CBC’s Linden MacIntyre, Alison Smith, Nancy Wilson announce retirement
Linden MacIntyre, the host of The Fifth Estate, said he felt compelled to retire to stave off the layoffs of younger journalists at CBC who would lose their jobs as part of a $130-million budget cut. Meanwhile, World at Six host Alison Smith said she will retire at the end of June.
By Tamara Baluja, Associate Editor
Linden MacIntyre, the host of The Fifth Estate, said he felt compelled to retire to stave off the layoffs of younger journalists at CBC who would lose their jobs as part of a $130-million budget cut. Meanwhile, World at Six host Alison Smith and CBC Newsnet's Nancy Wilson said they will retire soon.
The Globe and Mail reported that MacIntyre will retire by the end of the summer after 50 years as a journalist. The public broadcaster announced it would cut 657 jobs—or eight per cent of its staff—over the course of the next two years.
“If there’s 500-plus people disappearing, I’d like one or two of them to be recognizable. Because otherwise it’s just meaningless to people—to the taxpayers who are paying a big part of the freight … So I offered to vacate my position,” he told the Globe’s senior media reporter Simon Houpt.
Unlike previous layoffs, CBC is not giving buyout packages for senior employees. “It means old-timers are hunkering down … they just want to hang on long enough to get a bit more pension entitlement, or whatever,” MacIntyre said in the Globe. “So the main brunt of this is going to be felt at the low end of the food chain, where [CBC’s] future lies.”
Following Linden MacIntyre’s announcement that he will retire from CBC, Alison Smith said she will also retire at the end of June.
According to a note circulated internally at CBC, she said she had been considering retirement for some time.
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Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.