2023-08-19 21:50:05
A week after announcing “the immediate suspension of the activities of Métro, of all [ses] newspapers and [ses] community websites”, the president and CEO of Métro Média, Andrew Mulé, is still hoping for last-minute help to revive the company’s activities.
It happened so fast. We do not know. We are waiting, we do not know exactly what the next steps are. We take it one day at a time, says the businessman in an interview with The Canadian Press on Saturday morning.
Faced with a lack of cash, in the midst of its digital shift and as it began its transformation into a cooperative to ensure its survival, the company, which oversaw more than twenty hyperlocal newspapers in Quebec and Montreal, was forced to stop publishing.
Around 70 people, including around 30 journalists, have since been unemployed. We had already reduced from 106 to 70 [employés] to try to survive the income crisis and try to get through it, says Mulé.
He mentioned on X (formerly Twitter) that he stopped paying himself a salary last March, which he repeated in an interview. The most important thing was to [soutenir] the editorial mission of the company, because if we don’t have that, we have nothing, supports the entrepreneur.
It’s not true that I’m more important than my newsroom, I’ve ever been: that’s the heart of the business.
Dividends of over $2 million
Friday, the Montreal Journal reported that Metro Media founder Michael Raffoul paid himself a $2.57 million dividend in August 2021, months before the company’s financial woes began. Mr. Raffoul bought the Transcontinental newspapers in 2018 to form Métro Média.
It was done when there was a lot of money in the industry, explains Mr. Mulé. We had no reason, at that time, to think that we were going to lose 80% of our income. The former shareholder was a distributor of our newspapers, he provided us with his services, so it was a way of [se repayer].
Andrew Mulé maintains that at that time, he was not yet a shareholder of Métro Média. I was not one of the owners, this decision was not mine. I didn’t have any [pouvoir] on that decision at that time, he says, adding that the dividend payment took place as part of a restructuring that required a change of shareholder.
An article from News attic indicates that Mr. Mulé became chairman and CEO of the company in May 2021. Mr. Raffoul had then become chairman of the board of directors.
Mr. Raffoul is still listed as the main shareholder of Métro Média in the Quebec Enterprise Register.
An excellent question
Asked whether Mr. Raffoul’s decision to reimburse himself a few months earlier may have discouraged some investors from supporting the company financially afterwards, Mr. Mulé admits that it is an excellent question.
Mike [Raffoul] was willing to give back [de l’argent] to the company, but in a deal structured, with the intervention [d’autres investisseurs]mentions Mr. Mulé, who has knocked on many doors in recent months to obtain funding, notably at the Ministry of Culture and Communications, Investissement Québec, SODEC and the Ministry of the Economy.
Mr. Mulé continues to point the finger at the City of Montreal as being primarily responsible for the company’s downfall, having on the one hand sounded the death knell for Publisac, the main vehicle of the Metro Media weeklies, and on the other hand refused to financially support the press company accordingly.
We didn’t even have [un défenseur] who worked for us inside the City itself, deplores Mr. Mulé, who at the end of 2021 chaired an advisory committee on local newspapers set up by the municipal administration.
On Friday, the Liberal Party of Quebec called for emergency government aid to save the press group, as it had done in 2019 to avoid the bankruptcy of the Groupe Capitales Médias newspapers.
The opposition’s culture and communications critic, Michelle Setlakwe, estimates that $1 million would be enough money to allow Métro Média to complete its digital transition, which is already well underway.
Andrew Mulé still wants his call for help to be heard.
We have really taken a major digital shift. We really invested in this future, because we believed in it. But we were still on the ground floor. If we had been given some funding, we would have gone up one floor at a time.
For the years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications has awarded grants of $393,575 and $348,845 to Métro Média under its Program d’aide à l’adaptation numérique des entreprises press of written information, learned The Canadian Press.
In 2022-2023, the company received $394,821 under the same program and for 2023-2024, the planned amount was $313,276.
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