Canada’s largest newspaper is cutting dozens of jobs from its newsroom, outsourcing editing duties that are increasingly seen as too costly for cash-strapped dailies trying to cope with falling advertising revenue. The Toronto Star is slashing 55 jobs, about 9 per cent of its workforce, with about half coming out of the editorial department. The paper plans to outsource copy editing and page design to Pagemasters North America, which offers those services at a steep discount to what the papers typically pay inhouse.

After 17 hours of continuous bargaining that ended in the wee hours last Friday morning, the Washington-Baltimore Guild unit at Bloomberg-BNA achieved major gains in a new agreement. Members will vote next week on the contract, the first negotiated since Bloomberg bought the company. The proposed contract grants across-the-board pay raises to the corporation’s 700 Guild-covered employees, from 2 to 4 percent this year; 2.25 to 4 percent in 2014; and 2.5 to 4 percent in 2015.

Journalists covering crime and other stories in Oakland, Calif., are being robbed of expensive cameras, sometimes at gunpoint.  In less than a year, every major television news station in the Bay Area has been a victim, some more than once. One newspaper photographer has lost five cameras. In the most brazen episode, a group of men punched a KPIX-TV cameraman last November while he was filming at midday in front of an Oakland high school. The robbers fled with his camera while it was still recording. Viewers saw the reporter sign off and then an inexplicably wobbly image.