Too much debt, again

The sale of Canwest’s newspapers, approved in principle last week by a bankruptcy judge in Toronto, to an ad hoc committee of bondholders, mostly based in the USA, does little to reassure 1,700 members of Canada’s largest media union who work for the...

Time to fix CCAA system

Screw the workers and look after ourselves! This seems to be the motto that Canwest senior managers live by, as judged by their actions in the current Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceedings. Not content with the original $3.4 million worth of...

Let's hope new owner gets journalism

So now that we have some idea of who is interested in buying Canwest’s newspapers which one of the bidders should we, the employees, be cheering for? According to news reports “about” six companies or consortiums have submitted expressions of interest in the first...

Canwest soap opera

The restructuring process, including finding a buyer(s), for Canwest newspapers gets more curious with every filing of new material to the court-appointed monitor’s website. So far this week, a reading of the new documents reveals a nasty power struggle between...

State of the union at Canwest

“What’s going to happen next?” remains the hottest topic of conversation among Canwest employees two weeks after the company’s newspaper division entered creditor protection. Here’s what we do know: The big Canadian banks that, in effect, are currently running the...

'If it isn't illegal, it should be'

However one characterizes it — criminal or just the way the capitalist system works — Hollinger’s last chapter is a fitting end for the newspaper empire once run by convicted felons Conrad Black and David Radler. In this end to the story of what was once the dominant...