| Right to the Point | |
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 The front of the redesignedNational Post, September 28, 2007 | |
| Type | Dailynewspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Postmedia Network |
| Founder | Conrad Black |
| Editor-in-chief | Rob Roberts |
| Founded | October 27, 1998; 27 years ago (1998-10-27)[1] |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | 365 Bloor Street East Toronto,Ontario M4W 3L4 |
| Circulation | 142,509 Tue–Fri 132,116 Saturday (March 2013)[2][needs update] |
| ISSN | 1486-8008 |
| Website | nationalpost |
TheNational Post is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper and the flagship publication of the American-ownedPostmedia Network. It is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.[3] The newspaper is distributed in the provinces ofOntario,Quebec,Alberta andBritish Columbia. Weekend editions of the newspaper are also distributed inManitoba andSaskatchewan.
The newspaper was founded in 1998 byConrad Black in an attempt to compete withThe Globe and Mail. In 2001,CanWest completed its acquisition of theNational Post. In 2006, the newspaper ceased distribution inAtlantic Canada and theCanadian territories. Postmedia assumed ownership of the newspaper in 2010, after the CEO of theNational Post's,Paul Godfrey, assembled an ownership group to acquire CanWest's chain of newspapers.
Conrad Black built theNational Post around theFinancial Post, a financial newspaper in Toronto whichHollinger Inc. purchased fromSun Media in 1997. Originally slated for an October 5, 1998 launch date,[4] the debut of the paper was delayed until October 27 because of financial complications that stemmed from Black's acquisition of theFinancial Post,[5] which was retained as the name of the new newspaper's business section.[citation needed]
Outside Toronto, thePost was built on the printing and distribution infrastructure of Hollinger's national newspaper chain, formerly calledSoutham Newspapers, that included the newspapersOttawa Citizen,Montreal Gazette,Edmonton Journal,Calgary Herald, andVancouver Sun. ThePost became Black's national flagship title, andKen Whyte was appointed editor.[citation needed]
Beyond his political vision, Black attempted to compete directly withKenneth Thomson's media empire led in Canada byThe Globe and Mail, which Black and many others perceived as the platform of the Liberalestablishment.[citation needed]
When thePost launched, its editorial stance wasconservative. It advocated a "unite-the-right" movement to create a viable alternative to theLiberal government ofJean Chrétien, and supported theCanadian Alliance. ThePost's op-ed page has included dissenting columns by ideological liberals such asLinda McQuaig, as well as conservatives includingMark Steyn andDiane Francis, andDavid Frum. Original members of thePost editorial board includedEzra Levant,Neil Seeman,Jonathan Kay, Conservative Member of ParliamentJohn Williamson and the author/historian Alexander Rose.[citation needed]
ThePost's magazine-style graphic and layout design has won awards.[clarification needed][6] The original design of thePost was created by Lucie Lacava, a design consultant based in Montreal.[7] ThePost now bears the motto "World's Best-Designed Newspaper" on its front page.[8]
ThePost was unable to maintain momentum in the market without continuing to operate with annual budgetary deficits. At the same time, Conrad Black was becoming preoccupied by his debt-heavy media empire,Hollinger International. Black divested his Canadian media holdings, and sold thePost toCanWest Global Communications Corp, controlled byIsrael "Izzy" Asper, in two stages – 50 percent in 2000, along with the entireSoutham newspaper chain,[9] and the remaining 50 percent in 2001.[9] CanWest Global also owned theGlobal Television Network.
Izzy Asper died in October 2003, and his sonsLeonard andDavid Asper assumed control of CanWest, the latter serving as chairman of thePost. Editor-in-chiefMatthew Fraser departed in 2005. Fraser's deputy editor,Doug Kelly succeeded him as editor. Pyette departed seven months after his arrival, replaced byGordon Fisher.[citation needed]
ThePost limited print distribution inAtlantic Canada in 2006, part of a trend to whichThe Globe and Mail and theToronto Star, Canada's other two papers with inter-regional distribution, have all resorted.[10] Print editions were removed from all Atlantic Canadian newsstands except inHalifax as of 2007.[11] Focussing further on its online publishing, in 2008, the paper suspended weekday editions and home delivery in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.[12] The reorientation towards digital continued into its next decade.
Politically, thePost has retained a conservative editorial stance, although the Asper family has long been a strong supporter of theLiberal Party of Canada. Izzy Asper was once leader of the Liberal Party in his home province ofManitoba. The Aspers had controversially dismissed the publisher of theOttawa Citizen, Russell Mills, for calling for the resignation of Liberal prime ministerJean Chrétien.[citation needed]
However, thePost endorsed theConservative Party of Canada in the2004 election when Fraser was editor. The Conservatives narrowly lost that election to the Liberals. After the election, thePost surprised many of its conservative readers by shifting its support to the victorious Liberal government of prime ministerPaul Martin, and was highly critical of the Conservatives and their leader,Stephen Harper. The paper switched camps again in the runup to the2006 election (in which the Conservatives won a minority government).
Like its competitorThe Globe and Mail, thePost publishes a separate edition inToronto, Ontario, Canada's largest city and the fourth largest English-language media centre in North America afterNew York City,Los Angeles andChicago. The Toronto edition includes additional local content not published in the edition distributed to the rest of Canada, and is printed at theToronto Star Press Centre inVaughan.[citation needed]
On September 27, 2007, thePost unveiled a major redesign of its appearance. Guided by Gayle Grin, thePost's managing editor of design and graphics, the redesign features a standardization in the size of typeface and the number of typefaces used, cleaner font for charts and graphs, and the move of the nameplate banner from the top to the left side of Page 1 as well as each section's front page.[citation needed]
In 2009, the paper announced that as a temporary cost-cutting measure, it would not print a Monday edition from July to September 2009.[13] On October 29, 2009, Canwest Global announced that due to a lack of funding, theNational Post might close down as of October 30, 2009, subject to moving the paper to a new holding company.[14] Late on October 29, 2009, Ontario Superior Court JusticeSarah Pepall ruled in Canwest's favour and allowed the paper to move into a holding company.[15] Investment bankers hired by Canwest received no offers when they tried to sell theNational Post earlier that year. Without a buyer closing the paper was studied, but the costs were greater than gains from liquidating assets. The lawyer for Canwest, in arguing to Justice Pepall, said theNational Post added value to other papers in the Canwest chain.[16]
In 2010, an ownership group was assembled byNational Post CEOPaul Godfrey in 2010 to bid for the chain of newspapers being sold by the financially troubled Canwest (the company's broadcasting assets were sold separately toShaw Communications). Godfrey secured financial backing from U.S. private-equity firmGolden Tree Asset Management as well as other investors. The group completed a $1.1 billion transaction to acquire the chain from Canwest on July 13, 2010, forming thePostmedia Network.[17] The company's shares were listed on theToronto Stock Exchange in 2011.[18] On October 28, 2011, thePost announced its first ever yearly profit.[19] In 2016,Chatham Asset Management acquired a 66 per cent stake in the Postmedia Network, resulting in the reduction in their staff, including a third of the National Post's editorial staff.[20][21]
In 2024, theNational Post published two articles in which it advocated for the Russian documentary filmRussians at War. The first article by columnist Chris Selley introduced the claim that this film showed the human face of the Russians and was therefore banned.[22] This statement was later used by the magazineDie Weltwoche and other media to which cinematographerAnastasia Trofimova gave interviews to defend her film after it had been banned from the Zurich film festival.[23][better source needed] In the second article by Chris Knight, "Russian-Canadian filmmaker battles attempts to suppress controversial film as Ukraine launches probe",[24] the idea was taken further, claiming a Ukrainian campaign against the film, whereas in reality the film was widely criticized by the international press and others.[citation needed]
TheNational Post's main office is at 365 Bloor Street East inToronto, Ontario. It was formerly located at 1450 Don Mills Road in theDon Mills neighbourhood of Toronto, which was vacated in 2012.[25]
The newspaper is published at Postmedia's Islington Printing Plant in Toronto's Rexdale neighbourhood, along with theToronto Sun,London Free Press and various Postmedia and Metroland-owned weekly newspapers. The newspaper was previously printed at theToronto Star Press Centre inVaughan, Ontario, until theToronto Star closed the site.[citation needed]
The following is a list of past and present columnists for theNational Post.[28][29]
On May 19, 2006, the newspaper ran two pieces alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring religious minorities to wear special identifying badges. One piece was a front-page news item titled "Iran Eyes Badges For Jews" accompanied by a 1935 picture of two Jews bearingNazi-orderedyellow badges. Later on the same day, experts began coming forward to deny the accuracy of thePost story. The story proved to be false, but not before it had been picked up by a variety of other news media and generated comment from world leaders. Comments on the story by the Canadian Prime MinisterStephen Harper caused Iran to summon Canada's ambassador to Tehran,Gordon E. Venner, for an explanation.
On May 24, 2006, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper,Doug Kelly, published an apology for the story on page 2, admitting that it was false and theNational Post had not exercised enough caution or checked enough sources.[31]
From 1998 to 2014, the now defunctCanadian Islamic Congress (CIC) had been actively monitoring media coverage for anti-Muslim or anti-Islam sentiment and had issued reports highlighting its findings. It had opposed the use of phrases such as "Islamic guerrillas," "Islamic insurgency" and "Muslim militants" saying that terms like "militant" or "terrorist" should be used without a religious association "since no religion teaches or endorses terrorism, militancy or extremism."[32] The Congress had singled out theNational Post, saying the paper "consistently is No. 1" as an anti-Islam media outlet.[33]
A 2017 survey of Canadians found that theNational Post was perceived to be middle-of-the-pack for bias among national news outlets (perceived biased by 48 per cent of Canadians overall).[34][35] A 2010 Ipsos survey commissioned by CBC found that 38% of respondents believed thePost leaned to the right or far right.[36]
The advocacy groupCanadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East has accused thePost of pro-Israel bias for publishing articles from theJewish News Syndicate which it describes as "a mouthpiece for the Israeli military".[37]
In a 2021 academic study on the presentation of the subject of climate change in 17 mainstream media outlets in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, theNational Post came out as the worst in terms of its misrepresentation of the scientific consensus on the impact of anthropogenic climate change.[38] TheNational Post was found to represent scientific consensus only 70.83% of the time—noting the significant contribution of anthropogenic climate change—while 9.17% of the time it presented anthropogenic climate change and natural climatic variance as equally relevant, and 20% of the time presented anthropogenic climate change as a negligible phenomena.[38]
On September 24, 2011, the newspaper ran anadvertisement paid for by the Institute for Canadian Values (ICV) which was hosted byCanada Christian College. The advertisement argued against the teaching ofLGBTQ-relatedsex education topics in the Ontario school curriculum, and was criticized for alleged discrimination againsttranssexual,transgender,intersex, andtwo-spirited people. Following the controversy, theNational Post apologized for the advertisement on September 30 and withdrew the ad from circulation.[citation needed]
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