By Doug Draper
For the fifth time in 18 years, Niagara, Ontario’s three daily newspapers – the St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review and Welland Tribune – and a number of its weekly affiliates in the region have been sold to a corporate change.
The facade of the old St. Catharines Standard building in that Ontario city’s downtown, now abandoned. Photo by Doug Draper
An announcement of the latest sale, involving 175 English language newspapers and tabloids owned by the Sun Media/Quebecor conglomerate across Canada, was made by Postmedia Network Canada Corp. and its flagship papers the National Post and Financial Post this October 6th.
If the sale, reportedly totaling $316 million for all 175 publications, is approved by Canada’s federal government and its media concentration/competition referees, Postmedia will take its place as possibly the largest and most powerful media corporation in the country.
Since 1996, when the St. Catharines-based Burgoyne family sold the Standard, the newspaper it founded more than 100 years earlier, to the now-defunct Southam media chain, it has been passed through the hands of Hollinger (Conrad Black’s former media empire), Osprey Media and Sun Media. All along the way, the Standard and other two Niagara, Ontario dailies, the Review and Tribune, saw their circulations plummet and resources for gathering and reporting news to local readers slashed significantly.
Over the past decade and a half, Niagara media observers and readers in general have engaged in a chicken-and-egg debate over what came first – cuts to local news gathering resources that have led to turned-off readers and circulation drops or circulation reductions that have led to cuts in reporting staff.
The old Standard presses before they were dismantled for scrap. Photo by Doug Draper
Whatever came first, all three dailies have become shadows of what they were 15 or 20 years ago in terms of offering a paper featuring page after page of in-depth coverage and analysis of local and regional news.
It now remains to be seen if Postmedia will change that for the three Niagara dailies and weeklies it has acquired, including the Fort Erie Times, Thorold News Pelham News, Port News, Niagara Advance in Niagara-on-the-Lake and others.
As for the federal media concentration/competition bureaucrats are concerned, if past history means anything, it is doubtful, they will object to this sale.
It has been some 35 years since a so-called federal advisory group, the Kent Commission, warned Canadians that the quality and quantity of news they need to engage in the democratic process in their communities would diminish with the sale of local newspapers to larger and larger media chains. But few listened to the commissions warnings and the door blocking corporate concentration has likely been open far too long to close it now.
As self-serving as I know this final line will sound, one alternative to the hijacking of local papers by corporate media is to support the growth of alternative, independent news and commentary sites like Niagara At Large.
For Postmedia’s unfettered announcement on this major media takeover click on http://www.postmedia.com/2014/10/06/postmedia-to-acquire-sun-medias-english-language-newspapers-and-digital-properties/
(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
Calling the Sun Media group of newspapers, “newspapers” is in my opinion an oxymoron. They are all full of the same poorly written articles throughout the Niagara Region and basically spout the agenda of the Chamber of Commerce, They are mostly advertisements and pap when it comes to news and opinion pieces are mostly nonsensical filler of a conservative bent. … Rarely are any controversial readers’ letters printed.. With this takeover, by another like-minded group of owners ,I don’t see any positive changes coming.
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Almost 59% of Postmedia stock is owned by American interests and as David Orchard stated the Americanization of Canada Continues.
The Welland Tribune, St Catharines Standard and the Niagara Falls Review is already printed in Mississauga will these become totally one with the other names eliminated and does it really matter???????
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I observed with some interest the challenges of the staff at the Standard, including those of the author, through the lens of a journalist somewhat sensitive to the labour objectives. Vince Rice introduced me to many of the stakeholders at the Standard and it was a highly politicized setting.
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