The end of SaltWire: What happened and what happens next?

The NB Media Co-op is following the story of the end of Saltwire through reporting by Tim Bousquet at the Halifax Examiner. Here is a brief summary of the story so far.

SaltWire, the largest newspaper chain in Atlantic Canada, owns 26 papers in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island. Its largest papers are the Halifax Herald, the St. John’s Telegram, and the Charlottetown Guardian.

Last week, a private equity firm started the legal process to dissolve SaltWire. At stake are the jobs and livelihood of hundreds of reporters, printers, delivery drivers, and related staff across three provinces. Saltwire has 390 employees and 836 contracted carriers.

SaltWire was created by the owners of the Halifax Herald in 2017 specifically to purchase most newspapers in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island from Transcontinental Media.

The fundamental business was never good. SaltWire closed some of its papers, consolidated others, turned daily papers into weekly papers, reduced and in some cases eliminated home delivery, and most recently started putting obituaries behind a paywall.

Meanwhile, the financial side of SaltWire was collapsing. In January 2020, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) registered a judgement against SaltWire for more than $3 million in unpaid taxes. SaltWire also owes the CRA more than $7 million in unpaid HST remittances.

The corporate dissolution of SaltWire is a complicated and yet orderly process that will likely take several months to unfold.

There will be an asset sale. Most, probably the vast majority, of current employees will lose their jobs. That’s an enormous personal tragedy for hundreds of people working in an industry where they’ll be unlikely to find similar work.

This summary and excerpt is from a story by Tim Bousquet in the Halifax Examiner: The end of SaltWire: What happened and what happens next? The NB Media Co-op will continue to follow the Saltwire story in the Halifax Examiner, a solely subscriber-supported publication.