The U.S. may consider itself the most media-savvy nation in the world, but in one significant way Canada stands out ahead of its neighbor to the south. 
   It is far more of a newspaper culture, especially in its major cities, which each enjoy a multitude of papers when most U.S. cities struggle to support one or two.
  Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver each have two, while Montreal and Ottawa can claim three. 
    Toronto, Canada's largest city with a population of 5 million, has five daily papers, with 75 percent of the city's households taking at least one paper every day.
   They are the National Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Toronto Sun, which are paid, and a free commuter paper that is a joint venture between the Star and the Swedish publishers of Today.
    But just why Canadians are so nuts over newspaper is a mystery, even among journalism professors and the titans who own the publications, though they do have theories.
     Toronto has always been a competitive newspaper town. Since 1893, when the Toronto Star was launched to compete with the Globe (now Globe and Mail) and the Toronto Telegram, the city has only been without three major papers for one day.
    That was in 1971, when the Telegram folded on Oct. 30 and on Nov. 1 when some of the ex-Telegram staffers launched the tabloid Toronto Sun.
   Since then, two more players have jumped into Canada’s largest, most prestigious and necessary market, the National Post in 1997 (born from the 90-year old Financial Post), and Metro Today, the free commuter newspaper.
    Combined, the penetration level of their 1.2 million circulation, at 75 percent, compares favorably to penetrations of 38 percent in Chicago and 46 percent in Boston, according to figures from Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley.
    For a period between 2000 and 2001, Toronto had seven daily newspapers, says Crawley, noting the move by the Sweden-based Metro chain of free commuter papers to launch its product was quickly matched by similar offerings from The Star and The Sun.
   Eventually, The Sun withdrew and The Star joined forces with the Swedes. The merged product, Metro Today, circulates about 200,000 papers through the public transit system to its 1.4 million daily riders.
    Loren Lind, a journalism professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University, believes the large readership and newspaper saturation is due in part to the nation’s high-quality TV journalism on the CBC but also to an accident of history.
    “In 1997, Conrad Black wanted to start another newspaper to compete with the Globe and Mail as the national newspaper. He failed in that, but created an excellent paper,” Lind says After losing an estimated $126 million, Black sold the Post and his other newspaper holdings to Winnipeg-based Can-West Communications.
    The once-lavishly financed paper has seen its budget slashed by the new owners, he adds, and while the paper remains highly regarded, it is “a shadow of its former self.”
   Perhaps because each paper offers a distinctive voice, there is considerable overlap in readership, with many readers picking up more than one paper every day.
    In sheer numbers, the Toronto Star has dominated Toronto since killing off its long-time rival, the Telegram. With a daily circulation of about 400,000, The Star looms over the Globe and Mail (200,000), NP (130,000), Sun (200,000) and Metro Today (200,000).
   The Star is generally considered the liberal paper, focusing on the city’s widely diverse ethnic communities and championing causes like treatment of minorities and housing conditions among the poor.
    The Globe, which calls itself the national newspaper, aims at upper-income and educated business people. Since the advent of the Post, it has become flashier and expanded its coverage of the city, sports and literature.
   The Post wears its politics on its sleeve, using its front page to push a more conservative, almost libertarian viewpoint.
    The Sun, known as the little paper that grew, is the city’s only tabloid. While it recently moved away from flashing bikini-wearing models on page 3, it still regards itself as an upstart conservative paper railing against political correctness and grabbing readers with lots of flashy headlines, sports and gossipy entertainment.
    

August 16, 2002© 2002 Media Life

-Barry Brown is a writer living in Toronto.

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