Contraction of the market.

I'm beginning to think that newspapers might be a declining market.

Anyone with WIFI able devices, a blog, and any number of social media outlets knows this has been true for the better part of this decade, and will be truer yet in the years not far ahead.

I'm not at all confident that editorial freedom will be part of this deal. Postmedia will, no doubt, spout the 'editorial independence' line, all the while exerting their existing left-wing bias upon the Sun tabloids. So, with the exception of the occasional conservative slant in the Post, we'll be stuck with more left-wing media. With all major Canadian TV networks already on the left, the view from the right will be lost.
Sad day.

Newspapers, at least the local Calgary Herald, are becoming irrelevant.

They seem to have forgotten that the term is composed of news and paper.
News, meaning what the hell is going on in the world, a report.

Understand that there are those that read opinion and editorial page.
There is nothing inherently wrong with an opinion, everybody has one, as you can clearly see.

The nonsense comes in when a news article is spiked with a reporters opinions rather than reporting.
There is a guy on Global national news that does that on daily bases
It then becomes non-reporting and gibberish on why not look at the root cause.
Of course then root cause becomes an ideology depending on whose side the “journalist” is on.

Maybe they could publish an opinion in another paper that people that those that are interested can buy.
Better yet publish the health stories in another paper, those stories take way, way too much space.
There are those, the hypochondriacs that like them, then again maybe it is the majority of population.
You can never tell.

Do the people really go for the idiotic headlines that are titles of the articles or news?

According to the headlines in the Herald, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, are heading for complete and utter destruction, disaster is right around the corner, catastrophe can be seen in the distances, devastation is upon us, ruin is our future. Well at least that last one they got right.
They use extreme words to describe simplest things. One begins to wonder what happens when the plebeians become indifferent, immune to the extreme language and loose interest. There may be still kill this kill that and more descriptive and intimate details of such kill.

They think they are of course changing the world, what else would they think.
They were told in the newspaper scrool that that is what they are supposed to do, having no significant other purpose in life otherwise.

Just come out and admit it: it was Justin's principled boycott that brought down Sun Media. We all know it's true.

Just you watch: he'll do the same to ISIS, Putin and Iran. The Trudeau cold shoulder always works in the end.

I would hope that after spending $316 million to buy an editorially conservative newspaper chain they would keep it conservative. That's what they paid the big bucks for. The Quebec communists who ran it were smart enough to know their strength was their conservative viewpoint. Are the National Post people as smart? Likely not, but there would be a great opportunity for a new conservative chain but it might take 30 years to get there.

You don't buy McDonalds and turn it into a Shushi restaurant. I think the Competition Bureau should overturn the sale. Too much concentration of ownership - seriously too much.

Never fails. I switched from the NP to the Sun 6 months ago because I was tired of constant subscription hikes and increasing Liberalism.

So I know what's coming.

So the only newspaper chain with a Conservative bent has been assimilated by the leftist Borg?
Sad day for Canada. Can the competition board squash this acquisition?

I attended Ryerson's School of Journalism when it was a legitimate training ground for aspiring journalists and radio/television news reporters. It was constantly pounded into us that news was a separate animal from opinion and NEVER should we conflate the two. But that was 50 years ago. Unfortunate that 'journalism' has sunk so low.

Its not hard to see where print journalism is headed - $316 mil for 175 papers, and that includes real estate. An average NPV or only $2 mil each... ? :)

A lot (most?) of the papers are small town weeklies.

I remember the days when there was one editorial, which I never read, in a big daily. The columnists were mostly fluff without political edge. They were mostly selling news, not opinion. The political bias was far from the surface as picking sides wasn't good for sales. Today the capitalists more likely to advertise in socialist rags that are far from their friends. I don't get it.

The Competition Bureau may nix the sale. There are only two newspaper chains in Canada, and having both of them owned and operated by the same company and people is a prima facie monopoly.

This is Postmedia trying to reach a critical mass in subscribers after selling off anything it possible can post sale. But they still do not see it. They are blind to demographics which says that with every article in the obituary section, they lose another subscriber with no replacements.

They are similarly delusional when they think they can capture digital readers by accessing Canoe (which nobody has barely heard of). They don't understand that websites are not like newspapers. With newspapers there are only a set fixed few competitors to divide up the market. Changing papers takes some effort. With websites there are countless numbers of alternatives and your website can be ditched with the press of a button. Your content is duplicated for free over hundreds of sites with no way to charge for it.

Postmedia was losing $1 million per quarter in digital revenue. It is a business that is dying proportionaly just as fast as their print brand. Canoe offers nothing here other than a way to continue to bleed red ink with absolutely nothing that differentiates or creates value for a digital readership that values content at no cost and cares nothing about branding.

The selling price of $319 million is a pittance. It is the cumulative personal net worth of the parents of the children attending a small school in Edmonton or Calgary or Red Deer or Fort McMurray. That is how little the market values the print media today.