Torstar, owner of the Toronto Star, then Canada’s largest-circulation daily, cut 160 positions in a restructuring of its newspaper division in April 2008. Among them were all ten of the company’s internet production staff.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada seized on the contradiction. Its official Maureen Dawson said the message to the world was that the company was dedicated to the internet, and then it laid off the whole department.
Torstar’s answer was that the losses would not affect the Star’s commitment to online journalism, because many of the functions had been transferred to the editorial department over time. The claim was not implausible on its own terms: the paper had ratified a new three-year contract with its staff that January, averting a strike, and the agreement was presented as part of a strategy to move from a print-focused organisation to a multimedia one.
What the episode illustrates is how thin the line was between integrating web production into the newsroom and simply removing the people who knew how to do it. The restructuring took the second route while describing the first. The post appeared as a cross-post from Newslab.ca.