Billionaire Proprietors


The fallout in Canada mirrors the trend abroad. The U.K.’s Independent newspaper announced last week it would cease print editions in March. In the U.S., total newspaper advertising revenue fell almost 60 percent to $16.4 billion from 2004 to 2014, according to the Pew Research Center.

In the U.S., many of the biggest daily papers have gone into the hands of billionaires such as Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post in 2013. In 2011, Warren Buffett agreed to acquire his hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald, while John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, bought the Boston Globe from New York Times Co. in 2013.


Charitable Trusts


Canadian papers are much smaller than institutions like the Washington Post and don’t offer the same level of influence, said Pierre-Elliot Levasseur, chief operating officer of the La Presse paper in Montreal, at a Feb. 3 panel discussion on the future of the industry.

“I think it’s easier for a Jeff Bezos to come in and say, ‘Look at the impact on democracy I’m going to have across the United States,’” Levasseur said. La Presse stopped its weekday print run late last year and has been lauded for drawing about 460,000 people to its tablet-only edition every week.

Turning the papers over to not-for-profit foundations isn’t the answer either, Phillip Crawley, publisher of the nationally distributed Globe and Mail, said at the event. He pointed to the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, which is funded by a charitable trust, as a prime example. It’s admired for its journalism but is losing money, while the Daily Telegraph makes money in the same market, Crawley said.


Tablet Bet


The Globe and Mail, which heralds itself as the country’s paper of record and has used a paywall to push its more affluent reader base to sign up for subscriptions, projects that print advertising revenue will still be double digital revenue though 2019, Crawley said.

Torstar’s Toronto Star experimented with a paywall for less than two years. It’s since built an iPad-only edition developed in conjunction with La Presse. Star Publisher John Cruickshank declined to comment at the event on how much revenue the tablet app is generating.