加拿大3大传媒公司投资93年历史的加新社(加通社)，为它转型业务，从新闻合作社转为牟利公司。
Major publishers invest in Canada’s oldest news agency
Published On Fri Nov 26 2010
Dana Flavelle Business Reporter
After 93 years of service, Canada’s oldest news agency is being transformed into a modern for-profit business under new owners.
Torstar Corp., The Globe and Mail and Square Victoria Communications Group announced Friday they have invested in a new for-profit entity, Canadian Press Enterprises Inc., to take over the operations of the Canadian Press.
Torstar publishes the Toronto Star. Square Victoria is the parent company of Gesca Ltée, which owns La Presse of Montreal.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Each of the owners will be equal partners in the venture and has invested new working capital in the company.
The change in the ownership structure from a non-profit co-operative to a for-private business will allow the company to cover its pension needs and take advantage of future business opportunities, Phillip Crawley, publisher of The Globe and Mail, said in a interview.
(Pedestrians walk past The Canadian Press head office entrance in Toronto on Friday Nov. 26, 2010. Graeme Roy/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
“My colleagues and I in the investment group are proud to be assuming ownership of this vital Canadian institution,” Crawley said in a statement. “We will be upholding a very fine tradition and will take the organization into a bright future with excellent business prospects.”
David Holland, president and chief executive officer of Torstar Corp., added: “As one of the founding members of The Canadian Press, Torstar is delighted to join with Square Victoria and The Globe in charting a new future for CP. A viable national news agency is vital for Canadian journalism and we look forward to working with CP management to ensure its success.”
Canadian Press has a serious pension shortfall, which was last valued at $34.4 million.
As part of the restructuring, CP will be given an additional 11 years to cover the shortfall under an agreement with the federal Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Crawley said. It had already received a two-year extension from the federal government.
The working capital is not to cover the pension, but “to enable us to operate a business that is able to identify growth opportunities and invest in them,” Crawley said.
The new board will meet for the first time Monday to review the company’s operations, Crawley said. Canadian Press employs 300 people.
Crawley acknowledged that the new entity will have competitors. Both Sun Media and Postmedia Network Inc., former CP members, left the co-operative in the past two years and run their own news services.
However, Crawley said CP has a strong brand and the added advantage of an exclusive arrangement to distribute Associated Press news in Canada.
Founded in 1917 as a newspaper co-operative to facilitate the exchange of information across Canada, CP has transformed itself over the past decade into a multi-media organization serving news outlets, government and corporations.
“The attraction for the investors is the fact that we own a high quality content business. Over the last couple of years a number of media companies have cut back on the size of newsrooms and have reduced their ability to generate content. This business was built on a supply of very good content that, as it happens, delivers breaking news. That’s something that’s very hard to match,” Crawley said.
Under the new structure, CP will maintain and enhance its mission of providing trusted, round the clock, real-time news and information in English and French for all media platforms, the new owners said.
CP will also maintain its editorial independence, the new owners said. Decisions about what news and information it distributes will continue to be guided by the bedrock principles of newsworthiness, reliability, accuracy and objectivity.
Members of the co-operative that did not take an ownership stake in the new entity will move to commercial relationships, and services to existing commercial clients will remain intact.
Existing members will not face fee increases for CP’s services at this time, Crawley said.
CP’s membership, consisting of daily newspapers across the country, and the CP board of directors approved the proposed transaction earlier this year, after an independent review concluded that it was fair from a financial standpoint.
CP announced a year ago that it was looking to reinvent itself as a for-profit corporation. The move was taken as part of an agreement with the federal government to delay making payments into CP’s pension plans.
http://www.thestar.com/business/media/article/897603–major-publishers-invest-in-canada-s-oldest-news-agency
旧闻回放：Canadian Press to become for-profit: Report
By QMI Agency
Last Updated: July 4, 2010 4:55pm
Due to financial difficulties, the Canadian Press is planning to undergo a massive restructuring by going from a not-for-profit industry co-operative to being under private ownership.
CTVglobemedia, Torstar Corp. and Gesca will be equal investors in a for-profit collective called Canadian Press Enterprises, ending CP’s 93-year run as a non-profit.
The three media partners demand that CP improves the financial status of its pension plans in order for the plan to carry out. The newswire service asked the federal government last year to delay pension payments because its pension plans were $34.4 million in the red, CP’s director of human resources Paul Woods said in an internal memo to employees, the Globe and Mail reported Sunday.
In it’s own memo to employees obtained by QMI Agency, the union said they wanted to see a restructuring plan put in place that would give stability to The Canadian Press.
“That was the reason we agreed to $5 million worth of concessions last year, concessions which were to become an employee stake in the new Canadian Press,” the union memo said, noting the bargaining team had initially agreed to a plan, but on May 1 “we were told our new ‘investors’ had some issues to work out. On May 11, we found out they wanted to rewrite the deal still again.”
At the heart of the bargaining with the union is the company’s pension plan.
But the union says in its memo they are still confused about the future of Canadian Press.
“Time to get hard facts. What exactly was the deal? We have seen nothing to indicate the exact nature of the ownership arrangement or to what degree the proposed new owners could be held accountable as the new masters of The Canadian Press,” the memo reads.
“Up to this point, all we have been told is that they have offered up to $7 million in new investment over the next few years, if the Canadian Press can prove it needs the money for projects it wants to get going to generate a profit. We have been presented with no guarantees of stability for the pension plans, employees or the structure and purpose of The Canadian Press.
“Presumably, the investors (Torstar, Gesca and CTVglobemedia) would retain the right to walk away at any point in the future if we refused to give them new compensation concessions or meet other demands. This would offer no stability to employees, the pension plans or the institution of our 100-year-old news service.”
The bargaining is set to resume Monday.
“The Guild bargaining committee will now deal with how employees will be treated in the restructuring process, after proposed changes to deal we arrived at earlier this year were handed to our representatives,” the union memo said.
As well, the union said it won’t be keeping quiet.
“We have been unable to communicate openly over these last several months because the investors weren’t ready to be identified and the ‘deal’ wasn’t complete. However, we will be issuing regular communiques about the bargaining process and what is being discussed. Our reports will be more detailed than they have been in recent rounds of bargaining so that Guild members have a clear understanding of the issues and how talks are proceeding,” the memo said.
Sun Media broke ties with the Canadian Press on July 1 and has formed its own wire service, QMI Agency.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/07/04/14604771.html
旧闻回放：Honey, I shrunk CP
93-year-old news co-operative falls under control of a few large newspapers.
Dateline: Tuesday, July 13, 2010
by John Gordon Miller, Ryerson University
Just four years ago, a Senate committee examined the state of Canada’s news media and made a prescient plea: Please support The Canadian Press wire service. It’s vital to the country.
Since then, the country’s two largest newspaper companies — CanWest (in 2007) and Sun Media (this month) — have pulled out of CP. And that has triggered a radical restructuring that threatens the future of the 93-year old co-operative.
New owners hope to win pension and wage concessions from the union representing more than 250 employees.
Under the plan announced this week, CP would be reborn as a for-profit company owned by CTVglobemedia, (publisher of The Globe and Mail), Torstar Corp, (publisher of the Toronto Star), and Gesca, which owns LaPresse in Montreal.
So Canada’s only national news service, which was launched by public-minded publishers in 1917 to bring news of the First World War to all Canadians, would fall under the control of a few large newspapers in Ontario and Quebec. Worse, they would be free to walk away from it at any time, if they fail to win pension and wage concessions from the union representing more than 250 employees.
“We have been presented with no guarantees,” the Canadian Media Guild said in a statement. “This would offer no stability to employees, the pension plans or the institution of our 100-year-old news service.”
I, too, wonder how viable the new entity will be. How many newspapers and broadcasters will be interested in belonging to a news service that will suffer such a significant loss of its ability to collect news from all regions of Canada? The bulk of news does not happen only in a few large Eastern cities.
To survive, CP’s new owners will need to convince the federal government to offer them a 13-year reprieve to pay off the $34 million shortfall in CP’s pension plan. Federal legislation allows companies five years to pay back the pension contributions they owe, and industry analysts say a 13-year reprieve would be unprecedented and unwise.
The potential new owners of CP, don’t forget, include some of the wealthiest families in the country, the Thompsons, the Honderichs and the Desmarais. None of them is promising to put any of their own money forward to replenish CP’s pensions.
We don’t need these owners holding such a venerable and needed institution hostage.
Here is what the Senate committee said about the importance of the news service: “If The Canadian Press or comparable wire services no longer existed, small independent news organizations would be less able to cover international, national and, at times, even regional stories. This would be detrimental to the existing diversity of news voices in Canada. The Commitee urges subscriber/shareholders to continue support for Canada’s only national news service.”
John Gordon Miller has been an award-winning reporter, a senior news executive, chair of a journalism school, an author, a teacher, a researcher and a consultant. He’s been professor of journalism at Ryerson for 21 years, following a 20-year career as an editor and reporter. Most of that was spent at the Toronto Star, where he was foreign editor, founding editor of the Sunday Star, weekend editor, deputy managing editor, and acting managing editor.
eMail: [email protected] Website: http://www.ryerson.ca/journalism/facultydirectory/emeritus/miller.html
