Sun Media Closes 11 Newspapers to Cut Costs

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A unit of Canadian publisher and broadcaster Quebecor Inc., Sun Media Corp, has announced to shut down 11 of its newspapers, which will result in 360 jobs being emptied, in a move through which the company aims to save C$55 million ($53 million) a year. The chief operating officer of Sun Media, Julie Tremblay, mentioned in a statement issued today that the move is crucial to remain competitive due to the consistent fall of print revenue as industry shit towards digital. Tremblay stated that “digital is more than a strong trend” adding that “young people are getting their information almost exclusively from digital sources.”

Sun Media has decided to shut down its free urban daily 24 Hours newspapers in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. 24 Hours was competing with Torstar Corp.’s Metro, which also has papers in those three cities, according to Metro’s website. The announcement has come almost eight months after Sun Media previously vacated 500 jobs in order to close two of its production facilities in Ontario.

Furthermore, Sun Media has cancelled the urban dailies in order to focus on one paper in each urban market except for Montreal and Toronto, where it has decided to continue two papers due to large commuter populations. Sun Media mentions that it has overall suspended three 24 Hours papers and eight smaller papers in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The company also stated that Sun Media is the largest newspaper publisher in Canada, based on paid and free circulation.