April 13, 2000
Newspaper bitchings - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- For something like an entire century, Canada had only one “national newspaper”. In the United States, they have USA Today, as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post which one could get in any American town from Kalamazoo to Blaine, Washington. Canada, on the other hand had to settle with Lord Thomson’s Globe and Mail.
Understanding the print business in Canada is a funny thing. One must realise that the Globe and Mail has been in production as a newspaper for 156 years. It’s even older than Confederation itself. It considers itself “Canada’s National Newspaper”, but those outside of Toronto, consider it Toronto’s national newspaper. There isn’t any arguing with that assessment. The paper has never really strayed on giving great prominence to Torontonian issues, simply because that’s the way it is.
Canada recently got the hope of a national paper, with almost-Lord Conrad Black’s National Post, which hit news-stands over a year ago. It tries to be fair in covering this massive and magnificent country, but the task at providing fair coverage is magnificent thanks to the diversity of each of this country’s regions.
Kenneth Mair, otherwise known to you and I as Rafe, had an interesting Province column a couple of weeks back. In it he made public his disdain for the Globe and Mail, by announcing the cancellation of his subscription. I never was interested with subscribing to the Globe. I hardly ever read it, for reason which I let Rafe know on e-mail soon afterwards. I told Rafe that I agreed with his diagnosis and that I thought you needed a degree to wade through the smug arrogance of the paper.
On Saturday, I decided to pick up a copy of the Globe and Mail. I read it the way I read most papers, in that I read the things that either interested me or that looked interesting. The stories rarely strayed from the coverage in my paper, The National Post. While the Post ran another headline on the money being funnelled to the Prime Minister’s own riding of St. Maurice. The Globe and Mail, decided that Premier Bouchard’s visit to France and his call for the revival on the question of Quebec sovereignty.
There isn’t a real difference, but Rafe is right. The Globe and Mail almost reads like a local Toronto paper, it’s hardly national, at least not as national as the National Post.
Now, to play devil’s advocate, there really isn’t a market niche that’s strong enough for newspapers. To demonstrate, would you be surprised that the country’s top paper is the Toronto Star? The Star, a long time journalistic cornerstone in Canada, is a paper that is only available in Southern Ontario, yet it has a larger circulation than the Globe and Mail or the National Post. Canadians like papers that cater exclusively to the coverage of their own communities.
I guess we don’t give a damn about the goings-on in St. John’s. St. John’s in New Brunswick or Newfoundland? Ah, who gives a damn.
I don’t think we’ll have a truly national newspaper. I think “national” papers, like the Post or the Globe and Mail have to revert to creating papers that have an element of the split-run. Read like the magazine stink where American magazines like Time or Sports Illustrated carry ad’s exclusively Canadian. Simpler yet, the Post could use a British Columbian columnist. There isn’t a regular columnist from this province, and that’s a shame. Rafe suggested the installation of Gordon Gibson in the Post’s pages. I suggested to Rafe, how about him?
His response: “No. I don’t think the Post will hire me... they could never be sure of me!”
We have a ways to go.
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