Pagination centralized for Eastern Ontario Region Sun Media chain
From a job posting:
“Reporting to Sun Media’s East Region Pagination Co-ordinator(s), these layout editors will design broadsheet and tabloid pages including news, entertainment and sports. Graphics work will also be required. Experience in the publishing industry an asset. This position involves working afternoons and evenings, as well as some weekends. The location will be in Brockville, Ontario. Applicants should be prepared to start their first shift in August 5, 2009.”
While this may appear to be a cost-savings to the corporation, the loss of these jobs in the communities served by the newspapers demonstrates a reduction in local news content. More and more content from outside the community is being provided (and in some cases, demanded) as content while the local reporter’s holes are shrinking.
Sadly, the trend is growing. What should be happening is the growth of local content. Resident of these communities need high quality content that is unique, not the same stuff that can be found everywhere else. If interest in local newspapers is dropping, it is due to the fluff and nonsense being printed. The lack of comprehensive, in-depth coverage of local issues takes newsroom resources, something Sun Media refuses to invest in. As Phil Meyer demonstrates in his book, The Vanishing Newspaper, he demonstrates how an increase in quality increases revenues. It is not a rhetorical argument, but a statistical fact. The question is: When are the MBA hot shots at head office going to get the message?
From a job posting:
“Reporting to Sun Media’s East Region Pagination Co-ordinator(s), these layout editors will design broadsheet and tabloid pages including news, entertainment and sports. Graphics work will also be required. Experience in the publishing industry an asset. This position involves working afternoons and evenings, as well as some weekends. The location will be in Brockville, Ontario. Applicants should be prepared to start their first shift in August 5, 2009.”
While this may appear to be a cost-savings to the corporation, the loss of these jobs in the communities served by the newspapers demonstrates a reduction in local news content. More and more content from outside the community is being provided (and in some cases, demanded) as content while the local reporter’s holes are shrinking.
Sadly, the trend is growing. What should be happening is the growth of local content. Resident of these communities need high quality content that is unique, not the same stuff that can be found everywhere else. If interest in local newspapers is dropping, it is due to the fluff and nonsense being printed. The lack of comprehensive, in-depth coverage of local issues takes newsroom resources, something Sun Media refuses to invest in. As Phil Meyer demonstrates in his book, The Vanishing Newspaper, he demonstrates how an increase in quality increases revenues. It is not a rhetorical argument, but a statistical fact. The question is: When are the MBA hot shots at head office going to get the message?
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July 15, 2009
Is that an inference to draw
Is that an inference to draw here? The pagination and graphics work may be centralized, but it does not necessarily follow that the individual newspapers will no longer carry local news. It could just be that the chain found it a more efficient use of the paginators’ time to have them all in one place, with the news shipped in from the different papers to be put together.
At individual sites, the paginators and graphics people often have exceptionally busy days leading up to and on deadline day, and then little to do on other days. This is probably an effort to use them throughout the week as the different papers would have different press times.
Granted though that apart from the loss of local jobs to a centralized location, it is likely that such efficiency will probably mean that each paper will boast an identical style, like the Transcon weeklies in Nova Scotia which are impossible to tell apart on the newstand but which have different editorial content. They tend to do this so that the paginators don’t have to change style with each paper they work on. However there is no reason why the news content itself can’t be different and that would still require local reporters.
At the end of the day, people want to read local news, and to get that, you have to have reporters on the ground where the news is happening.