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Quebecor, Canada’s largest publisher, cutting 200 jobs

Sun Media, a division of Quebecor Media Inc. and Canada’s largest newspaper publisher, announced 200 layoffs on Wednesday, with a quarter of them coming from the editorial department.

by WAN-IFRA Staff executivenews@wan-ifra.org | December 5, 2013

The company stated that the job cuts were spurred by “unprecedented changes in the print media industry driven largely by the digital revolution.” This is the third round of layoffs the company has made in the past 13 months.

In July, CBC reported the company shut down 11 newspapers throughout the country, resulting in a loss of 360 jobs. At the time, Sun Media said that if they hadn’t made the cuts, they would not survive and that there would be a reinvestment of funds into digital and websites.

The cuts reportedly resulted in a 15 percent increase in revenue for the company. In mid-November 2012, Sun Media laid off some 500 employees.

During the past five years, 10,000 jobs have been lost in Canadian media, according to figures from the Canadian Media Guild and cited by Jan Wong in a post last month on The Canadian Journalism Project‘s website. Approximately 6,000 of those jobs have been from the print sector, Wong added.

Unfortunately, Quebecor is hardly alone in announcing recent layoffs, especially in North America.

Just two weeks ago, US-based Tribune Co. said it was cutting 700 jobs at the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and six other dailies. The cuts come despite a reported $50 million third quarter profit by the company.

In late August, USA Today reported that its parent company, Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, had cut recently cut approximately 200 jobs at several of the company’s local newspapers.

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