2023-08-11 22:41:15
The Métro Média group, which includes the Métro newspaper and some twenty local weeklies in Montreal and Quebec, is immediately suspending all of its activities. The president of Metro Media, Andrew Mule, made the announcement in an email sent to employees of the media on Friday afternoon.
“On Wednesday August 9 of this week, we were notified that we could no longer continue our operations with almost immediate effect due to the lack of continued support from institutions, — Desjardins Culture, the Minister of the Economy and de l’innovation, Investissement Québec and SODEC, to whom we have listened and with whom we have exchanged regularly and actively over the past few months,” read Mr. Mule’s message.
The latter also blames the decision of the City of Montreal to have put an end to the distribution of the Publisac, last May. “A particularly devastating blow,” he said. In April, Metro Media sounded the alarm. Andrew Mule then told Le Devoir that “nearly 75 to 80%” of the group’s income would disappear “all of a sudden”.
In the fall of 2022, in order to limit the financial consequences of stopping the distribution of the publisac on the local press, the City of Montreal announced one-time assistance of $2 million, or approximately $85,000 per newspaper. eligible. It did not prove to be enough to keep Métro Média alive.
Mr. Mule claims to have “knocked on every door in Quebec and Canada” in the past year in order to solicit a major investment that would have saved the group.
“The strange and paradoxical part of this story is that Métro not only has a healthy balance sheet, but we have made huge sacrifices over the past year to show our commitment to the future,” he laments. He adds that plans to transform Métro Média into a cooperative were studied, but that these must be put on ice.
For the almost hundred employees affected, Friday was a tough day. “We are in a precarious and uncertain financial and employment situation, testifies a journalist from the newspaper Métro who wishes to preserve anonymity. The entire editorial staff is in shock, but we expected it. »
Metro Media president Andrew Mule politely declined Le Devoir’s invitation to comment further on the news.
Where to shock
The announcement of the suspension of Métro Média’s activities sent shockwaves through the world of journalism in Quebec. “If we needed one more example that things are not going well in the media, we have one,” laments the vice-president of the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec, Éric-Pierre Champagne.
He believes that this “sad news” will have consequences on access to information for the public. “Métro really specialized in local and hyperlocal coverage. It’s a blind spot of the larger media, which does local coverage, but not as accurate. »
Without being too pessimistic, he nevertheless believes that “we should perhaps expect other news of this kind for the media in Quebec, certainly in the coming months”.
The head of the journalism program at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Patrick White, sees this announcement as a new symptom of the media crisis, which he describes as permanent. “We see that we are in the last miles of paper newspapers,” he says.
The Métro newspaper still distributed printed copies, but it had bet on a major digital shift in the last two years. “Unfortunately, ad revenue hasn’t kept pace enough, and Meta’s blocking of news in recent weeks hasn’t helped,” White said.
Despite everything, the journalism professor remains optimistic: “There is a labor shortage in journalism in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. There are dozens of positions posted in several media. He says that the placement rate for baccalaureate graduates is currently 100%.
“But the year 2023 will not be an easy year with the economic slowdown and the drop in revenues for the media”, he believes.
To see in video
1691796678
#Métro #newspaper #immediately #suspends #activities