(Montreal) A new tile hit the media on Friday. Métro Média, which includes the Journal Métro and 16 local weeklies, announced at the end of the day the immediate suspension of its activities, leaving its employees in shock and the media community pained.
President and CEO Andrew Mulé made the announcement to employees by email late Friday. “Time was my worst enemy and what I feared unfortunately happened, but abruptly and suddenly,” he said in an internal memo.
In his message, he criticizes the lack of government support and the decision of Mayor Valérie Plante to complicate the distribution of the Publisac, which forced the company to make a digital shift. In addition to the Journal Métro, the company owned 11 local newspapers in Montreal and 5 in Quebec.
Seeing the end of the Publisac on the island, the company turned to a digital shift. However, this transition was impossible “without external financial assistance”, explains Mr. Mulé.
The president says he has “knock[ed] on every door” in the past year to try to save the company, to no avail. He was warned on Wednesday that he could no longer continue his activities due to the lack of continued support from Desjardins Culture and the Minister of Economy and Innovation, Investissement Québec and SODEC.
“From the first lines of our president’s message, I burst into tears. It’s not something I was expecting. Not in the short term,” Journal Métro cultural journalist Caroline Bertrand told La Presse.
Caroline Bertrand had held her position with the newspaper for more than a year. “I was living my dream of being a full-time cultural journalist, and that’s it. I know I’m going to bounce back, but right now I don’t have a job anymore, ”she drops, very moved.
For UQAM journalism professor Patrick White, this announcement is “dramatic for the journalistic world in Quebec” and constitutes “very bad news for local democracy”.
“This is very sad news,” adds the vice-president of the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec (FPJQ) and journalist at La Presse Éric-Pierre Champagne. “The quality of information is based, among other things, on the plurality of voices, so, with one less media, it is information and the public who lose out. »
The mayoress of Montreal, Valérie Plante, expressed her great sadness at the announcement of the suspension of the activities of the Journal Métro. “This is a significant loss for the media ecosystem and the daily lives of Montrealers,” she said on social network X, formerly Twitter. She also highlighted the need for “urgent reflection” and “collective solutions” in the face of the radical transformation of the media business environment.
“It’s the end of an era and it’s really the nail in the coffin for paper newspapers in Quebec,” laments Professor Patrick White. This news is part of a context of transformation of the media landscape, he notes.
Since January, Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec have abandoned their Sunday paper editions. The Information Coops (CN2i), bringing together six regional dailies, also announced at the end of March that their paper versions would end around December 2023.
The other local weeklies across the province must also deal with the challenges posed by the digital transition. “We all have the same issues. The Publisac still distributes many of our member newspapers and digital transformation is at the heart of our challenges,” said Hebdos Québec CEO Sylvain Poisson.
For many local newspapers, advertising in print editions remains more profitable than digital advertising revenue, explains Patrick White. The blocking of news on Facebook and Instagram in the past few days further hurts their digital transition.
Last week, Meta, the parent company of the Facebook and Instagram platforms, began shutting down access to news in Canada. This measure follows the adoption of the Ottawa Online News Act, which forces major web platforms to negotiate agreements with Canadian media to compensate for the distribution of their news.
According to him, an increase in financial assistance from the federal, provincial or other programs is therefore essential to ensure the survival of local weekly newspapers. “Governments must be well aware that each time a media closes, as is the case with Metro, it is the basis of democracy that is undermined. »
Number of Journal Métro readers per week
Number of Journal Métro distribution points
Number of monthly unique visitors to the Journal Métro website
Number of newspapers distributed monthly by Hebdos Métro
January: Postmedia, which owns the National Post, the Montreal Gazette and the Vancouver Sun, among others, lays off 11% of its editorial staff.
February: Quebecor announces the elimination of 240 positions, including 140 at Groupe TVA, due to the erosion of its advertising revenues.
March: The announcement of the end of paper at the Coops de l’information leads to the abolition of a hundred positions by the end of the year. A voluntary departure program is in place.
June: Bell cuts 1,300 positions, or about 3% of its workforce. Employees and managers are laid off at at least three Bell Media-owned radio stations in Quebec: Montérégie, Drummondville and Rimouski.
June: A staff shortage at the Montreal Gazette forces the paper to suspend its opinion section for the summer, news site The Rover reveals.
July: Canadian media companies Postmedia Network Canada and Nordstar Capital, owner of the Toronto Star, end discussions on a possible merger, saying they are unable to reach an agreement.
August: Quebecor stops paying its rent to the National Assembly for its Press Gallery offices, demanding free access to the premises for journalists.
