Sun Media has announced it will be closing 11 publications and laying off 360 staff across the country. The company said the restructuring will save an estimated $55 million in costs.
The closures include three of Sun’s 24 Hours free urban dailies in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. The company said this is part of a strategy to focus on a single urban newspaper in those markets. 24 Hours will continue to operate in Montreal and Toronto, which the company said can sustain multiple dailies, as well as Vancouver, where Sun has no daily.
The company will also close eight regional papers: The Lindsay Daily Post and The Midland Free Press in Ontario; L’Action Régionale in Montérégie, Le Magazine Saint-Lambert and Le Progrès de Bellechasse in Quebec; The Lac du Bonnet Leader and The Beausejour Review in Manitoba; and The Meadow Lake Progress in Saskatchewan.
The company said the layoffs will be sprinkled across the country, not just at the papers that are being shut down.
As reported by The Globe and Mail media reporter Steve Ladanturaye, Tuesday’s layoffs will mean Sun Media has laid off 850 employees in less than a year, and more than 1,000 since the beginning of the recession.
“We don’t have a choice, because if we don’t do this we won’t survive,” said Martin Tremblay, a spokesman for Sun Media’s parent company, Montreal-based Quebecor Inc.
“If we want to succeed in the future, we’re going to have to invest more money in digital and the website and trying to bring in new, young readers.”
A memo circulated to staff said the cuts represented about 8% of the company’s workforce.
“Our vision is to continue to be the leading news media provider in Canada while being the most profitable in the industry,” said Sun Media’s chief operating officer Julie Tremblay in the memo. “This means that we will continue to focus on great journalism, hard hitting information that reports on issues that matter most to people. It also means that we will continue to partner with our advertisers to offer them innovative solutions in reaching customers and furthering success.”
Quebecor reported in its latest quarterly financial statement that net profit has fallen by half since Q1 2012, from $71.4M to $35.6M. News media revenues fell 11% in the same period. Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau stepped down in May and was replaced by former head of Quebecor’s successful Vidéotron division, Robert Dépatie.
