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

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, MATT said the loss of any jour­nal­is­tic in­sti­tu­tion in T&T rep­re­sents a loss of cul­ture, na­tion­al mem­o­ry, and his­tor­i­cal record. The as­so­ci­a­tion 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 most em­ploy­ees were not con­sult­ed be­fore the de­ci­sion to wind up the com­pa­ny and on­ly be­came aware of it last Fri­day, min­utes be­fore the fi­nal hard-copy edi­tion was due to go to press.