One Newspaper Chain For all Ontario – Should Have Seen This Coming

Jeff Green | Jul 05, 2023

I was scrolling through some news sites last week, when I stumbled on an article about Post Media and Metroland joining forces. I did not see that coming, but maybe I should have.

Coming up on 6 years ago, the two companies swapped a total of almost 40 papers, a the new ‘owner’ of these papers shut them down immediately.

It was an agreement between the Metroland and Post Media to carve up the province between them and stop competing in most of the markets. Ottawa and Kingston are Postmedia towns, Lanark County and Guelph are Metroland Towns, etc.

This had an impact on us at the Frontenac News, because the Frontenac Gazette, a satellite paper for the Kingston Heritage, was shut down that day, ending a lowkey newspaper war between us that had been going on for over 16 years.

Then, in February of this year, Metroland suddenly shut down their massive printing plant in Toronto, with 1 month of notice to customers, including the Frontenac News, by the way.

According to the media report, Post Media and Metroland are both losing millions of dollars each year and by combining forces, the resulting savings will create one profitable newspaper company. How this will happen, when they already do not compete and both companies should have achieved a fair bit of economy of scale, is not set out in the article.

The entire instance brings to mind something that Central Frontenac Mayor Fran Smith said about the amalgamation that brought about Central Frontenac Township.

She said, and I’m paraphrasing, when you put 4 small, poor townships together, you get one larger, poor township.

So, when you put two money losing news companies together, what do you get then.

What you don’t get is any semblance of a competitive newspaper environment, and a very real opportunity for a one dimensional news service. This idea is only underlined by assurances from Metroland that their flagship paper, the Toronto Star, will be operated independently from the rest of the new company. First of all, why is this necessary unless the other company will be a monolith running the same copy in dozens of papers across the province, and on the other hand how is it even possible when the Toronto Star will be under the same pressure as all of the company’s assets to become profitable, and quickly.

The possibility that the new Postmedia/Metroland will not succeed and we will end up without traditional newspapers in small, medium and large Ontario, is a real one. If this company gets established, it will be the last consolidation, with only one company left. Survival, bankruptcy, or the wholesale shedding of money losing news services is a real possibility.

There are, of course, a variety of independent news services in Ontario. Small rural ones, like the Frontenac News, neighborhood and ethnic papers in cities like Toronto, and other niche papers.

Nothing in this announcement makes any difference to these papers. I would venture a guess that, like the Frontenac News, most of these papers operate on a small budget, and cannot run deficits or accumulate debt because they don’t have shareholders, diversified portfolios or banks backing them. They survive as long as they have the will, energy, and enough revenue to turn a reasonable profit.

There are also digital services that have sprung up in recent years. The Kingstonist website is a local example. While they started off mostly reposting or reworking content submitted by the OPP, local municipalities and organisations, they also produce some original content. I don’t know what their finances look like, and how they plan to establish a healthy mix of re-writing other content generating their own in the future. But I know their service is well used, and that is something.

The newspaper business has been in flux for decades now. The potential amalgamation of the last surviving news paper chains in Ontario, and the two largest in Canada, may work, in which case we will have a single source for print news in an increasingly diverse, complicated and nuanced world, in the best case. In the worst case, we will have no source at all.