Toronto's Newspaper War Fizzles

By: Mark Fitzgerald North America's fiercest newspaper war probably hit its manic peak one week last year. On Monday, June 26, John Honderich, publisher of The Toronto Star, stood proudly at a press conference in Union Station to show a prototype of its free commuter paper, GTA Today. After months of planning, GTA would launch on Wednesday, Honderich said.

But on Tuesday, the feisty tabloid, The Toronto Sun, beat the Star into the subway with its own quickly assembled free commuter paper, FYI Toronto. A few days later, Modern Times Group, which had launched transit papers around the globe, started distributing Metro. By the end of the week, commuters were being inundated by 350,000 copies of free papers every day. And Toronto's four dailies -- the Star, the Sun, The Globe & Mail, and the National Post -- were also hawking their full-size paid papers. There were so many papers literally blowing around in city subways that some got caught in underground ventilation fans and started fires.

Fast forward to Toronto today. There's only one commuter paper now. GTA Today and Metro stopped competing and merged to become Metro Today, while FYI Toronto was folded in October. The paid papers are downsizing as well. The Sun axed 125 workers, the Post cut 130 -- hitting its respected sports department particularly hard -- and The Globe & Mail, Canada's first and biggest national paper, pared about the same number using voluntary-retirement packages.

Competitors and analysts are openly speculating about the future of the Post -- mostly pessimistic talk that rose in volume again last week when a news release about an interview Israel Asper gave a business-school magazine suggested the CanWest Global Communications Corp. chairman and founder had said the national paper had one year to get profitable. Asper quickly assured staffers in an e-mail message that he is committed to the paper.

Torstar President and CEO David A. Galloway has been suggesting lately that he'd consider doing a distribution deal with the Post -- but only if it returned to its roots as the Financial Post, which was folded into the National Post when Hollinger International Inc. Chairman Conrad Black created the national paper.

Newspapering is a lot less fun in Toronto these days, reporters say privately. For one thing, they don't have Black to kick around. After watching the Post quickly gain respectability, Black dumped his 50% share in the paper, sold Hollinger's papers to CanWest, and decamped for the United Kingdom. Last week, the newly minted Baron Black of Crossharbour even sold off Hollinger's remaining 15% stake in CanWest -- around the same time the company confirmed that it is investing $2 million in a new daily paper in New York.

"Certainly, it's a different atmosphere than it was only a year and a half ago," said one reporter, who insisted on anonymity. "For one thing, back then it was very easy to get, or switch, a job in journalism."