Sub standards in Toronto

When APN, publisher of the Herald and Listener, outsourced much of its sub-editing to an outside firm the result wasn’t pretty – standards plummeted. The Toronto Star is about to do the same, and this apparently hasn’t gone down well with the staff, as Torontoist reports:

Earlier this week the Toronto Star announced, among other changes, that it was planning to outsource some one hundred in-house, union editing jobs. In the press release issued by the union in the wake of the announcement, union chief Maureen Dawson explained that "Journalism is a collaborative effort, the product of a team of reporters, photographers and editors working in concert to produce the kind of activist agenda that has served Star readers and our community so well for so long... To remove a critical element of that work is to shortchange everyone who depends on it."

Now, one (apparent) editor at the Star has decided to show us all the benefits of collaboration. An extensively marked-up copy of Publisher John Cruickshank's internal memo announcing the changes was sent to Torontoist by a self-described “intermediary who was asked to send this for a friend who works at the Star” this morning; it’s, allegedly, “the work of a Star editor.”

It’s a large graphic so you’ll have to go to Torontoist to see the whole thing: anyone who has ever worked in the media will enjoy it, as will anyone who has ever had to wade through a pompous, illiterate and weasel-worded memo from an idiot in a suit.