At this very moment that is the top story on the Canadian edition of Google's news aggregator.
My first reaction was, oh great, more anti-native hate propaganda. Then I noticed the headline was from the National Post, the flagship of Paul Godfrey's PostMedia "empire."
These are folks who know complete financial disarray when they see it. In fact, they've been soaking in it for two and a half years now. One could even argue that PostMedia was born into complete financial disarray.
Variously referred to as "GhostMedia" or "ToastMedia" this empire-on-borrowed-time came about when a crew of hedge-fund sharpies bought up debt from the sunken Canwest empire at pennies on the dollar and then swapped that debt, at face value of course, for equity in the "new" PostMedia.
News reports at the time claimed the CanWest papers were bought for 1.1 billion, of which 950 million dollars was cash. Nobody bought the "cash" part of the story. That "cash" was really discounted debt being magically transformed into "equity," which soon enough turned into debt again, which GhostMedia has been struggling to pay off ever since.
GhostMedia is paying off that debt at rates in the 10 to 14% range on its face value. Forget about that "pennies on the dollar" stuff. In order to make those debt payments the company has been selling off everything that isn't nailed down. Journalists and editors have been pink-slipped by the bus-load. Printing presses have been sold off.
Rumor has it that all GhostMedia copy is now written by three or four unpaid interns working out of a Tim Hortons in Burlington.
The only thing that's secure at GhostMedia is Chairman Godfrey's seven number compensation package.
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