News 1. Canadian Press layoffs On Friday, the Canadian Press notified its staff that at the end of March it will be laying off six reporters nationwide, four of whom are in its Atlantic bureau in Halifax. The four Halifax reporters are Brett Bundale, Aly Thomson, Keith Doucette, and Alex Cooke. All are excellent reporters. […]
Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey was paid $5 million in 2018, but says his company is so broke it needs public subsidies
Morning File, Wednesday, November 28, 2018
News 1. Legacy media: CEO compensation and public subsidies Yesterday, Postmedia released its Management Information Circular in preparation of January’s shareholder meeting; the circular shows that CEO Paul Godfrey was awarded a $1.2 million bonus on top of his $1.2 million dollar salary in 2018, and with stock options brought in over $5 million in […]
The Yarmouth ferry subsidy? Still? Still more? Always…
“Our goal, which I believe we have achieved,” Transportation Minister Geoff MacLellan said when he signed the latest ferry deal, “was to put a stable, long-term agreement in place.” How’s that working out?
I could say I told them so — and I did, way back when “them” was still Rodney Macdonald and his Tories, and from then on forward through Darrell Dexter and Stephen McNeil to whatever same-old-same-old will come next — but I’d have to stand in a too-long line behind all the other told-them-so nattering...
The gospel according to Mark
The short and the small of it all is that SaltWire CEO Mark Lever is blandly, blindly traveling a well-trod path to self-immolation. Unfortunately, SaltWire’s employees — and its readers — will become collateral damage in his self-lit inferno.
“We believe being in 25 communities is a big strength… I believe telling local stories in Gander, and in St. John’s, and in Corner Brook, and Summerside, and Sydney are going to be what supports this network. Not amalgamating. Not putting the same copy in every paper.” Mark Lever, Saltwire CEO Financial Post interview July 17,...
We spent millions of dollars on the Argyle Street reconstruction project and forgot to put in washrooms and water fountains
Morning File, Friday, July 6, 2018
News 1. Cabinet shuffle This item is written by Joan Baxter. Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is no more. Yesterday, Premier Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government renamed it the Department of Lands and Forestry (not, however, Lands and Forests, something lamented by the insightful Facebook page devoted to Nova Scotia’s “Woods and Water”). Timberlea-Prospect […]
BREAKING: Saltwire announces consolidations and layoffs at its Nova Scotian papers
President Mark Lever: "It doesn’t mean [the newspapers are] dying, it means they’re alive and dynamic."
The following email was sent by Saltwire (owner of the Chronicle Herald and all the former Transcon papers in Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland and Labrador) to Saltwire employees today. Dear colleagues: There are some important changes happening to our Nova Scotia publications that I want to share with you. Specifically, these changes affect the […]
The Herald strike ends; how long will the bitterness linger?
It was Day 2 back on the job after an incredibly long, deeply bitter and divisive strike, and many among the Halifax Chronicle Herald’s two dozen returning reporters and editors feared management wanted to provoke them by forcing them to work alongside ex-scab reporters and editors. Inside what unfolded that day...
The question was straightforward. Would the replacement workers who’d taken their jobs for the previous 19 months continue to work in the newsroom, the Chronicle Herald reporter wanted to know? There was a long silence. “Yes,” Mark Lever responded finally. Later, another reporter pressed the newspaper’s CEO. “All of them?” “All of them.” It was only...
Mark Lever and sins against journalism
If Mark Lever really wants to restore public confidence in his post-strike Halifax Chronicle Herald, he could begin by acknowledging — and publicly apologizing for — some of the newspaper’s most egregious sins against journalism during the past 18 months. The problem is that Lever — the failed-businessman-turned-newspaper-magnate — would need to have the first clue about the ethos of journalism and why facts and integrity matter. He doesn’t.
If Mark Lever really wants to restore public confidence in his post-strike Halifax Chronicle Herald, he could begin by acknowledging — and publicly apologizing for — some of the newspaper’s most egregious sins against journalism during the past 18 months. The problem with that, of course, is that Lever — the failed-businessman-turned-newspaper-magnate — would need...
What’s In Mark Lever’s Books? Examineradio, episode #123
As a crippling 18-month strike drags on, the Nova Scotia government has appointed an independent arbitrator to try to strike an agreement between the Chronicle Herald and its unionized workers. This industrial inquiry, the first in Nova Scotia in nearly a quarter century, gives the mediator, William Kaplan, sweeping powers, including the ability to subpoena […]
The Chronicle Herald strike meets the “final option”
Part of me hopes Kaplan’s mediation can end the strike, but part of me would like to see the process proceed to a full-scale industrial inquiry. Now that could get interesting.
For the sake of the 53 reporters and editors still walking the picket line at the Halifax Chronicle Herald, part of me hopes super-mediator/arbitrator/industrial inquiry commissioner William Kaplan is able — through an initial stage of mediation next month — to find a quick resolution to their seemingly intractable, brutish, one-year-176-days-and-counting dispute with owners Mark...