The news was announced this morning, with some Daily News employees hearing about it from other media (how classy). Transcontinental, the publisher of the Daily News, as well as free daily Metro newspapers in major cities (including Montreal), and community weeklies including the West Island Chronicle and Westmount Examiner, is going to replace a small daily newspaper with a free one that relies mostly on wire copy mixed with advertising.
The paper will go from 92 employees to 20. And journalism in Halifax suffers.
The Chronicle Herald, the other (and much larger) Halifax daily, naturally has the story.
Some other coverage:
- A press release at the old Daily News site, which is now a Metro website.
- Another release heavy on marketingese (incuding an optimistic projected readership of 25,000 daily, which is 5,000 more than the Daily News had)
- CBC, including a picture of the last issue and an audio interview with a now-former columnist and journalism prof, as well as a hilarious quote from a Transcon VP who says Halifax is “over-mediatized” and, I guess, closing a newspaper is actually a good thing.
- Canadian Press
- Globe and Mail, with plenty of history and background
- Editor and Publisher
- Media in Canada
- Financial Post
- Nova Scotia Business Journal (which is also Transcontinental-owned but mentions it’s not affected by this decision)
- University of King’s College editor’s blog, which talks about the king of ballsy journalism that’s being lost here
- Latenight Halifax, which takes a glass-half-full look at the situation
- CJCH
UPDATE: The King’s Journalism Review has an entire section on the Daily News and its history, including interviews with now-unemployed staff. Meanwhile the Canadian Association of Journalists calls the paper’s demise a “dangerous trend” towards “news lite”
Kinda sad, but let’s be honest: Halifax is not a large enough market for two dailies.
Halifax actually had three dailies until 2004, when the Mail-Star (one of Canada’s last evening newspapers) folded. In its later years it was published by the Chronicle-Herald, though, so maybe that counts as 2.5 newspapers.
I don’t really think anyone in Halifax considered the Daily “journalism” per se, Steve.
Christopher DeWolf (comment #2) is incorrect. The Mail Star didn’t fold: it was published by the Halifax Herald, which simply eliminated its evening delivery (long after almost every other paper in North America had done the same).
The Mail Star was simply the evening edition of the Chronicle-Herald: same paper, with a different name.
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