Saturday, March 31, 2007

Zerbisias bemoans narrowing of media voices

PSYCH!!! She’s just gloating over the supposed imminent demise of the Sun Media chain (you’ll have to find her March 30th column yourself at the Star’s website; their links never work for me):

You may not notice it as you go by, but the smell of death is on many street corners in the GTA.

It comes out of all those red boxes offering the Toronto Sun.

It’s not just here. The same stench emanates from Sun Media boxes in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa and London, where the Free Press is also being bled to death by Quebecor.

The other day, I asked former Sun staffers about their joy and relief in 1998 when they learned that Quebecor and not Torstar would be taking over.

“They were hugging and dancing in the atrium,” recalled one.

Now that atrium echoes with the voices of ghosts.
--“Bad news for setting Sun,” Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star, March 30

Sun Media’s purported troubles are a welcome distraction for the Zerb, given that her regular predictions of the National Post’s demise have yet to come to pass.

I don’t know much about the finances of the news business, all I know is that I pay to have the Toronto Sun delivered to my house Saturdays and Sundays, and buy it every weekday. The Star, on the other hand, has been delivering its paper – for free –seven days a week for over two months now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Toronto Star certainly appears more likely to fail than the Sun, the Star gives no reason for people to purchase it.