Quebecor Inc.’s dispute with reporters at two French-language newspapers over Internet content shows no signs of abating as the chief executive of Canada’s largest newspaper publisher urged employees yesterday to face the reality of dwindling readership.
“This reality is unavoidable and has greatly affected the whole industry,” Pierre Karl Peladeau told shareholders at its annual meeting. “We are not going to bury our head in the sand.”
Sun Media Corp. locked out 140 editorial and office staff at Le Journal de Quebec 14 months ago over an impasse in getting journalists to adapt to the multimedia world by providing content for the Internet in different formats.
A similar fate threatens Quebec’s largest circulation daily Le Journal de Montreal this fall.
Peladeau said newspapers must adapt their business model to the shift of revenue from advertising and classified to the Internet.
“Now, more than ever, we must produce high-quality editorial content that we will make profitable by making use of the new technolgical vehicles that enable us to reach our public,” he said as union members protested outside the company’s TVA television studios where the annual meeting was being held.
While its Quebec dailies don’t have websites, newspapers in English Canada have reinvented their newsrooms. Reporters and photographers in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver produce copy and video for use on the Internet.
It is redesigning its newspaper websites by September to attract advertisers that no longer use its newspapers.
