Results tagged “nationalpost”

CanWest has successfully transferred the Post to another part of its company, out of bankruptcy protection and into where the rest of the company's papers are, according to the CBC—which means that, for now, it's still safe. Deep breaths.

According to a court filing made by CanWest Global Communications, the National Post is in immediate danger of being shut down. Creditors are running out of patience with the money-losing paper and will cease underwriting its operations after October 30. A potential stay of execution may come if CanWest can successfully transfer the Post to another holding corporation, which it is currently attempting to do.

We all know that columns in the National Post will, by virtue of the publication they're in, have a tendency to be contrary for the sake of contrariness. There's nothing wrong with contrariness: playing devil's advocate for an unpopular idea can stimulate public debate and give us real ideas for positive change.

Being Erica—the new season of which started last night—will soon have a new co-star: the National Post! Yes, even though the parent companies of the show and the paper are each intent on covering the other's financial problems, the Post will (apparently) be playing itself in an upcoming episode, which'll see Erica go to the (real) Post to confront a (fake) Post critic who slams a book that she edits.

The bad news continues for the Post: they're not going to publish a Monday print edition for nine weeks this summer, according to Reuters, a move sure to not help the steep circulation slide the paper's currently experiencing. Here's hoping no news happens on the weekends, right?!

There's no really good way to spin these numbers: the National Post's paid weekday print circulation declined 20.22% between 2008 and 2009, and their paid weekend circulation dropped 18.8%—to 159,089 and 170,021 copies, respectively—according to Media in Canada. While the circulations of the vast majority of the States' top daily papers are declining, few are falling as dramatically, and only one of the top twenty-five papers' weekday circulation there fell by more than the National Post's: the New York Post. [Hat tip to Canadian Magazines]

Every single one of the 107,000 copies of Now Magazine published each week is read by (on average) three different people. Sure, PMB, whatever you say. Perhaps that's not surprising when your annual studies—used to determine readership numbers and thus a year's worth of ad rates—are based largely on how recognizable a publication's logo is [PDF].

At left, Gary Clement's National Post cartoon from Friday. At right, a CBC TV crew spotted on Canwest death watch outside the Post's Don Mills HQ the same day.

Today was not a good internet day for soon-to-be-former National Post technology reporter (and fleeting Torontoist contributor from way back when) David George-Cosh. In the opening shot in a brief but intense public fight on Twitter, one summarized nicely on MediaStyle, product marketer April Dunford earlier this afternoon called out an at-that-point-unnamed journalist: "Reporter to me 'When the media calls you, you jump, OK!?' Why, when you called me and I’m not selling? Newspapers will get what they deserve." George-Cosh was a touch displeased, outing himself as the "reporter," and telling Dunford "hey april - fuck you. seriously. fuck you" as she tried to calm him down.

To err is human. To point out the erring may not be divine, but somebody's got to do it.

Just like blogTO, Torontoist got a tip from one of our readers Thursday morning, alerting us to the imminent disappearance of Toronto Star newspaper boxes around town. And just like the recent spate of National Post newspaper box cutbacks, this had us worried. That newspapers are on their deathbed is a well-worn cliché, promulgated first with the rise of web-based news sites and whose spread accelerated with the economic meltdown that is stripping media outlets of their advertisers. We didn’t want to jump to conclusions, though: the Star is—at least relatively speaking—a strong performer. According to the Newspaper Audience Databank, in 2007 the Toronto Star outperformed all other newspapers in the city: it had 2.1 million weekly readers, compared to 1.2 million for the Toronto Sun, 1 million for The Globe and Mail, and 500,000 for the National Post.

Torontoist first learned of the mysterious case of the disappearing National Post this weekend, when we woke to find newspaper boxes empty throughout the downtown core. We had just started coming to grips with losing the Post’s Toronto magazine-style insert—a Saturday morning without the paper altogether seemed rather overwhelming. The forlorn boxes, like the one above at Bay and Bloor, bore only a sticker, notifying readers that those locations would no longer be serviced.

The National Post's nice weekend-edition Toronto pseudo-magazine is officially dead, allegedly the result of CanWest's ever-present and ever-worsening financial troubles. Canadian Magazines says that "whatever is salvaged from the section will now be subsumed in the main, broadsheet pages of the weekend paper," and that "this most recent change will reduce three magazine-style features...to only one in the main paper," which is a shame: those features, like (former Torontoist staffer) Mark Medley's recent article about Toronto Centre Animal Alliance Environment Voters' Alliance candidate Liz White [PDF], were often excellent and quite pretty. But we've also heard that the content might not be changing too much—just the format—so we'll have to wait and see. In the interim, happy birthday, Post!

Despite its excellent online coverage from 10:30 p.m. Friday and onwards, not all print editions of Saturday's National Post carried news of the TTC strike. All versions of its Toronto Magazine, however, included the presciently coincidental graphics shown above (Post illustrators' responses to the predictably utopian sentiments of the "My Toronto Is..." tourism ads proffered by OCAD advertising students for their annual let's-generate-PR-for-a-billboard-company contest).

According to the Inside the CBC blog and the National Post, Toronto's favourite boyish-looking provocateur, Avi Lewis, is back on the airwaves with his newest show, Frontline: USA. The show promises to "strip away the spin and highlight real issues such as poverty, violence, race, health, and immigration" in America. Considering that Lewis is involved and that the show airs on Al Jazeera English, chances are that Frontline: USA won't be a Dobbsian exercise in blaming America's problems on immigrants.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has fired off a whiny letter to the PM complaining about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's public criticism of Ontario and its tax laws. Flaherty, who apparently counts all time lost when he's not psychologically bitch-slapping his governmental inferiors, responded by calling McGuinty a "big stupid crybaby."

Photo of d’bi.young.anitafrika and her son, Moon, courtesy of Women’s Press.

When your own mother calls you "foolish" and "an idiot," you know you're in serious trouble. However, if your name is Salman Hossain, it's likely that your mom's assessment of your intellectual abilities is the least of your concerns right now.

Unless you're just coming off a three-day bender, you already know that Australian actor Heath Ledger died in New York yesterday, an event covered by the media with the familiar dead celebrity combination of prurience and gravitas. Still, he was good at what he did and he had a little girl and it's sad.

In case you were wondering, it's probably not a great idea to be hanging out in the entertainment district at 3:15 a.m. Especially if you're in a luxury SUV. And especially especially if you've got a ponytail.

As the unofficial fansite of Roncesvalles' favourite success story (and one of the oldest operating movie theatres in this country), Torontoist is pleased to tell you about another exciting event being staged by the good folks at the Revue Film Society. This time, money will be going towards brand-new educational initiatives the theatre aims to have up and running in early 2008, including a film school for neighborhood kids. This particular event, starting at...

This just in: Conrad Black has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his role in "misappropriating" (which is Rich People for "stealing") millions of dollars from the Hollinger newspaper empire, and for obstructing justice by allowing certain documents, which would have determined whether or not he was guilty of the nine charges he managed to evade (including racketeering), to "disappear." Now, of course the National Post is all over this...

A large part of the downtown core from College to Queens Quay and York to Bayview, was blacked-out for about 2 ½ hours yesterday. In response, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said that Toronto has the ability to generate all the power it needs and certainly wasn't getting any more from the Province, while Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty agreed, adding that Torontonians should stop whining and being all dependent on electricity.

The National Post is reporting today that Coyote Ugly––the raunchy, almost-a-strip-club-bar that inspired a Jerry Bruckheimer movie that everyone, including Piper Perabo, forgot about five years ago––will open up its first Canadian "saloon" next year at 220 Adelaide Street West. Coyote Ugly is upfront about its intentions: on their website, the bar explains the "business plan" of its first owner, Lil' Lovell, was "beautiful girls + booze = money." The organization's slogan is "Don't Just...

Photo by Try Hank from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

There are a shitload of pedestrian- and public space-themed events going on Sunday afternoon: P.S. Kensington, Word on the Street, the below-mentioned Not Blanche, and the "Our Streets – inserting oneself into the municipal process" pre-Walk21 workshop. But for raw pedestrianism, nothing is going to beat the Great Queen Street Psychogeographic Walk, organized by Spacing and the Toronto Psychogeography Society.