Just four (4) weeks ago this forum celebrated that National Post removed its paywalls. All content would be free. Free can be expensive.
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I'm not surprised at all. I recently tried the very simple function of downloading monthly invoices for my past year's National Post subscription (our fiscal year ends March 31st). Their horribly-outdated website was not even technologically capable of doing this! (though, to be fair, neither the Star nor Globe & Mail's websites were any better).
It continues to amaze me how great "heritage" brands like newspapers - but also also other public institutions - continue to be run into the ground by poor management unwilling and/or incapable of "keeping up with the times". Funny how there seems to be plenty of taxpayer bailout money for executive compensation & sweetheart consultant deals (Star Touch, anyone?) - but very little available for actual R&D, automation, market research, and technically savvy front-line STAFF.
In a world where any joe with a keyboard can monetize their content by curating a community using freely-available tools, there is absolutely no reason (beyond incompetence) that behemoths like legacy newspapers can't find a way to leverage their brands.
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how much, if anything, did postmedia take from the gov't bailout of newspapers?
the Barrie Today online paper from Village Media just announced yesterday the hiring of a new legal affairs reporter for the next five years, thanks to the gov't local journalism fund.
things that make you go hmmm.....
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Postmedia gets 8-10 million a year from the fund. Torstar gets about $6 million. Sort of shoots down the argument of the Liberals favouring a liberal paper. As nice as these figures are, neither will make or break the company, so they shouldn't be referred to as a bailout, but that's what most call it. The governments loaning $14 billion to GM was a bailout. Most of the money for newspapers is actually tax credits not an actual cheque or money placed in an account.