Government subsidies are bad for poor people but good for big business

When you give money to poor people, it destroys their work ethic. When you give money to news corporations, it saves democracy.  That's my takeaway from the recent announcement that the Trudeau government will begin offering assorted goodies to the hard-pressed newspaper industry.

You have to love Postmaster Paul's reaction; "Everybody in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now." Sorry, Paul, I don't think Postmedia has any buildings anymore. They've all been sold off to appease the insatiable demand for interest payments on the part of the US hedgies who bought Canwest debt out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, rebranded the smoking ruins as "Postmedia," and have managed to collect full value on that debt ever since.

Brilliant business strategy! The real estate had to go, the printing plants had to go, hundreds upon hundreds of journalists had to go, all in the name of finding "efficiencies" so that the unearned cash can keep flowing to the hedge fund vultures who are laughing all the way to the bank. Now the taxpayer gets to step up to the plate to help keep the whole charade afloat.

Elsewhere in the magical world of capitalism, the Globe and Mail informs me that there are now 122,455 "idle" oil and gas wells in western Canada, an increase of over fifty thousand since 2005. What happens to these wells? Well, what's going to happen to most of them is the tax-payers are going to be gifted the cost to clean them up.

The excellent Globe investigative report ( in its very own stand-alone eight-page section) details how the big "responsible" players in the oil patch fob off their played-out wells to fly-by-night entrepreneurs with high hopes but little money, who have nothing to lose by walking away from them in the event that their pie-in-the-sky plans don't work out.


Capitalism at its finest!

PostMedia cuts unpaid interns out of the loop

The think tankers here at Falling Downs have long held that most PostMedia content is the product of unpaid interns working feverishly out of a Burlington Timmies; working feverishly but working for free, just to get a few more lines on their resumes, so that when the time comes they can score one of those imaginary paying jobs in the modern media world.

I think they're even more out of luck than we suspected.

We were perusing the Google news aggregator this afternoon when we chanced upon this story at the Edmonton Journal.

When you click on the story, you get a press release from CNW Group, a Cision Company. Yup, you see "Edmonton Journal" in the hot bar but you've got a press release from a private PR company in front of your eyes.

Hmmm....  look around a bit more and you'll soon discover that the Edmonton Journal story cum CNW press release is actually this press release from the Government of Canada!

Now, does that mean CNW, a Cision Company, actually wrote the Government's press release?

I'd guess yes.

But the other thing we must note is that those unpaid interns weren't even allowed to change a single word before it found the light of day under a PostMedia title!

It's bad enough that the pirates who hijacked Postmedia have been shitting on their professional journos for six years, but denying the legions of unpaid interns the opportunity to tweak a press release goes beyond the pale. I mean, they're working for free already!... give them a little something to put on their resumes!

Meanwhile, guess who's NOT working for free?

If you guessed that cabal of money-grubbers around PostMaster Godfrey, you'd be right!

Pot-addled hillbilly predicted Postmedia share collapse over three years ago

Today you can pick up a share of Postmedia stock for two or three cents on the TSE. Technically that's still not "zero," where I first predicted it was heading back in 2013, but I think we're close enough for gloating rights.

And this is quite the "restructuring" the vultures who have been milking this cash cow to death since its birth have fashioned for themselves, is it not? Not only can they continue bleeding SunPostMedia dry, but on the off chance that the newspaper industry ever stabilises, they've now got a 98% ownership stake!

I expect Mr. Godfrey will trouser a tidy bonus for his excellent service to his American masters!

Another fucked up French-Canadian tries to stab a soldier, and therefore Canada must prepare for Jihad?

Yup, Tarek Fatah spells it out for you in the Toronto Sun.

Maybe one reason the SunPostMedia brand of journalistic hysteria is sinking like a stone is because the vast majority of Canadians recognize this as the rancid fear-mongering bullshit that it is.

It will be interesting to see who buys the Toronto Sun out of the scrap-heap of bankruptcy after that Paul Godfrey engineered trainwreck that's been going on in slo-mo since 2010. After all, the Sun is probably a viable stand-alone title.

I'm thinking it might be a great side project for the Ford Brothers.

Toronto Star boss calls SunPostMedia boss a liar

Oh, you gotta love it when the Big Dogs get into a catfight!

And you gotta love how John Honderich hedges the truth... he doesn't out and out call Godfrey a liar; he simply suggests he is "trifling with the truth."

Jeez, I wish I'd been acquainted with that particular turn of phrase in my childhood!

Honest, mom, I wasn't lying, I was just trifling with the truth!

Into your room (wack) you little shit (wack) trifling with the truth (wack) is LYING! (wack, wack, wack!).

Mr. Honderich is of course trifling with the truth just a bit himself on this one. Claiming that Torstar offered "a bid of around $800 million" is more than a little disingenuous.

So do tell, Mr. Honderich; how much of that $800 million was fresh unencumbered cash, and how much was taking over CanWest debt obligations?

Postmaster Godfrey elected to Canadian News Hall of Shame

I see where SunPostMediaNetworks boss Paul Godfrey has been elected to the Canadian News Hall of Fame.

Contrary to what some naysayers have been trying to tell you (probably just sour grapes from some of the thousands of journos fired by Mr. Godfrey, who has been the most prolific terminator of journalists in the history of Canadian journalism), there actually IS a Canadian News Hall of Fame - it's downtown right next to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

No shit. Been there. Seen it with my own eyes.

Since Godfrey was never a typesetter or a journalist, you'll find him in the "Builder's Section." Yup, just like the hockey guys, they've got a Builder's Section. That's where you'll find Max Aiken and Conrad Black.

And as of a couple of months back, Paul Godfrey.

Now, I know there's bound to be a few cynics who are gonna claim that Godfrey has been more of an "un-builder" than a builder; a destroyer if you will. (See ref to sour grapes above.)

But look at it this way; times have changed. New times present new challenges, and in spite of these challenges the Postmaster has succeeded in creating the largest conglomeration of news titles in the history of this fair land!

Yes, the days where we felt obliged to hold a Royal Commission on concentration of media ownership at least once every decade are long behind us, obviously.

Not only that, but Godfrey has managed to shake off the shackles of the onerous and entirely arbitrary "Canadian Ownership" regs as well! Today's Canadian news colossus is 100% at the mercy of the US vulture funds that have been bleeding it to death since its inception.

Congratulations Mr. Godfrey!

Decisions this stupid can only be taken at the very top

I see where the SunPostMedia gang are gonna slice off another 90 journalism jobs for the sake of efficiency.

Because the paper-buying public will never notice that the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun have merged newsrooms...

As the think-tank here at Falling Downs has been relentlessly pointing out for years now, the SunPostMedia conglomerate isn't about the news business anymore.

No.

Instead, it's about paying off a couple of hedgies who bought up CanWest debt at pennies on the dollar back in the day.

Yup, those dudes have been working miracles in Canadian journalism ever since!

What's really extra funny, just in case you haven't had enough yet, is that these assholes have the gall to sponsor those galling J-School promos designed to convince idealistic but gullible youth that the once-honourable profession of journalism has a future.

Pot-addled hillbilly beats Globe and Mail to story by two years

James Bradshaw has an interesting story about SunPostMedia's inexorable slide into bankruptcy in the business pages of today's Globe and Mail.


Ha! I've been banging on that for well over two years.


What I'd like to see a real journalist like James Bradshaw do is a story about the financing the Godfrey team used to buy the former Canwest assets. If there really was $950 millions in cash involved in that purchase, which I don't believe for two seconds but which was widely reported at the time, the new owners would have been running a virtually debt-free company.


PostMedia and now SunPostMedia may be Canada's largest conglomeration of news platforms, but first and foremost it's a cash cow being milked to death by two or three unscrupulous hedge funds. In an ironic case of deja vu all over again, what Bradshaw wrote about the company today is almost identical to what was being written about Canwest in the year or two before it went tits up.


Headline of the future; "Paul Godfrey fronts investor group to buy former SunPostMedia assets out of receivership."

Another reason why SunPostMedia is destined to tank

Conrad and Paul can quibble all they want, but when something this dishonest and retarded shows up in one of their most prized titles, they have cause for concern.

The unpaid intern who wrote this story seems to think that a farming operation with a gross market value of two million dollars is a "big business." This in a climate where the average Toronto house price is over a million.

Where a 50 acre hobby farm commands a million.

Family farms with a 70 cow herd are "millionaire farming companies."

(By the way, this is exactly the kind of story that will kill Big Steve in Conservative-voting farm country, so thanks for that.)

And they're making it rich on the backs of the poorest of the poor, who don't realize that every variety store in the land offers a carton of milk for less than the price of an energy drink!

It's easy to see what the game is here. Those marginally literate people (that's what they call their readers when the MBAs are designing strategies) can be easily swayed by tall tales of millionaire dairy farmers living large on the backs of the poor...

Yes, we may be a nation of imbeciles, Mr. Godfrey, but did you really think we're that stupid?

You see Mr. Godfrey, it's not just declining ad revenue that's sinking the good ship SunPostMedia.

It's the egregious bullshit that you insist on publishing and insulting your readers with.

Conrad Black and SunPostmedia CEO Godfey spar on conference call

Paul and Conrad are two guys who have led charmed lives, although I have to give a tip of the cap to Conrad for making his charmed life way tougher than it needed to be.

Judging by this story, it would seem that Conrad still has some skin in the game after being divested of his empire.

And as for Godfrey, he's way underpaid to be the figurehead at PostMedia cum SunPostMedia. Since the resurrection of PostMedia out of hock a few years ago, the reason for keeping the corpse alive has been to mollify the bond-holders.

Like Conrad?

The Postmedia-Sun death rattle

Quebecor is breathing a big sigh of relief to have the Sun chain off their books.

That Quebecois neo-fascist with political ambitions will also be breathing a big sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, the hedgies who run the Postmedia "empire" are salivating at the prospect of a few more pension plans to be looted and a few more real estate assets to be "monetized" before this pretend take-over of nothing by nothing hits the wall.

And Paul Godfrey is just happy to keep collecting a million a year as the titular head of this slow-motion trainwreck...

...but those unpaid interns at a Burlington Timmy's are aghast!..

A marriage of stinkers

Hard to know what to think of the Postmedia-Sun wedding.

Obviously, the union of two sinking ships won't, in the long run, buoy up either of them... the question is, will they sink twice as fast or half as fast?

What's not in question in the mind of any serious analyst is the fact that they be sinkin', baby; maybe sooner, maybe later, but they be sinkin'!

This deal is supposedly going to be financed by a share sale and a new bond issue. Hmm... really?

Would YOU buy shares in this sinking ship? Would you lend them money by buying their bonds?

Reading between the lines, I see where for the 300+ millions being paid here, Postmedia is getting a few dozen real estate parcels in urban centres in Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta. It doesn't take a lot of real estate in Alberta or Ontario to add up to a tidy sum, and I'm wondering when and how that will be stripped out post haste from the potential reach of creditors, who in a year or two will be dismembering the carcass of Canada's latest media conglomerate.

Top National Post columnist exposed as delusional by pot-addled blogger

The National Post is the flagship title in the Postmedia stable, a Canadian newspaper franchise that has been enjoying a death spiral for years.

Postmedia was a Lazarus play conjured up by a few money guys who bought the outstanding debt of Izzy Asper's crashed Canwest media empire for pennies on the dollar a few years ago. They stuck Paul Godfrey in the captains chair for a million a year, crossed their fingers, and hoped for the best.

Over these last few years Postmedia has tried all sorts of desperation strategies trying to stay afloat; they've sold off the corporate real estate, fired virtually everyone who gets a real paycheque, farmed out all their editing and production, and still they're haemorrhaging more red ink than the last wagon-builder in the age of the motorcar.

While rumour has it that virtually all copy across the Postmedia chain is now produced by a handful of unpaid interns working out of a Tim Hortons in Burlington, it looks like a few of the old stalwarts are still given real office space and actual column inches to carry forward the illusion of continuity in the pages of the crumbling media empire.

Which must be why we still get to read Jonathan Kay in the pages of the Post.

Jonathan's reactionary far-right opinions are often entertaining, and his fellowship with the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies gives you a heads-up on what to expect, but the sad truth of the matter is that Kay is far more often than not simply full of shit.

Here's a Kay editorial from over two years ago celebrating the imminent demise of Bashir al Assad. Not only was Assad a gonner, but he was going to take Hezbollah with him, and all these marvels were occurring "without the West firing a shot."

And here is yours truly calling the bullshit at the time.

So where should you go to get the no-shit truth on world affairs, the National Post or this pot-addled blogger?

Postmedia Networks and the forty foot pole

Back in 2010, when the late Izzy Asper's media empire was in its death throes, a wake of bond vultures got busy buying up Canwest debt at peanuts on the dollar. They installed seasoned political operative Paul Godfrey as their titular figurehead and before you knew it, Canada was rocking a brand spanking new media conglomerate under the PostMedia banner.

As an investment by the vultures, the new entity has thus far honoured at face value the obligations the vultures bought up for peanuts. As a newspaper chain, it has the most readership of any media conglomerate in Canada. As a viable investment for regular folks it's been dead in the water and circling the drain since the get-go.

That's why the news that somebody paid real money, albeit not a lot of it, for almost 20% of the company left me flabbergasted. Everything at the former Canwest that can be stripped, looted, or outsourced has been, ages ago. They're an industry leader in the exploitation of unpaid interns. Their real estate is long gone in sale-leasebacks. What's the attraction? There is no possible upside by standard investment metrics.

But I think I've got it figured out.

The 11 millions Ed Mule paid for his 20% share of Postmedia is pocket change. It got him a coast to coast newspaper network with big schlep in Ottawa and some of the provincial capitals. This isn't a financial investment; it's an investment in a bully pulpit.

If you want to guide Canadian public opinion to happy thoughts about trade agreements, pipelines, tar sludge, Iran... whatever, what better way to do it than with the nation's biggest newspaper network?

As a potential profit centre, Mule has vastly overpaid for his slice of Postmedia.

As a PR platform he practically got it for nothing.

Your intangible assets could be worth more than you think

When I was yet again fulminating about that dastardly plot against journalism called Postmedia Networks, I drew attention to a certain item on their balance sheet.

"Intangible assets."

Somewhere Paul and what's left of his leadership team are strategizing survival strategies, and unless they glanced at the latest financials they might not even be aware that the same company that is deferring their paycheques is sitting on $340 million in intangible assets.

What the hell is an "intangible asset?"

I think the colloquial translation might be "imaginary asset."

But they do help balance a balance sheet!

Why Paul Godfrey is a bargain at a million a year

It can't be pleasant being in charge of the slow-motion sinking of the good ship Postmedia Networks, but Paul is making the best of it. Here's his take on the just released numbers that showed a $112 million loss for the last quarter:

“The transformation of Postmedia continued this quarter with the roll out of our paid content model to all of our newspapers, traction on our cost savings initiatives and the completion of our organizational redesign to a functional operating model,” said Paul Godfrey, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We will continue on this path, transforming a traditional media company into one that leverages future opportunities with a structure that supports a new model.”

Is that not some of the most inscrutable bafflegab you've ever tried to decipher? "The transformation continued" indeed! From a "traditional media company into one that leverages future opportunities."

I sure hope they arrive at that "functional operating model" soon. The dysfunctional operating model they've been operating with is getting a little long in the tooth.

And the shareholders must be holding their breath waiting to get a glimpse of the "structure that supports a new model." Will the new model be the first media network to operate entirely without paid employees? Can the operation be functionally operated with unpaid interns? Can they all telecommute from their homes, thereby saving the company the expense of office space?

Speaking of shareholders, one wonders what invisible hand is propping the share price up in the $1.50 range. Maybe it's time to sell off some of that $340 million in "intangible assets" on the balance sheet?

Unpaid interns at Postmedia working harder than ever

This week Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey announced another round of sackings in the troubled downward spiral of the one-time media conglomerate, including several publishers at various major titles in the chain.

That means those interns working out of the donut shop are going to have to pull up their pants and tighten their belts even more than before.

Because everybody knows that news gathering, investigative reporting, thought-provoking editorial writing, and newsworthy content don't mean shit if the bond-holders aren't being paid in full on the "equity" they bought for pennies on the dollar.

When Godfrey bails you'll know there's not enough juice left in the old cow to pay his seven-number salary.

And the new CEO will be an unpaid intern working out of a Tim Hortons in Burlington.

Canadian paper celebrates triumph of democracy in Syria

This isn't just counting your chickens before they hatch; it's counting your chickens while somebody's making an omelet with the eggs your waiting to hatch.

Jonathan Kay has got the Syrian Free Army toppling not just the Assad regime, but, hold on to your hat, Hezbollah as well!

Mr. Kay is way too far down the highway of wishful thinking for me to even try to catch up!

For all the gloating his article evinces, there doesn't seem to be any awareness that the heavy lifting on the ground in Syria isn't being done by a "rag-tag army" of freedom loving secularists. It's being done by hard core Islamist extremists.

When they eventually do triumph, they won't be eager to cede power to the "Free Syria" crowd doing the light lifting in London and Washington. Nor will they love America, Israel, or the West in general, as the delusional Mr. Kay assumes.

That's when the real war in Syria will start.

As for his claim that the Syrian revolution is home-grown, he should know better. His bio informs us that he is a fellow of The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, one of the right wing American front groups that's been  busy fomenting "home-grown" change in Syria for years.