The
Toronto Star is Canada
's
highest-circulation newspaper, though its print edition is
distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario
. It
is owned by
Toronto Star Newspapers
Ltd., a division of
Star Media
Group, a subsidiary of
Torstar
Corporation.
History
The
Star (originally known as The
Evening Star
and then The
Toronto Daily Star ) was created in
1892 by striking
Afternoon News
printers and writers. The paper did poorly in its first few years.
But it prospered under
Joseph "Holy
Joe" Atkinson, editor from
1899
until his death in
1948.
Atkinson had a strong social conscience. He championed many causes
that would come to be associated with the modern
welfare state: old age
pensions,
unemployment insurance, and
health care. The Government of Canada Digital
Collections website describes Atkinson as "a ‘radical’ in the best
sense of that term…. The
Star was unique among North
American newspapers in its consistent, ongoing advocacy of the
interests of ordinary people. The friendship of Atkinson, the
publisher, with
Mackenzie
King, the
prime
minister, was a major influence on the development of Canadian
social policy."
But Atkinson was also a shrewd businessman who became the
controlling
shareholder of the
Star and amassed a considerable personal fortune. The
Toronto Daily Star was frequently criticized for
practising the
yellow journalism
of its era. For decades, the paper included heavy doses of crime
and sensationalism, along with crusading zeal for social change.
From 1910 to 1973, the
Star published a weekend
supplement, the
Star Weekly.
Its early opposition and criticism of the Nazi regime saw the paper
become the first North American paper to be banned in Germany by
its government.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, the
Star sought increased
respectability by elevating professional standards and avoiding the
sensational excesses of the past. It hired some of the country's
most respected journalists and advocated expansion of the welfare
state.
In 1971,
the Toronto Daily Star was re-named The Toronto
Star and moved to a modern office tower at One Yonge
Street
and Queens
Quay. The original
Star Building at
80 King Street West was
demolished. The new building originally housed the paper's presses.
The
printing plant was moved to Vaughan
in
1992. In September
2002, the
logo was changed, and "The" was dropped from the papers.
During the
2003 blackout, the Star
printed the paper at a press in Welland, Ontario
.
On May 28, 2007, The
Star unveiled a redesigned paper that
features larger type, narrower pages, fewer and shorter articles,
renamed sections, more prominence to local news, and less
prominence to international news, columnists, and opinion pieces.
Star P.M., a free newspaper in
PDF format that could be downloaded
from the newspaper's website each weekday afternoon, was
discontinued in October 2007, thirteen months after its
launch.
Atkinson Principles
Shortly before his death in 1948, Atkinson transferred ownership of
the paper to a charitable organization given the mandate of
continuing the paper's liberal tradition. Ontario's Conservative
government passed a law barring charitable organizations from
owning large parts of profit-making businesses. The law required
the
Star to be sold. The five trustees of the charitable
organization circumvented the law by buying the paper themselves
and swearing before The Ontario Supreme Court to continue the
Atkinson Principles:
- A strong, united and independent Canada
- Social justice
- Individual and civil liberties
- Community and civic engagement
- The rights of working people
- The necessary role of government
Descendants of the original owners, known as "the five families",
still control the voting shares of
Torstar,
and The Atkinson Principles continue to guide the paper to this
day. Recent editorials have been headlined "Fairness for the deaf"
and "Public policy fuelling poverty." In February, 2006,
Star media columnist
Antonia
Zerbisias wrote on her
blog: "we all have
the Atkinson Principles—and its multi-culti values—tattooed on our
butts. Fine with me. At least we are upfront about our values, and
they almost always work in favour of building a better
Canada."
Editorial position
The Star is proudly liberal in the Canadian context. Its precise
position in the political spectrum — especially in relation to one
of its principal competitors,
The
Globe and Mail — is hotly disputed. Long a voice of
Canadian nationalism, the paper opposed
free
trade with the United States in the 1980s and has recently
expressed concern about U.S. takeovers of Canadian firms.
Editorial positions sometimes surprise readers. The
Star
was an early opponent of the
Iraq War and
sharply criticizes most policies of
George W. Bush,
but supported Canadian participation in U.S. continental missile
defense. Recent editorials have denounced
political correctness at Canadian
universities, opposed
proportional representation, and
yet called for more restrictive
copyright
laws.
The paper usually endorses the
Liberal Party federally. The
Star was the only major daily to do so in the
2006 and the
2008 federal elections while
many
of the other major papers endorsed the Conservatives. The
Star endorsed the social democratic
New Democratic Party leader
Ed Broadbent in 1979 and
Progressive
Conservative leader
Robert
Stanfield in 1972. The paper endorsed the
Progressive
Conservative Party of Ontario in many of the provincial
elections from the 1940s to the 1980s, and endorsed strategic
voting to defeat
Mike Harris in
1999.
The paper's editorialists and columnists usually avoid strident
advocacy of radical social change. They prefer incremental reform,
fueled by earnest exhortation and appeals to compassion. Recent
series on news pages have focused on poverty and multiculturalism.
Supporters praise the
Star 's continuing commitment to its
founding principles, applauding its ability to attract a large
readership for many stories unlikely to be printed elsewhere.
Detractors call the newspaper "the only paper in the world edited
by a dead man" (a derisive reference to The Atkinson Principles),
or target formulaic "sob sister" stories that focus on the plight
of the poor and downtrodden.
Features
The
Star is the only Canadian newspaper that employs a
public editor (
ombudsman). Other notable
features include:
- a community editorial board, whose members write opinion
articles that sometimes criticize the paper
- an immigration/diversity reporter
- charitable campaigns that solicit contributions from
readers
- a half page to full page of letters from readers every day
- results of daily online polls and comments about them
- an annual competition honouring Toronto's best employers
- a full colour comics page every day (with half of a page of
"Saturday Strips" on Sundays, and one section consisting of "Sunday
Strips" on Saturdays)
- one page of puzzles, such as crosswords, riddles, jumble, word
search, and Sudoku, daily (with two pages of
puzzles in the comics section on Saturday and three Sudoku puzzles
from easy to hard on Sundays)
The
Star says it favours an inclusive, "big tent"
approach, not wishing to attract one group of readers at the
expense of others. It publishes special sections for
Chinese New Year and
Gay Pride Week, along with regular
features on condominiums and shopping. In the late 2000s, the
newspaper has promoted "a new deal for cities".
Competitive position
With four conventional dailies and two free commuter papers in a
greater metropolitan area of about 5.5 million inhabitants, Toronto
is one of the most competitive newspaper cities in North America.
The advent of
The National
Post in 1998 shook up the market. In the upheaval that
followed, editorial spending increased and there was much hiring
and firing of editors and publishers. Readers, advertisers and
reporters benefited from the fierce competition; shareholders
arguably did not. Toronto newspapers have yet to undergo the
large-scale layoffs that have occurred at most other newspapers in
Canada and the United States.
Unlike some of its competitors, The
Toronto Star has been
profitable in most recent years. The residual strength of the
Star is its commanding circulation lead in Ontario. The
paper remains a "must buy" for most advertisers. Some competing
papers consistently lose money, are only marginally profitable, or
do not break out earnings in a way that makes comparison possible.
However, the
Star has long been criticized for inflating
circulation through bulk sales at discount rates.
But margins have declined and some losses have been recorded. In
2006, several financial analysts expressed dissatisfaction with The
Star's performance and downgraded their recommendations on
the stock of its parent company, Torstar. In October 2006, the
publisher and editor-in-chief of The
Star were replaced
amid reports of boardroom battles about the direction of the
company. A redesigned paper launched in May, 2007. It features 17%
less space for editorial content and a greater emphasis on local
coverage.
Publishers
Notable journalists and columnists (past and present)
Superman and the Star
Joe Shuster, one of the two creators of
Superman, worked for the
Star as a
paperboy in the 1920s. Shuster named
Clark
Kent's paper
The Daily
Star in honour of The
Toronto Daily Star. The
name of Kent's paper was later changed to
The Daily Planet.
See also
References
- TheStar.com | News | You spoke, we listened: Here are the
changes
- A collection of Hemingway's work in the Star was published as
Dateline: Toronto
Bibliography
- Harkness, Ross (1963) J.E. Atkinson of the
Star, Toronto: University of Toronto Press
- Walkom, Thomas (1994) Rae Days, Toronto: Key Porter
Books, ISBN 1-55013-598-8
External links
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