The Métro Média company, which includes Journal Métro and 16 local weeklies, will go bankrupt next week.
Métro Média management made the announcement by email to employees on Sunday morning. “The temporary layoff will therefore now be a permanent layoff,” the message reads. Some 70 employees, including around 30 journalists, lost their jobs.
“It’s quite a sad moment, but I’m facing reality. I think that right now is the time to call for solidarity from governments and to seriously study the lack of local media,” President and CEO Andrew Mulé said in an interview with La Presse.
The company announced on August 12 the immediate suspension of its activities. In an internal memo sent to employees, Mr. Mulé criticized the lack of government support and the decision of Mayor Valérie Plante to complicate the distribution of Publisac, which forced the company to make a digital shift.
Seeing the end of Publisac on the island, the company had initiated a digital shift. However, this transition was impossible “without external financial assistance”, explained Mr. Mulé. Mayor Valérie Plante, however, rejected responsibility for the death of the local Métro newspapers. She argues that the problem comes from the method of financing rather than distribution.
In August, the Liberal Party of Quebec demanded emergency aid from the government to save the press group, as it did in 2019 to avoid the bankruptcy of the Groupe Capitales Médias newspapers. The leader of the official opposition at Montreal city hall, Aref Salem, for his part called on Mayor Plante to convene an emergency meeting between district town halls and the Quebec government to safeguard the local information.
However, on August 18, the Journal de Montréal revealed that the owner of Métro Média had paid itself a dividend of $2.57 million in August 2021, a few months before its financial difficulties began. A situation denounced by the mayor of Montreal, judging that the owner had paid himself a dividend using “taxpayers’ money”.
Andrew Mulé believes that this news hurt their search for funding. “It was cheap. It changed the narrative and the government changed its action. However, the people who used this as an excuse had already had access to the information for at least six months. For me, it still shows the fact that there is a lack of solidarity,” he laments.
