In these remarkable times, everyone could do with a good news story. Fortunately enough, the Toronto Star is, once again, eating itself—rewarding their executives eye-watering salaries whilst laying off 85 workers.

This, however, is likely to be of little concern to the Star's executive who already have their trotters placed firmly in the troth after Trudeau's $600 million media bailout. As well as this, TorStar expects to be granted a 75% wage subsidy.

This is noteworthy in itself: to qualify for that wage subsidy, TorStar's revenue must have decreased by 30 percent. This owes itself to declining advertising revenues at the newspaper.

In an act of extraordinary magnanimity, the Star's execs have also agreed to a 20 percent pay cut—pulling their average salaries down to a measly $760K. How will they survive?

In a memo sent to the TorStar staff, CEO John Boynton requested that all employees attend an online town hall "to provide an update on our business in light of the COVID-19 outbreak."

In a Torstar-wide memo, CEO John Boynton has invited employees to a virtual town hall meeting at 3 this afternoon, "to provide an update on our business in light of the COVID-19 outbreak."



They will not be taking questions after. — Jonathan Goldsbie (@goldsbie) April 6, 2020

These layoffs have not been painted as a temporary solution to the Toronto Star's woes.

This most recent incident follows a long road of turmoil at the newspaper. In October, TorStar's stocks plummeted to historic lows after they reported an unexpected loss of $40.9 million.