Saltwire laid off a hundred or so people last week, 25 of them in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The most recent cuts are the result of revenue drops
due to COVID but Saltwire has been hacking and slashing at its operations
across the region since buying up a raft of dailies and weeklies from TransCon
a few years ago. In Newfoundland and
Labrador, The Telegram is the only daily left. The rest - more than 15 dailies and weeklies
– have been closed. Their replacements
are a couple of weekly freebie mailbox-stuffers. Editorially, Saltwire is now well on the way
to becoming the same thing: a generic content generator with a local label
slapped on it.
To appreciate what is going on here, you only have to
look at The Telegram’s circulation.
The public only has ready access to data for about a decade -
2008-2016 and 2015
– 2018 - but that,
coupled with a bit of recollection from a veteran observer of local news media,
gives an idea of the dramatic decline of print media.
The Telegram’s paid circulation dropped about 60% to 65% between 2008 and 2018, the last year for which we have figures. Monday to Friday, the paper has dropped from between 25,000 daily subscribers on average to about 10,000 in 2018. The weekend edition is currently around 14,000 paid down from 41,000 in 2008.