Some familiar names have been erased at the Manitoba Co-operator and
many observers say the Winnipeg-based farm newspaper will be a shadow
of itself after recent job cuts.
“I believe it is going to be a big loss for producers and I’m sad to
see the demise of it,” said Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann
Wowchuk after the job cuts were announced last week.
“The Co-operator has for a long time been a very important and reliable
source of information for producers in Manitoba, and they rely on it.”
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On March 6 Farm Business Communications manager Palmer Anderson
announced that Co-operator editor John Morriss, associate editor Laura
Rance, and seven other employees were being laid off.
The only journalists to survive the job cuts are reporters Ron Friesen
and Gord Gilmour, who have been offered jobs within FBC.
The job reductions were a result of an amalgamation involving the
Manitoba Co-operator, which had been owned by Agricore, and Farm
Business Communications, which had been owned by United Grain Growers.
FBC publishes Grainews, Country Guide, Cattlemen and other farm
magazines.
Anderson said the job cuts were the result of “business synergies” that
were discovered when the operations were integrated. Four of the nine
cuts involved management positions.
“These are tough decisions,” said Anderson.
“These are all very well respected journalists in Manitoba, and this by
no means was a lottery. These were not personal decisions. They were
strictly business related based on business principles and what we had
to drive out of it in the areas of duplication.”
Anderson said the essential content of the Co-operator will not change.
It will still focus on news and will continue to publish weekly.
But instead of relying on full-time reporters, the news stories will be
primarily written by freelance writers, who are less expensive.
There will also be more focus on regional news about farmers and their
crops.
“Judge us by what we do, not by what you think we will do,” said
Anderson.
“Our objective is to continue it and make it bigger and better.”
Mikkel Pates, past president of the North American Agricultural
Journalists Association, said the loss of experienced reporters will
hurt farmer-readers’ interests.
“It’s a shame to see such a fine publication rout its editorial staff,”
said Pates, who covers agriculture for the Grand Forks Herald and North
Dakota farm publication Ag Week.
Pates said the decision to rely more heavily on freelance writers will
have a negative impact on coverage.
“With a dedicated news staff you have people on a beat constantly who
develop a source base that’s very difficult to duplicate with
freelancers,” he said.
“In order to have to contacts and the context, you need to have people
with a deep knowledge of the turf.”
For months, Co-operator journalists feared that the UGG-Agricore merger
would affect their publication.
“I loved my job,” said former reporter Allan Dawson, contacted at his
Miami, Man., farm, a day after his job was terminated.
“We tried to keep farmers up to speed with what the issues were. We
were an honest broker in terms of providing balanced information and a
lot of detail on issues,” said Dawson.
Former publisher and editor John Morriss said he tried to create a
publication that welcomed all Manitoba farmers.
“The goal was to have a package that would have broad appeal no matter
what sector of agriculture people were in,” said Morriss, whose
father edited the Manitoba Co-operator for more than 20 years in the
1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
He said he was proud that the Co-operator had successfully changed from
a free publication sent to all Manitoba Pool Elevators members to a
paid subscription newspaper in 1996.
The newspaper has about 14,500 readers.
