Friday 19 March 2010

Northern centre

Four Sun Media newspapers in Northern Ontario are being packaged at the Sudbury Star, another "centre of excellence," judging by a new ad for three layout positions.

The Media Job Search ad reads:

"The Sudbury Star is seeking three layout persons to paginate Sun Media’s four community daily newspapers in Northeastern Ontario. (One position is a maternity leave contract.)

"Based in Sudbury, these layout persons will paginate local news, entertainment and sports pages for the Sudbury Star, the North Bay Nugget, the Sault Star and the Timmins Daily Press. A journalism degree and experience in the publishing industry is an asset.

"This position involves working afternoons and evenings, as well as weekends."

This blogger worked at the Sudbury Star many, many moons ago when it was a Thomson newspaper and largely autonomous and like the Nugget served the north with pride.

And talk to Joe Warmington about the pride of working at the Sault Star.

Today, more paginated sameness for the masses, leaving remaining on-site editors with little to do with their creative juices.

Have layoff casualties at the four papers been deep? TSF hasn't received any body counts.

It seems declining readership and circulation stats be damned, full speed ahead on cost-cutting, sanitized centralization that is sucking the life out of community newspapers.

1 comment:

  1. The days of the pride that Warmington felt at the Sault Star are long gone.
    In fact, this "centre of excellence" means the loss of more jobs at all the papers (both union and non union).
    It's another way to cut costs...and unfortunately more circulation when you're not producing a local newspaper, locally anymore.
    Sun Media should be ashamed at what they've done!!!! Especially in smaller Northern Ontario communities that rely on their daily, LOCAL paper.

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