The Newspaper Great Makeover

Is the struggling National Post toast?

Former Blue Jays head honcho Paul Godfrey was brought in as president and CEO to right the National Post ship

They’ve cut their Monday edition for summer, and many of their star staffers have jumped ship. With parent company Canwest Global Communications busy dealing with their $3.9 billion debt problem, we went elsewhere to get advice for CEO Paul Godfrey on what might be done to save this suffering daily.

Garth Turner - Author & two-time MP

A return to newspapering instead of muckraking.... Trying to compete (in vain) with ubiquitous online news sources and blogs, reporters have been turned into columnists and colour commentators, when readers and viewers actually want unvarnished, unbiased and unfiltered news. It’s all about cred, and the Post has lost its of late. Forget clever. Give me stuff I don’t know.

Don Drummond - Sr. VP & Chief Economist at TD

The financial section of the Post is still very good, but it could be beefed up. It’s not what it once was a year or two ago, and it’s certainly not what it was 10 years ago. They’re seeing tremendous turnover, and they’ve lost a lot of good people. That said, I don’t know that returning entirely to a finance or business focus would be marketable.

Ashwin Joshi - Schulich School of Business

The good news is that the National Post has a clear value proposition in the marketplace. It presents a compelling alternative to the liberal consensus. The bad news is that precisely because of this clear positioning it has trouble moving beyond its highly committed base and into the living rooms of the nation. In my opinion, the National Post should aim to become the first truly technologically blended newspaper, integrating seamlessly across platforms such as print, the Internet and the cellphone. The 20-year-old of today is the audience to go after. Revenue will follow in the form of advertising.

Paul Wells Sr. - Columnist at Maclean’s

When the National Post launched, it was often smarter than the Globe and VERY funny. Those traits went away. They need to come back. The Post cannot survive if it is only right wing. It is easier to be smarter than the Globe these days than it has ever been, and while it’s hard to be funny, they’ve gotta try.

Alan A. Vernon - Editorial Director at Eye Weekly

They took a risk by entering an already competitive market, and they've never distinguished themselves. The Star is the paper of the people. The Globe positions itself as Canada’s National paper. With the Canwest empire crumbling, it's moot to discuss what they can do now to improve.

This article appears in the June 2009 issue of Post City Magazines

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