MATT urges transparency and fairness to workers during Newsday closure

The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) is call­ing on News­day’s man­age­ment to be open and trans­par­ent with its work­ers fol­low­ing the com­pa­ny’s clo­sure.

In a re­lease, MATT said the loss of any jour­nal­is­tic in­sti­tu­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go “rep­re­sents a loss of cul­ture, na­tion­al mem­o­ry and his­tor­i­cal record”. MATT not­ed that em­ploy­ees had served News­day with dis­tinc­tion and ded­i­ca­tion through­out its 32 years of op­er­a­tion, de­spite an ever-chang­ing me­dia land­scape.

The MATT Ex­ec­u­tive said it was dis­turbed to learn that the ma­jor­i­ty of em­ploy­ees were not con­sult­ed be­fore the wind­ing up of the com­pa­ny and on­ly be­came aware of the de­ci­sion last Fri­day (Jan­u­ary 9, 2026), min­utes be­fore the fi­nal hard-copy edi­tion was due to go to press.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the As­so­ci­a­tion al­so was in­formed that em­ploy­ees now as­signed to the dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion re­main un­cer­tain about whether they will re­ceive pay­ment for the month of Jan­u­ary 2026.

MATT called for all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with work­ers to take place “in a re­spect­ful and col­lab­o­ra­tive man­ner, with em­ploy­ees re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion first.”

The MATT Ex­ec­u­tive al­so called for prop­er com­pen­sa­tion and sev­er­ance ben­e­fits for af­fect­ed work­ers, with con­sid­er­a­tion ex­tend­ed to tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees and free­lancers.

The re­lease al­so raised con­cerns about the preser­va­tion of News­day’s dig­i­tal archives, point­ing to the re­cent clo­sure of Loop, and warn­ing that the loss of such records can af­fect dis­placed jour­nal­ists seek­ing fu­ture em­ploy­ment.

A pe­ti­tion to wind up Dai­ly News Lim­it­ed was filed on De­cem­ber 31, 2025, and was pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers on Jan­u­ary 6, 2026.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the com­pa­ny has been in dire fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty since 2024, and pur­sued sev­er­al op­tions to keep the busi­ness afloat through­out 2025.

How­ev­er, de­clin­ing sales of phys­i­cal news­pa­pers and a sharp fall in ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue made op­er­a­tions un­sus­tain­able.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands at least 30 mem­bers of the ed­i­to­r­i­al team will be af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion.

The first court hear­ing is set for Jan­u­ary 19, 2026.