In light of the takeover the WSJ by Rupert Murdoch the ripples are happening even in Canada.One of Torstar Corp.'s five controlling families has signalled it will soon begin selling off shares in the tightly held newspaper publishing company in an effort to diversify their investments. The Thall family, part of the voting trust that steers Canada's largest newspaper by circulation, the Toronto Star, informed the company that it intends to divest "some or all" of its non-voting shares in Torstar Corp.
Following an annual business review of the paper, Post management decided to limit sales to only one Atlantic Canadian market — the metropolitan area of Halifax — as of the end of July.
This latest move follows another decision, announced in late March, to limit Atlantic Canadian distribution of the Post to provincial capitals only.
At that time, the paper blamed the prohibitive costs of distributing the paper regionally after circulation numbers are factored in. Home delivery to the Atlantic region was also discontinued in 2006.
"As we took a look at our business model, looked at how and where we're distributed across the country — and frankly no newspaper has 100 per cent distribution across the country, it's just too big — we made some hard decisions," said Steven Hastings, National Post vice-president of marketing and reader sales.
Similar reasons were cited this time, with the paper also blaming difficulty distributing the Toronto-produced and printed paper in a timely manner.
Wow that was some business plan. Typical of the right, overwhelmed by all their pompous social conservative blathergab when it comes to good old fashioned capitalism they are utter failures, bleeding cash and blue bloods.Upon its much ballyhooed introduction in October 1998 by media mogul Conrad Black, the National Post offered a bold new, neo-conservative voice in Canada's national newspaper landscape, offering a different take on the news and current affairs as well as a jazzy, colourful look compared to venerable newspaper the Globe and Mail.
However, the Post soon began amassing large debts from the heavy spending incurred during its startup period. Black eventually sold the paper to fellow media scion Izzy Asper and his CanWest Global Communications (in two stages over the course of 2000 and 2001).
In 2001, management of the still-young newspaper imposed severe budget cuts, laid off a significant percentage of its staff and nixed several sections, with a plummet in circulation the ultimate result.
Inside the Journal, you can cut the fear and loathing with a knife. The champions of unfettered capitalism are terrified that somebody is actually practising it on them.Of course she is not the only one to note the irony of the whining of the WSJ staff and their media sycophants.
All of which means that in an ideal world, the Bancrofts wouldn't let Murdoch within a mile of the Journal. But this is hardly an ideal world, as far as the newspaper business is concerned. I'm not one of the doomsayers who see The End of Newspapers As We Know Them lurking around the next corner, but it doesn't take a genius to see that our industry is in the midst of some of that good old "creative destruction" that the Journal's editorial page regularly praises as the engine of capitalism.The pro capitalist journalists at the WSJ, purveyors of the American Dream are afraid their will lose their journalistic integrity under Murdoch. Please gimme a break. What do they think that Murdoch will put Bill O'Riley on the editorial board?
And before the signatures are dry on Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ there are questions about those in charge of maintaining the journals much lauded editorial independence.
Wall Street Journal watchdog member has Murdoch links
As for the media, the one thing the media should have is common sense. They are the great conduit of knowledge to the people. They have to reduce the complex to the simple, and dispense it.
Full of contradictions Worthington complained about office politics at the Sun while conveniently overlooking his own family connections.I suspect Mr. Worthington comes by his forthrightness quite naturally. It may not be generally known that his father was Major General F. F. Worthington, popularly known as "Fighting Frank" and the acknowledged father of the Canadian Armoured Corps.
Peter Worthington himself served in World War II as an air gunner with the Fleet Air Arm, and as an officer of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Korea where he was, incidentally, his battalion's intelligence officer and as such an expert on secret information. But he is first and foremost a journalist and indeed his writing talents were most evident in his military career. General Lewis Mackenzie.
We have a fairly active and energetic board of directors at The Sun, who think they know more about journalism than they do, and they all seem to have relatives, nieces and nephews who are unemployed, and this suits them ideally, in their minds, to work on newspapers as reporters. It's insulting, in a way, when one is in the business. They don't last that long, but just the fact that they arrive is rather upsetting. Peter Worthington
Worthington is the step-father of conservative writer Danielle Crittenden, and is thereby David Frum's father-in-law.
In our country in the sixties the universities were the arenas of revolutionary idealism. The people who should have been defending academic freedom, the academics, were often cowed or convinced not only to tolerate the nonsense on the campuses, but to actually participate in it and in cases to lead it. The university should not be an arena for revolution, although all the revolutionaries have come from the academic world--Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, Allende. I think you could state a law that common sense tends to deteriorate in direct proportion to the amount of exposure a person has to the academic environment.
Worthington was criticized when it was revealed that he had informed to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation about the suspected political sympathies of a number of his friends including June Callwood.
But the members of the media in this country have no training whatsoever. Journalism has become trendy, it has become fashionable. All it takes to become a journalist is the nerve and the opportunity. That's how I got into it! But we have no particular skills. Most of us type with two fingers; we can't take shorthand. The greenest stenographer entering the job market has more mechanical skills than the most exalted journalist at the end of his career.
