If the federal government thinks its various subsidies to Canadian newspapers are doing much to uphold democracy, it needs to take a clear-eyed look at Postmedia’s paid circulation numbers.
Never mind the obvious right-wing bias of what is still the largest Canadian newspaper chain, even though it is nowadays mostly owned by a U.S. hedge fund. And don’t worry about the loony right’s hysterical claims the Trudeau Government is buying media support with its subsidies, which are not supported by the behaviour of Canada’s remaining daily newspapers.
Instead, just look at how many people actually pay to read the things.
In what started out as a question on a social media site for former Calgary Herald employees, journalist Mario Toneguzzi uncovered some pretty shocking figures about the circulation of Postmedia’s two Calgary daily dailies, the Herald and the Sun.
Mr. Toneguzzi, who nowadays runs an independent communications company in Calgary, wanted to know “how many people actually buy printed newspapers these days”?
“Well, finding that key data isn’t very easy anymore,” he wrote in the blog on his website. “It’s also one that newspapers like to keep quiet about (Geez, I wonder why).”
Before we get to Mario’s Big Reveal, when I first worked at the Calgary Herald in the early 1970s, it proudly called itself “the newspaper of record in Southern Alberta” and boasted circulation of, if memory serves, about 144,000 on weekdays.
According to a deep dive in to the history of the Calgary Herald a year ago in The Sprawl, in April 1982, when the Herald moved into its imposing $70-million new building looming over the Deerfoot Trail in southeast Calgary, daily paid circulation was up to 150,000.
Despite the recession hitting Calgary in the early Eighties, the long-term forecast for newspapers in a growing and prosperous city should have been bullish.
But by 2008, Mr. Toneguzzi reported, the Herald’s average daily circulation had fallen to 121,800 and the Sun’s was 49,633.
Based on a spreadsheet last published in 2015 by News Media Canada, a mainstream media trade and lobbying organization, he discovered that year the Herald’s average weekday circulation that year had dipped to 62,974 and the Sun’s was 25,403.
So here’s Mr. Toneguzzi’s scoop: When he asked News Media Canada for the Herald’s and the Sun’s current paid circulation numbers, on weekdays they were 18,379 for the Herald and 9,908 for the Sun.
Weekend numbers were a little better, but not much: 20,675 for the Herald, 12,469 for the Sunday Sun, and 10,342 for the Saturday Sun.
So, paid circulation at the Herald has declined well over 85 per cent since its halcyon days.
Well, no wonder! Postmedia papers have very little local reporting.
In Calgary, since the sale last year for $17.2 million of the Herald building to U-Haul Canada, which has put the empty pressroom to work as a storage locker, it doesn’t even have a newsroom for the dozen or so reporters it still employs. (In 1998, the last full year I worked for the Herald, there were 146 people on the staff list for the newspaper’s editorial department alone. Most of them were journalists.)
As for Postmedia’s various websites – which seem to mostly publish the same National Post drivel – the number of paid subscribers would appear to be a deep, dark secret.
Maybe the feds know, maybe they don’t. But I’d bet they are few and far between.
For its part, Postmedia reported a 15.8-per-cent decline in revenue, “primarily due to decreases in advertising revenue,” in the three months ended on Nov. 30, 2023, which it calls its first quarter.
But not all is gloom and doom. “We welcome and thank the Canadian government for its revisions to the Journalism Tax Credit and positive settlement with Google on the Online News Act,” said Postmedia President and CEO Andrew MacLeod on Jan. 10 in the company’s first-quarter report. “We look forward to working with Federal and Provincial levels of government to implement structural reform in the Canadian media sector so the domestic industry, critical to Canadians, can regain its footing and secure our digital futures.”
I’ll bet!
If Ottawa thinks bailing out these guys is doing anything for democracy, or keeping journalists employed, it needs to demand some hard numbers and do some easy arithmetic.
Yes, newspapers do not reach the broad audience they once did. I suspect if they released the average age of their readers it would not be good news either. No or very few younger readers.
I recall in the 80’s the Edmonton Sun proudly proclaimed a daily readership of around 100,000, in a city much smaller than now. It seemed almost everyone back then looked at a newspaper, although of course many did not read it from cover to cover.
So the government subsidies given now are doing little to maintain and inform a broad readership. Despite the nice tales governments and newspapers like to tell about, they are now more like life support.
So there is a good argument to be made at this point it is time to pull the plug. What exist now is not serving our communities well, so whatever replaces them will probably be better.
Its unfortunate because the problem is not journalism or journalists which we still badly need. If anything, it started with corporate owners who saw newspapers as cash cows, cut too much and so the quality was eventually lost.
Maybe a different ownership structure can bring back quality journalism also without the legacy structures which do not work in the current world.
Shocking! Print media is already dead. Maybe it was a mistake to go to mostly canned content. The readers wanted local stories. The readers know best.
I picked up a free copy (worth every penny) of the Calgary Sun the other day and it was smaller than a grocery story flyer. The flyer has more useful information, though. On the whole, The Beaverton gives a more accurate account of Alberta’s goings on than either The Sun or Herald, especially for politics.
Would be interesting to compare numbers to centre or left-of-centre media like TorStar or the Globe. Hoping that hard stats will shut up the neo-cons who continue to claim that MSM are overwhelmingly woke (their term, not mine).
I miss having a newspaper, but I stopped buying them years ago. One by one, the columnists I loved disappeared. The investigative journalists quit or were let go. Local news became non-existent, unless it involved firearms. The newspapers went from hundreds of pages to fewer than twenty, while the price of the newspapers went up.
Television and on line news can never replace the feeling of turning the pages of a real newspaper, doing the daily crossword and bragging that I used a pen, clipping coupons for discounts, or writing a letter to the editor in hopes that it would be published. It was a form of community engagement.
It’s disappointing that real journalists have to get paid through crowdfunding or donations, while Postmedia shareholders beg for government handouts.
GMG: I used to say, “Well, most people may get their news from the Internet some day, but I’ll always read a newspaper.” But I doubt I’ve held a real newspaper in my hands more than a dozen times in the past decade. Between the Internet, and the tablet, they’re done for. They only exist as a funnel through which taxpayer funds are directed to Postmedia hedge fund managers in the United States and a few local executives. DJC
I totally agree. In my mind the right-wing propaganda rag(s) owned by Postmedia can all drop dead.
But you can’t wrap fish, line the cage, or start your wood fire with a tablet!
Fred: True, although I was speaking today with someone about the fish-wrap question – at least as far as fried fish goes. You can’t wrap fish & chips in newsprint any more, like they did when I was a kid, because ink. Printers ink may or not be toxic, but it can’t be good for you. Nor is it aesthetically pleasing on a fish, and even less so on batter. If it rubs off on your hands, it rubs off on your fish. Personally, I think we’re probably closing in on Peak Newsprint. DJC
I was senior freelancer on Special Projects to the Edmonton Journal editor Peter Collum’s team from about 2004 to 2012, which meant one payment for product that entailed pitching ideas and articles, research, links, coordinating art with the photo desk.
My product would often appear across the Postmedia empire, from Van Sun to CH to NP in all the print and digital forms. No royalties, no extra fees. I tracked it by frequent byline googling. Turns out I was his highest paid freelancer because he went to bat for his team. I was shocked to hear the demeaning word rate newbies were getting, despite their skills. More than one jumped ship from freelance to job security outside of journalism, usually comms. I too worked both sides of the desk. Oft times, especially holidays, I was basically in charge of providing most of the product. Though it was soft stuff, hard copy still rightfully staff led, I took pride in at least one story or two that supported alternate options. I was the go to for most real estate, culinary, organic food and ag, etc. After my fees were covered off and product published and spread across papers and platforms, it was sold at 5 bucks a pop to where, I’ll never know. I have seen it in Australian and Brit papers for example.
Two could play that game.
I theoretically owned copyright, I think that’s no longer the case for freelancers, so could amend and tweak copy and flog it elsewhere, and would often get 5 stories from one, while also working as a comms coordinators for ngos and private sector, columnist, rep, book conributor and editor etc. I hustled!
When line editors took away any sniff of pov in the early nineties, you must have felt the shift then. The changing of corporate hands so many times, the top heavy editorial, the gutting of newsrooms. Corporate media has been disintegrating for a long, long time. Many only providing paywall platforms. I could go on, apparently I have, as I am well over my word count haha.
Postmedia rest in pieces. Long live alternate media like this one. You know the others because your byline is everywhere. And glad of it.
Yes, I picked up a copy of the Vancouver Sun at the library. The paper itself was very low weight. It is now the size of a town paper. Much cut and paste stuff. No intelligent analysis. No wonder I haven’t subscribed in 26 years.
I simply want to point out re the Vancouver Sun that they do indeed have excellent investigative reporters who may one day be recognized national. Vaughn Palmer is a treasure who reliably dissects the fog of the Victoria legislature. He instinctively seems to know the difficult, uncomfortable questions to ask.
Douglas Todd already is a national treasure, tackling religious issues in our modern age, the new political correctness pervading our schools and society at large, the shallowness and divisive nature of conversations around housing and immigration.
Hastening the demise of print not mentioned in any comments, is the titanic loss of advertising dollars newspapers used to rely on. Lack of eyeballs= devolving quality =rapidly diminishing revenues.
We should have bought Amazon stock much sooner.
Long live subscriber driven quality on theSubStack platform!
It’s my understanding the news tax credit can only be claimed on digital subscriptions even if a reader also subscribes to the print edition. I’m one of those rare people who still has a print subscription to the Edmonton Journal. Don’t ask me why. Long story. I’d love to be proven wrong because a print+digital subscription costs about three times as much as a digital only subscription.
As a septuagenarian who I love once admonished me. “If the job is worth doing? Do it for no cash!” That is what our host is demonstrating! I’ve learned many lessons here, thanks to the kind and patient stoic that is our host. My favourite recourse is this, his personal response.
We were less than impressed with the Herald when we first moved to Calgary in 1978.
We moved to Vancouver. The Vancouver paper was a refreshing change.
We moved back to Calgary in 2000. The Herald was no better, probably worse. Just a ‘feel good’ paper. Little original, little investigative. Shame really.
Has home delivery for 15 years. The last two years we hardly opened it.
Cancelled and don’t even bother with the on line edition.
I can well understand why their readership is falling. We subscribe to other on line papers that provide some sort of value proposition for us.
I brought my neighbours Herald in off her steps for two weeks. I was surprised at how much it had shrunk.
I could read them for free at work, but I found it was no longer worth the effort to walk over and pick one up.
Everyone in our family of friends and family members who were Sun supporters dumped them when it became obvious they were just a mouthpiece for these Reformers helping them spread their lies and praising what these fools have done to this province. Now we see a huge change in rural papers where they blindly support these Reformers and refuse to print anything bad that is said about them, keeping their people ignorant of what they are really doing to us. After living in Rural Alberta for 24 years in 10 different communities I can’t believe how stupid they seem to have become. But by keeping them ignorant of what’s really going on has given Danielle Smith the majority she needs to keep destroying us and she certainly is. She knows how stupid they are and used it to her advantage, didn’t she?
Alan K. Spiller: You sure have that right.
My rule of thumb for reading a newspaper is how they cover topics I know something about. If they’re being dishonest about those topics, how can I trust their reporting on topics I know little about?
The Postmedia papers’ coverage of climate change was the acid test for me. Accepting or rejecting scientific findings by ideological criteria? That should disqualify them as purveyors of news.
I find the local newspaper quite useful for lighting the woodstove in the morning.
Jokes aside, the grip that Post media has on printed media can be compared to the USSR Pravda of old.
Too many newspapers have become the political tool of the rich.
TB
we are not so far from this state of affairs!@
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/17/alabama-power-electric-utility-finance-birmingham-news
TB
What I have noticed in newspapers is that their columnists lack any integrity, and show a clear political bias towards the Conservatives. The columnists will never question any of their mistakes, no matter how bad they are. This is especially the case in Postmedia newspapers. Columnists in these papers, such as Lorne Gunter, Licia Corbella, and David Staples, will never say anything critical about the UCP. It used to be when you read a columnist in the newspaper, they would be more neutral, and they would take a political party to task, when they did something wrong. With Postmedia, they are clearly endorsing the UCP, and the CPC, as well as any other Conservative parties in Canada, which are the furthest thing you can get from being a Conservative. Letters that criticize the UCP, hardly get published, and the comment sections in newspapers are filled with people calling others who disagree with the UCP nasty names.
Herald and Sun were too right wing for me. Stopped subscribing to both.