National Post Hits Stands
A new national daily hit newsstands Tuesday across Canada, one of the boldest ventures in North America's newspaper industry since USA Today was launched 16 years ago.
The advent of the National Post has sparked change throughout the Canadian newspaper world. The Post has lured many well-known journalists from other papers and prompted its major rivals to implement high-profile improvements.
The new paper is the latest expansion of the global newspaper empire of Conrad Black, who publishes Britain's Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and scores of other papers. His companies control 59 of Canada's 105 dailies and serve more than 40 percent of its newspaper readers.
Though the National Post aspires to an eventual circulation of about 300,000, it printed 500,000 first-day copies at nine printing plants across Canada and reported that all were snapped up by midday. Many were given away free.
The National Post is based in Toronto, Canada's biggest city and the only major metropolis that didn't have a newspaper controlled by Black. Toronto will now have four general-interest dailies competing for readers.
One of those four is the Globe and Mail, which until Tuesday was Canada's only nationally circulated general-interest daily. In a message to readers, the National Post's editor in chief, Kenneth Whyte, took a swipe at the Globe's claim to be Canada's national newspaper.
"We've had national business papers," says Whyte. "And Toronto papers presuming to speak for the whole country, but we've never seen a paper founded to serve the nation as a whole."
The Globe and Mail has been gearing up for tougher competition ever since Black announced plans for the new paper in April. It added color photographs, expanded its coverage of Toronto, and more than doubled its daily sports coverage.
"After all the talk and the planning and whatever, it's down to getting ready to rock 'n' roll," said the Globe's publisher, Roger Parkinson.
Some prominent social activists have bemoaned Black's increasing dominance within Canada's newspaper industry, worrying that his conservative, pro-business views will influence coverage at the expense of labor and left-of-center groups.
The National Post's business editor is Terence Corcoran. As a Globe and Mail columnist, he regularly infuriated environmental and anti-smoking groups with caustic attacks on their lobbying efforts.
Black, though unapologetic about his political views, says he is committed to airing diverse opinions in his papers. Among the letters to the editor in the inaugural National Post was one from the Rev. Bill Phipps, an outspoken social activist who heads the United Church of Canada. Phipps wrote that Canada needs more public debate on "the obscene gap between rich and poor, and our quivering allegiance t market ideology."
Two of the National Post's four sections are business sections, essentially a broadsheet version of the Financial Post, a business daily that Black's Southam Inc. acquired in July from Sun Media Corp. in exchange for four Ontario dailies.
Financial Post readers numbered about 100,000 Monday to Friday. Southam hopes the National Post's circulation will top 300,000, putting it in the same league as the Globe and Mail.
Initially, losses at the National Post were projected at about $90 million over eight years. They have since been revised to $32 million over three to four years because of the acquisition of the Financial Post.
"I don't think that losses will be as deep as originally expected, but there will still be losses," said Michel Perreault, President of MGP Media Consulting in Montreal. "There's no certainty the paper will make it."
Advertising revenues for Canadian newspapers were 10 percent higher in the first half of 1998 than the same period of 1997. But industry analysts wonder if the addition of the new paper could push advertising rates lower.
By David Crary