 Front page of the June 5, 2020 edition | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Postmedia Network |
| Founded | 1883 |
| Headquarters | 1964 Park Street Regina,Saskatchewan S4P 3G4 |
| Circulation | 34,047 weekdays 34,581 Saturdays (as of 2015)[1] |
| ISSN | 0839-2870 |
| Website | leaderpost |
TheRegina Leader-Post is abroadsheet newspaper published inRegina, Saskatchewan, owned byPostmedia Network.
The newspaper was first published asThe Leader in 1883 byNicholas Flood Davin, soon afterEdgar Dewdney, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Territories, decided to name the vacant and featureless site of Pile-O-Bones, renamedRegina byPrincess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, the wife of the Governor General of Canada, as territorial capital, rather than the previously-establishedBattleford,Troy andFort Qu'Appelle, presumably because he had acquired ample land on the site for resale.
"A group of prominent citizens approached lawyerNicholas Flood Davin soon after his arrival in Regina and urged him to set up a newspaper. Davin accepted their offer – and their $5000 in seed money. The Regina Leader printed its first edition on March 1, 1883."[2] Published weekly by the mercurial Davin, it almost immediately achieved national prominence during theNorth-West Rebellion and the subsequenttrial of Louis Riel. Davin had immediate access to the developing story, and his scoops were picked up by the national press and briefly brought theLeader to national prominence.
Davin's greatest coup was sending his reporter Mary McFadyen Maclean to conduct a jailhouse interview with Riel. Maclean obtained this by masquerading as afrancophone Catholic cleric and interviewing Riel in French under the nose of uncomprehending anglophone watch-house guards.[3]
Having begun with a small wooden shack before Regina had full streets, or electricity and plumbing outsideGovernment House,The Leader soon moved to a substantial office building on the southwest corner of Hamilton Street and 11th Avenue, one block east of what was then the post office, southwest across street fromCity Hall. Also around this time, it was acquired by the Sifton family It then moved to a multi-story building across Hamilton Street to the south of the Simpson's department store. It ultimately relocated in the 1960s to east-city outskirts on Park Street at Victoria Avenue, where it still remains.
In 1920, theLeader merged with another paper, theRegina Evening Post, itself in a building on Twelfth Avenue at Rose Street before the merger, and continued to publish daily editions of both before consolidating them under the titleThe Leader-Post in 1930.[4] In 1922, the paper launched one of the oldest radio stations in Canada,CKCK. Five years later, the company was purchased by the Sifton family, which launchedCKCK-TV, Saskatchewan's first television station, in 1954.
Newspapers were a thriving industry in the days through television's arrival in the 1950s until the Internet in the 1990s began to change people's gathering of news, compounded by the merger of local companies into ownership of local companies by national multi-corporation organizations. Other titles absorbed by theLeader-Post included theRegina Daily Star andThe Province.
In 1995, theLeader-Post released an electronic version of the newspaper so that subscribers could view their newspapers on the Internet. Electronic and daily print subscribers also enjoy access to extra content not available to all readers.
Decline of local news coverage radically occurred in 1996, when the paper and its sister, the SaskatoonStarPhoenix, were acquired from their owner based inMarkham, Ontario, Armadale group, byHollinger Inc., a company that was headed by the Canadian media baronConrad Black. Within three months, the staffs at each newspaper had been cut by one quarter, which becoming acause célèbre in Canadian journalism.[citation needed] The event with substantial elimination of staff and coverage of local news corresponded with one at the Regina television stationCKCK-DT, once locally owned but by 1985 no longer so.
An immediate effect was a significant reduction in coverage of local and provincial news, and a greater coverage of national events. Loss of news reporter staff, the increasing television news coverage and the arrival and growth of the internet all increased difficulty in preserving, much less increasing, theLeader-Post's significance.[citation needed]
Black's company subsequently divested itself of theLeader-Post in 2000, together with most other Canadian news media it had owned, in conjunction with Black's renunciation of hisCanadian citizenship to obtain aBritish peerage.
Eventually branding itself as theRegina Leader-Post, the newspaper shut down its printing facilities in 2015 in favor of being printed in Saskatoon with the press ofThe StarPhoenix.[5] In 2023, Postmedia announced that theStarPhoenix press would be shut down; both theStarPhoenix andLeader-Post were to continue publication, but printed at facility inEstevan.[6]
Like mostCanadian daily newspapers, theLeader-Post has seen a decline incirculation. Its total circulation dropped by 30 percent to 34,136 copies daily from 2009 to 2015.[7]
The opening sequence of the television sitcomThe Big Bang Theory features a photo of the original building ofThe Leader.[8]
Regina Public Library. Newspapers.[1] Accessed August 13, 2015.