Controversial columnist Margaret Went takes buyout from Globe and Mail
Posted June 24, 2019 10:53 pm.
TORONTO — Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente is among several reporters to take a voluntary buyout as the newspaper looks to trim $10 million from its annual budget.
Wente confirmed in an email on Monday that she accepted a buyout package as part of a company program announced in early May.
“I’ll be leaving at the end of August after 33 years. The best time to leave is before you’ve worn out your welcome. I will miss the Globe very much,” Wente said in the email.
Wente is a controversial figure.
While she is a former managing editor of the paper and has won National Newspaper Awards for column writing, she has also faced allegations of plagiarism in recent years.
After complaints by a blogger in 2012, Globe public editor Sylvia Stead investigated one of Wente’s columns and found that some of it appeared to have been copied from another source.
At the time, Wente apologized for her “journalist lapses,” but denied she was a serial plagiarist.
In 2016, the Globe apologized for more columns written by Wente that the paper said failed to properly attribute prose.
At that time, Stead wrote that Wente “deeply regrets these mistakes.”
Other Globe reporters who have announced they accepted a buyout include retail reporter Marina Strauss, Ottawa reporter Gloria Galloway, energy reporter Shawn McCarthy and sports reporter Allan Maki.
The Globe and Mail also informed five staff — four in editorial and one in advertising _ earlier this month it would lay them off over the summer.
Publisher Phillip Crawley says in an emailed statement the number of layoffs is low because the company had a strong response to the voluntary buyout program.
Crawley said some non-union layoffs will occur across various departments before Aug. 31.
Crawley said the company will not be announcing individual departures.
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A subsidiary of the Globe and Mail holds an investment in The Canadian Press as part of a joint agreement with Torstar and a subsidiary of Montreal’s La Presse.
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