Montreal Gazette Faces a New String of Departures

With two of three remaining managers expected to leave before July, the newspaper is temporarily shutting down its opinion section

More staff shortages at the Montreal Gazette will force the newspaper to suspend its opinion section for the summer.

With editor-in-chief Bert Archer and deputy editor Lenie Lucci leaving at the end of June, there will only be one manager left in the newsroom. Two years ago, the Gazette had a team of seven managers.

Parent company Postmedia announced the decision in an internal communiqué on June 6, just months after laying off six people from an already depleted newsroom. The only remaining manager, Jeff Blond, is a hard working, talented and well-liked editor with the unenviable task of putting out a paper five days a week while overseeing a skeleton staff. Archer will be replaced but it is unlikely that someone will step in for Lucci, who is leaving of her own volition at the end of the month.

News of Archer’s resignation came just one year after he took the reins. Finding a new editor-in-chief is a tall order in these circumstances. Archer was one of just a handful of candidates to apply for the job last year. Another potential editor, a Boston Globe editor, withdrew her candidacy because the salary wasn’t competitive.

The Gazette’s Thursday columnists learned this week that they’d be taking a forced summer vacation because of an “abrupt” decision from Postmedia, according to two sources at the newspaper. As a sign of just how bad the cash crunch at Postmedia is, the Gazette’s Peel Street newsroom is scaling down its wireless internet network to cut costs.

“It’s a gong show, the next quarterly results will be announced soon and it’s almost certain there will be more layoffs,” said one Postmedia employee, who would not go on the record for fear of reprisals. “Everyone is exhausted and afraid and Postmedia seems totally detached from how bad things are on the ground.”

An email from Duncan Clark, Postmedia’s chief content officer, struck an oddly hopeful tone earlier this month, promising that the most recent job losses would “strengthen our team for the future.” Now, two weeks later, the newspaper’s opinion section is preparing to close up shop until September because one of the Gazette’s few remaining editors has to take a much-needed vacation.

That the newspaper is still able to put out a product and break some of Montreal’s best stories every day is, in itself, a small miracle.

News of Archer’s departure comes as his signature project — publishing a serialized-novel by award-winning author Heather O’Neill in the paper’s Saturday edition — is vastly underperforming. Despite being given prominent placement in the paper and online, O’Neill’s latest piece was only the 26th most-read story on the Gazette’s website last week.

Though O’Neill is one of Montreal’s most popular and acclaimed writers, paying a novelist to write a fictional series amid layoffs and cost-cutting was a profoundly unpopular decision among the rank-in-file.

“I love Heather O’Neill, I own two of her books, I just don’t think it’s the right fit for an audience that comes to us for straight news and to read about the Canadiens,” said one Gazette employee. “Especially after the paper cried poor and got the anglo community to rally behind our mission of journalism.”

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In the short term, the Gazette’s parent company announced another quarter of net losses as it continues to “aggressively manage” costs, in a press release published in April. The upside is that its parcel delivery business earned $11 million last quarter, helping offset a weak quarter in ad sales. 

Longterm, Postmedia is over a quarter billion dollars in the hole, forced to pay $23 million a year in interest fees alone while its board of directors take their cues from American owners — a New-Jersey based hedge fund called Chatham Asset Management. And while the company lays off workers and asks its remaining staff to do more with less, Postmedia’s board has awarded itself millions. 

CEO Andrew MacLeod alone has collected over $6 million in salary and bonuses since the beginning of the pandemic. Meanwhile, his company’s workers are wondering whether they’ll still have health insurance for their kids after the latest — and almost certainly grim — quarterly results are announced next month. Postmedia remains the biggest beneficiary of the Liberal government’s media bailout money, collecting tens of millions in subsidies and tax credits since 2019.

Under MacLeod’s leadership, a proposed offer for Montreal businessman Mitch Garber to buy the Gazette was ignored. MacLeod was not immediately available for comment.

The newspaper chain’s struggles are part of an alarming trend in Canadian journalism. Bell Media announced last week it would be cutting 1,300 jobs and closing down six radio stations across Canada, including layoffs at its flagship CTV News programs. Corus Entertainment, which employs 800 people at its Global News stations, also announced a series of layoffs this year.