The National Post is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper and the flagship publication of Postmedia Network. It is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.[3] The newspaper is distributed in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. Weekend editions of the newspaper are also distributed in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The newspaper was founded in 1998 by Conrad Black in an attempt to compete with The Globe and Mail. In 2001, CanWest completed its acquisition of the National Post. In 2006, the newspaper ceased distribution in Atlantic Canada and the Canadian territories. Postmedia assumed ownership of the newspaper in 2010, after the CEO of the National Post's, Paul Godfrey, assembled an ownership group to acquire CanWest's chain of newspapers.
History
Conrad Black built the National Post around the Financial Post, a financial newspaper in Toronto which Hollinger Inc. purchased from Sun Media in 1997. Originally slated for an October 5, 1998 launch date,[4] the debut of the paper was delayed until October 27 because of financial complications that stemmed from Black's acquisition of the Financial Post,[5] which was retained as the name of the new newspaper's business section.[citation needed]
The Post's magazine-style graphic and layout design has won awards.[clarification needed][6] The original design of the Post was created by Lucie Lacava, a design consultant based in Montreal.[7] The Post now bears the motto "World's Best-Designed Newspaper" on its front page.[8]
21st century
The Post was unable to maintain momentum in the market without continuing to operate with annual budgetary deficits. At the same time, Conrad Black was becoming preoccupied by his debt-heavy media empire, Hollinger International. Black divested his Canadian media holdings, and sold the Post to CanWest Global Communications Corp, controlled by Israel "Izzy" Asper, in two stages– 50 percent in 2000, along with the entire Southam newspaper chain,[9] and the remaining 50 percent in 2001.[9] CanWest Global also owned the Global Television Network.
Izzy Asper died in October 2003, and his sons Leonard and David Asper assumed control of CanWest, the latter serving as chairman of the Post. Editor-in-chief Matthew Fraser departed in 2005 after the arrival of a new publisher, Les Pyette– the paper's seventh publisher in seven years. Fraser's deputy editor, Doug Kelly succeeded him as editor. Pyette departed seven months after his arrival, replaced by Gordon Fisher.[citation needed]
The Post limited print distribution in Atlantic Canada in 2006, part of a trend to which The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, Canada's other two papers with inter-regional distribution, have all resorted.[10] Print editions were removed from all Atlantic Canadian newsstands except in Halifax as of 2007.[11] Focussing further on its online publishing, in 2008, the paper suspended weekday editions and home delivery in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.[12] The reorientation towards digital continued into its next decade.
Politically, the Post has retained a conservative editorial stance although the Asper family has long been a strong supporter of the Liberal Party of Canada. Izzy Asper was once leader of the Liberal Party in his home province of Manitoba. The Aspers had controversially fired the publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, Russell Mills, for calling for the resignation of Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien.[citation needed]
However, the Post endorsed the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2004 election when Fraser was editor. The Conservatives narrowly lost that election to the Liberals. After the election, the Post surprised many of its conservative readers by shifting its support to the victorious Liberal government of prime minister Paul Martin, and was highly critical of the Conservatives and their leader, Stephen Harper. The paper switched camps again in the runup to the 2006 election (in which the Conservatives won a minority government).
Like its competitor The Globe and Mail, the Post publishes a separate edition in Toronto, Ontario, Canada's largest city and the fourth largest English-language media centre in North America after New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. The Toronto edition includes additional local content not published in the edition distributed to the rest of Canada, and is printed at the Toronto Star Press Centre in Vaughan.[citation needed]
On September 27, 2007, the Post unveiled a major redesign of its appearance. Guided by Gayle Grin, the Post's managing editor of design and graphics, the redesign features a standardization in the size of typeface and the number of typefaces used, cleaner font for charts and graphs, and the move of the nameplate banner from the top to the left side of Page 1 as well as each section's front page.[citation needed]
In 2009, the paper announced that as a temporary cost-cutting measure, it would not print a Monday edition from July to September 2009.[13] On October 29, 2009, Canwest Global announced that due to a lack of funding, the National Post might close down as of October 30, 2009, subject to moving the paper to a new holding company.[14] Late on October 29, 2009, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sarah Pepall ruled in Canwest's favour and allowed the paper to move into a holding company.[15] Investment bankers hired by Canwest received no offers when they tried to sell the National Post earlier that year. Without a buyer closing the paper was studied, but the costs were greater than gains from liquidating assets. The lawyer for Canwest, in arguing to Justice Pepall, said the National Post added value to other papers in the Canwest chain.[16]
In 2010, an ownership group was assembled by National Post CEO Paul Godfrey in 2010 to bid for the chain of newspapers being sold by the financially troubled Canwest (the company's broadcasting assets were sold separately to Shaw Communications). Godfrey secured financial backing from U.S. private-equity firm Golden Tree Asset Management as well as other investors. The group completed a $1.1billion transaction to acquire the chain from Canwest on July 13, 2010, forming the Postmedia Network.[17] The company's shares were listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2011.[18] On October 28, 2011, the Post announced its first ever yearly profit.[19] In 2016, Chatham Asset Management acquired a 66 per cent stake in the Postmedia Network, resulting in the reduction in their staff, including a third of the National Post's editorial staff. [20][21]
Facilities
The former National Post building in Don Mills, 2009.
The National Post's main office is at 365 Bloor Street East in Toronto, Ontario. It was formerly located at 1450 Don Mills Road in the Don Mills neighbourhood of Toronto, which was vacated in 2012.[22]
The newspaper is published at Postmedia's Islington Printing Plant in Toronto's Rexdale neighbourhood, along with the Toronto Sun, London Free Press and various Postmedia and Metroland-owned weekly newspapers. The newspaper was previously printed at the Toronto Star Press Centre in Vaughan, Ontario, until the Toronto Star closed the site.[citation needed]
On May 19, 2006, the newspaper ran two pieces alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring religious minorities to wear special identifying badges. One piece was a front-page news item titled "Iran Eyes Badges For Jews" accompanied by a 1935 picture of two Jews bearing Nazi-ordered yellow badges. Later on the same day, experts began coming forward to deny the accuracy of the Post story. The story proved to be false, but not before it had been picked up by a variety of other news media and generated comment from world leaders. Comments on the story by the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper caused Iran to summon Canada's ambassador to Tehran, Gordon E. Venner, for an explanation.
On May 24, 2006, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Doug Kelly, published an apology for the story on page 2, admitting that it was false and the National Post had not exercised enough caution or checked enough sources.[23]
Accusation of anti-Islam sentiment
From 1998 to 2014, the now defunct Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) had been actively monitoring media coverage for anti-Muslim or anti-Islam sentiment and had issued reports highlighting its findings. It had opposed the use of phrases such as "Islamic guerrillas," "Islamic insurgency" and "Muslim militants" saying that terms like "militant" or "terrorist" should be used without a religious association "since no religion teaches or endorses terrorism, militancy or extremism."[24] The Congress had singled out the National Post, saying the paper "consistently is No. 1" as an anti-Islam media outlet.[25]
Allegations of bias
A 2017 survey of Canadians found that the National Post was perceived to be middle-of-the-pack for bias among national news outlets (perceived biased by 48 per cent of Canadians overall). [26][27] A 2010 Ipsos survey commissioned by CBC found that 38% of respondents believed the Post leaned to the right or far right.[28]
In a 2021 academic study on the presentation of the subject of climate change in 17 mainstream media outlets in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the National Post came out as the worst in terms of its misrepresentation of the scientific consensus on the impact of anthropogenic climate change.[30] The National Post was found to represent scientific consensus only 70.83% of the time—noting the significant contribution of anthropogenic climate change—while 9.17% of the time it presented anthropogenic climate change and natural climatic variance as equally relevant, and 20% of the time presented anthropogenic climate change as a negligible phenomena.[30]
The Vancouver Sun, also known as the Sun, is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network, and is the largest newspaper in western Canada by circulation. Since 2022, it is published five days a week from Tuesday to Saturday.
The Globe and Mail is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it falls slightly behind the Toronto Star in overall weekly circulation because the Star publishes a Sunday edition, whereas the Globe does not. The Globe and Mail is regarded by some as Canada's "newspaper of record".
The Toronto Sun is an English-language tabloid newspaper published daily in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The newspaper is one of several Sun tabloids published by Postmedia Network. The newspaper's offices are located at Postmedia Place in downtown Toronto.
Canwest Global Communications Corporation, which operated under the corporate name Canwest, was a major Canadian media conglomerate based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with its head offices at Canwest Place. It held radio, television broadcasting, and publishing assets in several countries, primarily in Canada.
Postmedia News is a national news agency with correspondents in Canada, Europe, and the United States and is part of the Canadian newspaper chain owned by Postmedia Network Inc.
James Andrew Coyne is a Canadian columnist with The Globe and Mail and a member of the At Issue panel on CBC's The National. Previously, he has been national editor for Maclean's and a columnist with National Post.
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
The Financial Post is a financial news website, and business section of the National Post, both publications of the Postmedia Network. It started as an English Canadian business newspaper, which published from 1907 to 1998. In 1998, the publication was folded into the new National Post. The name Financial Post also lives on in the Post's monthly business magazine, Financial Post Business.
The Calgary Herald is a daily newspaper published in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Publication began in 1883 as The Calgary Herald, Mining and Ranche Advocate, and General Advertiser. It is owned by the Postmedia Network.
Paul Victor Godfrey, CM, OOnt is a businessman and former Canadian politician. During his career, Godfrey was a North York alderman, Chairman of Metro Toronto, President of the Toronto Sun and head of the Toronto Blue Jays. He was instrumental in bringing the Toronto Blue Jays to Toronto and has campaigned to bring the National Football League to Toronto. He is the former president and CEO of Postmedia Network.
The Edmonton Journal is a daily newspaper published in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It is part of the Postmedia Network.
The Gazette, also known as the Montreal Gazette, is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper which is owned by Postmedia Network. It is published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Postmedia Network Canada Corp. is a foreign-owned Canadian-based media conglomerate consisting of the publishing properties of the former Canwest, with primary operations in English-language newspaper publishing, news gathering and Internet operations. It is best known for being the owner of the National Post and the Financial Post. The company is headquartered at Postmedia Place on Bloor Street in Toronto.
Shaw Media, Inc. was the television broadcasting division of Shaw Communications. It owned the Global Television Network, which broadcasts nationally via 13 television stations, as well as 19 specialty channels including Slice, HGTV Canada, Showcase, Food Network Canada, and History. Shaw Media consisted of the broadcasting assets of the former Canwest. Shaw Media properties were acquired in April 2016 by sister company Corus Entertainment.
There were five important periods in the history of Canadian newspapers' responsible for the eventual development of the modern newspaper. These are the "Transplant Period" from 1750 to 1800, when printing and newspapers initially came to Canada as publications of government news and proclamations; followed by the "Partisan Period from 1800–1850," when individual printers and editors played a growing role in politics. The "Nation Building Period from 1850–1900," when Canadian editors began the work of establishing a common nationalistic view of Canadian society. The "Modern period" from 1900 to 1980s saw the professionalization of the industry and the growth of chains. "Current history" since the 1990s saw outside interests take over the chains, as they faced new competition from the Internet.
David Akin is a Canadian reporter, currently the chief political correspondent for Global News.
The Alberni Valley News is a weekly newspaper in Port Alberni, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It publishes Wednesday and is owned by Black Press.
The Nanaimo Daily News was a Canadian daily newspaper published weekdays in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia for 141 years until ceasing publication in January 2016.
StarMetro was a chain of Canadian free daily newspapers published in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Toronto, and Vancouver. The chain was a joint venture between the Canadian publishing conglomerate Torstar and Swedish global media company Metro International. The chain was originally branded as Metro prior to rebranding on April 10, 2018. StarMetro was not affiliated with the French-language Métro newspaper published by TC Transcontinental in Montreal.
The Welland Tribune is a daily newspaper that services Welland, Ontario and surrounding area. The Tribune was one of several Postmedia Network newspapers purchased by Torstar in a transaction between the two companies which concluded on November 27, 2017. The paper continues to be published by the Metroland Media Group subsidiary of Torstar. In late May 2020, Torstar accepted an offer for the sale of all of its assets to Nordstar Capital in late May 2020, a deal expected to close by year end.
↑ Hess, Henry, "Media's portrayal of Islam criticized", The Globe and Mail, September 24, 1998
↑ Petricevic, Mirko, "When religion's in the news; Faith groups often voice outrage about unfair media reports, so scholars are trying to determine if the complaints are valid", Kitchener-Waterloo Record, August 25, 2007.
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