RIP Daily News
Cats: politics, words|Until today, my city was a two-newspaper town.
There was the broadsheet The Chronicle Herald and the tabloid Daily News.
The Daily News was the little indie upstart that thought it could. It was young and hungry thirty years ago when it first started as a community paper. As it grew, it set its sights on challenging the supremacy of the family-owned Herald with its more than 100 years of history in this town.
It was a big challenge, but The Daily News had pluck, spirit and a can-do attitude.
Sometimes, it went too far with dodgy news gathering techniques, but you’d expect that kind of boundary-pushing from an upstart tabloid. For the most part, it was a respectable tabloid with excellent political, sports and entertainment coverage.
It never truly challenged the provincial dominance of the Herald, but for awhile there was a great cross-town rivalry in our capital city.
But time was not kind to the Daily News. It’s decline began when it fell into the hands of corporate newspaper chains. It would seem that bean-counting, and not journalism, guided successive owners.
The Daily News was bought and sold several times. It underwent identity changes, and staff changes, some sudden and brutal. Its old pluck was bruised, but never extinguished.
The last owner starved the little upstart tabloid of resources and presided over a decline in circulation. This lead to financial problems which resulted in today’s closure.
It’s a sad day for the 92 Daily Newers who are out of work. But it’s also a sad day for the Herald which has lost a valued competitor. It’s a sad day for the TV and radio stations which have lost a source of “rip and read” news.
And it’s a sad day for the people in this town who have one less source of information, interpretation and - dare I say it - truth.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
That’s a shame.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I like the tabloid format, much easier to read at a table or on public transit etc. So it’s a sad day for people who like to read on the fly too.
Why is it that the ‘high brow’ papers feel the need to print on such gargantuan pages?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:02 am
Megan, it is.
Dick, most of the broadsheets in Britain have gone to tabloid format - even The Times. The Herald is a broadloid format. A little bigger than a tabloid, but easy to read on the run. The Globe and Mail’s got smaller in recent years too.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I’m going to be honest- I thought that the Daily News was THE most awful newspaper ever written and should’ve been shut down for crimes against the English language years ago. Two sad things about the shut-down, though: the lost jobs, and the fact that I will now have to find something else to mock.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:30 am
Oh come on Deepti, get off the fence on you Daily News opinions.
Think on the positive side, now you can focus all your mocking on moi
February 13th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I’m not a fan of the tabloid format - too many reminders of the Sun chain, I guess - but a loss of competition amongst newspapers in a town is always a cause for mourning.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
BB, it’s interesting to see all the high-brow London broadsheets go ‘loid, except for The Daily Telegraph - conrad blacks old paper. The content is still high-brow, it’s just easier to read now. The local tabloid will be replaced by a free paper call Metro which I believe is distributed in Calgary