Niagara, Ontario Newspaper Dailies Take Another Hit As Sun Media Greed Devours More Media Jobs

A Commentary by Doug Draper 

As a former employee of the once-proud St. Catharines Standard – one that quit the newspaper 15 years ago rather than go on being subjected to any more abuse from its ongoing rotation of corporate masters – it gives me no pleasure to report that this paper’s latest master, Sun Media, is now cutting more jobs from it and the neighbouring Niagara Falls Review, if not the already gutted-down-to-almost-nothing Welland Tribune.

One of the oldest pieces of the now dead St. Catharines Standard newspaper building in that Niagara, Ontario city’s downtown. Gone with the greed of the corporations that took over the paper, once might say. Photo by former Standard reporter Doug Draper

What an assault it is on the right people should have in this region to decent daily newspapers, to have these papers eaten alive by corporations and their shareholders, with no direct stake in the welfare of the communities in this region other than sucking advertising revenue out of them.

How sad it is that people aren’t out on the streets protesting the gutting of these community papers which should, at the best time times, be watchdogs for them on the powers-that-be. There seems little appreciation left that the first thing Nazi-like dictators do is gut a free press because they don’t want it around keeping an eye on them. However, for some of you who may still care about the freedoms some of our forefathers fought and died for in wars gone by, Sun Media, owners of far too many news venues in Canada, including the St. Catharines Standard, Welland Tribune and Niagara Falls Review, is gutting another 200 jobs, including ones at the St. Catharines Standard and Niagara Falls Review, if not the Welland Tribune, which has already been eaten down to the bone marrow. This after killing off more than 300 jobs across this corporate chain earlier this year.

One wonders what is left worth saving in  the Niagara corner of the Sun Media enterprise.. The St. Catharines Standard, which once had a newsroom staff numbering somewhere between 40 and 50 before I left it, was already down to less than 10 before this latest round of cuts – making it a joke insofar as doing any of the kind of in-depth news or investigative reporting we could still do on behalf of the community we served as journalists some 15 or 20 years ago.

I have to ask; why bother with more staff cuts?  Just finally show some respect for the past of the Standard and two other dailies in the region and shut them down completelproud past and shut it down completely. After all, they shoot horses, don’t they? 

Meanwhile, one must wonder – and I have often wondered – where are the people our communities in Niagara and why aren’t they contacting the corporate bastards gutting these papers and demanding that they stop? If a young Canadian back in June of 1944 has the courage to storm up a beach of Normandy, France and risk getting his head blown off for the freedoms we claim we care for, why can’t people in communities like ours write these newspapers and demand a better news service.

Instead, we have Sun Media and other corporations less interested in delivering a better news service than they are in answering to shareholders who simply want a larger return – 25, then 30, then 35 percent return, etc. – on their quarterly investment.

These out-of-town carpetbaggers don’t give a damn what kind of newspaper we have left. All it is to them is an investment they bloody well better get a good return on. It might just as well be a chain of convenience stores. It doesn’t matter.

I have often argued in the past, going right back to my days on a picket line while I was still employed as a journalist at the St. Catharines Standard, that the gutting of a community newspaper is a tragedy for the community because it loses what should be a vital source of information for its citizens. After all, how can one engage in the affairs of a community unless one has a good handle on what is happening in the community. And the only way one can get a good handle on what is happening, other than through a town crier, is through a local media venue willing to deliver you the news, without fear or favour. 

What a drag it is that so few people seem to care enough to fight these corporate chains to get the news they need and deserve back.

For one good take by the Canadian Journalism Project on the impacts on communities of losing a local newspaper click on http://j-source.ca/article/why-we-should-care-when-community-newspaper-shuts-down?utm_source=CJF+Programs+Newsletters&utm_campaign=8e5f9be9f1-2013_12_0512_3_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_af798ac7be-8e5f9be9f1-288680837

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