on the Comment page are balanced once again.

To the left:

Mike Power, publisher; James Wallace, deputy editor (don't you need an editor to be a deputy editor?); Rob Granatstein, editorial page editor, and Lorrie Goldstein, senior associate editor.

To the right:

Brandon Grosvenor, added yesterday as VP advertising sales; Steve Angelevski, VP reader sales & services; Piero Menicucci,VP finance, and Julie Kirsh, director, electronic information.

How many of those lefties and righties would we trade for another J. Douglas Creighton, QC, founding publisher, as noted below the execs? Well, suffice to say the symmetry would be extremely out of whack.

Bob's cause

The first fall of snow brings to mind the thousands of down-and-out men and women the late, great Bob MacDonald helped as a hands-on supporter of the annual Regent Park Christmas Dinner.

Last Christmas, more than 1,300 people enjoyed a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, thanks to donations, many in Bob's name.

Bob's involvement was much more than lip service. He would leave Christmas Day comforts of family and home to man the chow line at Sacre Coeur Church on Sherbourne Street.

He would be on that chow line until everyone got fed and then scoot home for his own Christmas dinner with his wife and his daughter, Moira.

Bob, an AA member, had empathy for the down-and-out men and women helped by the good work of the dinner's organizers.

After Bob died on Feb. 26, 2006, Moira, a Sun columnist, took up the cause. She wrote about her father's selfless efforts last December.

There is still time to make a donation in memory of Bob. Mail a cheque to

Regent Park Christmas Dinner,
P.O. Box 30085, 2365 Warden Ave., Unit 4,
Scarborough, Ontario M1T 0A1.

We know it would put a smile on Bob's face.

Sarnia DOA?

A writer up Sarnia way says Sun Media's Sarnia Observer building is up for sale with a $1.9 million asking price. He's calling the paper DOA.

"Okay. It's official. The Sarnia Observer is dead," writes Chris Cooke, a blogger who worked for the competition, the Gazette.

"After 156 years the owner of Sarnia's daily newspaper has killed it one cut at a time. As I write this the building that has housed the paper at 140 Front Street since 1977 is being sold. The asking price? $1.9 million."

Cooke also writes:

"Four years ago The Observer sold to Quebecor for about $17 million. What do you think it's worth today? What do you think a sinking daily without staff, building and presses is worth? That's pretty much what we thought too."

Interesting read.

Black Tuesday +1

Next Tuesday is the first anniversary of Black Tuesday, the day 600 Sun Media employees across the chain were laid off.

Some jobs were saved by others taking buyouts, but within weeks most of the men and women pink-slipped were suddenly former employees.

Hundreds had been laid off before Black Tuesday and hundreds have been laid off since Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008. And the cuts keep coming.

If any of the 1,500 or so Quebecor layoff casualties from the past decade want to share their post-Sun Media stories, signed or unsigned, we'll post them next Tuesday. How did being laid off affect your life? Have you found a new job?

Feel free to vent at length.

E-mail your comments to TSF or you can post them as comments .and we'll hold them for Tuesday's posting. Please include the name of the paper you worked and the number of years you were with Sun Media.

If you wonder where a lot of media jobs are going, take a read of this Computerworld story. Companies around the world are clamouring for North America's outsourced newspaper jobs.

And be sure to visit this link in the story by Patrick Thibodeau.

NPAC: David Lucas

David Lucas, one of the Toronto Sun's good ones that got away, participates in the latest NPAC Q&A.

Lucas, now photo editor at the Globe and Mail, talks about freelancing in Ottawa, being hired by the Canadian Press, quitting the turbulent Sun in 2007, being hired by the Globe.

All the while holding on to his passion for the lens.

If there are any unemployed news photographers out there feeling blue, this Q&A should be motivating. The message: Never give up.

Intel -mailroom

More Merry-Christmas-you're-fired news, this time at the Belleville Intelligencer - a week shy of the first anniversary of Black Tuesday.

Out are the paper's mailroom and an undisclosed number of the 55 employees and in is a new depot-style facility at another location.

A story in today's paper calls the mailroom closure in January "part of a larger corporate plan to become leaner and more flexible."

The story says "a number of employees from the current facility will move to the new depot. The mailroom currently employees about 55 people; the number to move is still being determined."

The current mailroom is used to insert flyers in the Intelligencer, Community Press, Trentonian and County Weekly News.

The story says the new facility will be responsible for co-ordinating local delivery of the newspapers while the insertion process will be done at facilities outside the region.

Intelligencer publisher John Knowles says: "No one ever wants to let people go, especially the kind of hard-working dedicated people we have had the privilege of having work for us."

But he is "excited" about improvements being made for readers and customers.

Our crystal ball sees more and more Sun Media newspapers becoming glorified flyers in the next decade. Money over responsible and dedicated community news.

Perfect timing for the launching of new and independent newspapers run by people who give a damn.

Media conglomerates have sure made a mess of things.

Jay Leno material?

Updated re YouTube visits and Gawker coverage

Penisgate has helped TSF set a new daily hits record Tuesday - almost 2,000 by midnight.

Meanwhile, the YouTube views count for MTV Canada's coverage was 350 on Tuesday, and more than 2,200 today.

And Gawker readers are having their say.

Not sure if Jay Leno has checked it out personally, but we're sure Penisgate will reach NBC TV for use in his Monday night headlines bit.

Santa Claus parade and hot tub float penis exposure. They don't mix at all, but the photo has put Peterborough on the map.

It is incredible that the photo went from a Peterborough Examiner photographer to the photo desk, if the paper still has one, to layout editors, to the webmaster and presses, on to the Canadian Press and its editors, and then to Metro and its editors - all without penis detection.

What are the odds of that happening?

Penis play

Updated re Examiner's apology
MTV Canada's hilarious coverage of Penisgate is now on YouTube, with 305 views and counting, with thanks to a TSF tipster for the link.



No mention of Sun Media's Peterborough Examiner, where the photo originated (see apology below). MTV zeroes in on the editors at Metro and asks why they didn't catch the over exposure snapped during a Santa Claus parade.

Line of the day from co-host Daryn Jones:

"Who knew if you are a photo editor you also have to worry about, is there a dick in the picture."

"At least he's stacked," says co-host Nicole Holness. "So it's kind of good press for him."

Have to wonder how the Peterborough Catholic school student fared during classes today.

And whether any children or parents waiting for Santa Claus are now in therapy.

The Peterborough Examiner's apology:

Sometimes in life there is no other, or even better, word than sorry.

In Monday's paper a photograph was published that shouldn't have appeared as it did and we are sorry. It certainly was not published intentionally.

Some of our web readers did notice and we immediately took the photo from our website and electronic edition as soon as we were made aware of the problem but the print edition had already gone out.

We apologize to everyone who may have been offended.

Penis power

Wow.

Mention "penis" in this blog and the hits set a new record - almost 1,200 by midnight yesterday.

It's a long way from the hundred or so daily hits in the first weeks after Toronto Sun Family was launched three years ago today.

Almost 400,000 hits later, we are humbled by the growing audience. It is sufficient incentive to scrap plans to restrict TSF postings to the Toronto Sun, where it all began 38 years ago.

A lot of comments and e-mails supporting the status quo came from 333, a clear message from T.O. that employees across the chain are part of the family.

Besides, PKP's baffling game plan for his chain of newspapers as Sun Media approaches a new decade is too intriguing to abandon midstream.

Venting is healthy and Sun Media employees have been venting here for three years, so vent on.

All of your comments, anonymous or not, are welcomed, as long as they do not attack fellow employees. To the reader who recently called a Toronto Sun employee an arrogant motherfucker, are you wondering why your comment was rejected?

Let's try to be more civil in 2010. Fellow employees, union or non-union, are not the problem.

Last, but not least, memories of the glory years of the Sun papers are always welcomed.Today's employees owe a huge debt to the vets.