National Post Newspaper To Stay Alive In Canada

TORONTO — A judge Friday allowed Canada's insolvent media giant Canwest Global Communications to transfer the National Post into one of its divisions that is not under bankruptcy protection to stave off folding the unprofitable daily newspaper.

Judge Sarah Pepall said the National Post can be moved into the Canwest Limited Partnership.

Canwest is restructuring under bankruptcy protection from its creditors, who had refused to keep funding the newspaper, which has lost 62 million Canadian dollars ($57 million) in the last four years.

A lawyer for Canwest had told court that not only would the move allow the National Post to keep operating, it was essential to a successful restructuring of the whole company.

"The business of the National Post and the LP entities (other Canwest newspapers and media outlets) are highly integrated and interdependent," said Lyndon Barnes. "Without these agreements, the ability to restructure either of these entities is in doubt."

Canwest spokesman John Douglas said the decision by the judge to shift the Post was expected.

"It demonstrates that yet again the voice of our demise has been greatly exaggerated, as it has for 11 years," he said. "We know that the National Post is going to be a positive contributor to the publishing group, and we know that the publishing group will be stronger with it."

In court documents filed this week, Canwest said the Post has racked up CA$62 million dollars ($57 million) in losses over the past four years before factoring in interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The Post company also owes CA$139.1 million dollars ($128 million) to Canwest Media, its holding company, because it helped the company with payroll, capital expenditures and operational losses.

Chief Financial Officer John Maguire said in the filing that if the Post's Toronto operations had shut down, the company would have lost an integral part of its news team and been forced to pay about CA$500,000 dollars ($468,000) a year to create or license Toronto-based news content.

About 277 people work at the national daily paper founded in 1998 by the Southam group led by disgraced businessman Conrad Black.

Canwest has amassed CA$4 billion dollars ($3.6 billion) in money owed after buying Black's newspaper assets and the specialty channels owned by Alliance Atlantis.

Media analysts expect Canwest will explore the option of selling off its newspaper division to interested buyers, though representatives for the company have insisted the assets are not for sale.

The company is restructuring its entire operations with the hopes of completing the process by the end of January.

Comments

[CoconutLime]

Who cares about a Canadian newspaper? All they talk about is the pathetic daily happenings of Mr. Fuddle Duddle himself - PM Stephen Harper.

Signed
Ex-Canadian

[David423]

Not just the National Post deserves to die, the entire CanWest corporation
needs to be put out of its misery. The shameless rah-rah pro-Americanism
of the entire corporation is sickening.

What the late father founded, the children have ruined. As another person
said, they couldn't manage a one-man parade without fouling it up.

[mich308]

As a Canadian who's father used to read the National Post I can firmly say it is the closest thing Canada has to Fox News.

[ontariogirl]

I'm surprised its been around this long. Next to go is local tv programming across Canada. This is really not a good trend. Soon all will belong to a few corporations.....sounds like Walmart thinking.

[EndTheEcho]

Canwest is a huge media corporation, so not sure how your worries apply to this paper.

As an American, former Canadian resident, I would suggest your regulators, who tend to be stronger than the anti-regulatory zeal that we face south of the border, to prevent mergers so that one company runs paper, radio and TV in one town. That is when you really lose diversity in media.

[LiamMunny]

Hopefully it's put out of our collective misery asap.

[elizlucinda]

Well damn.....the National Post with a few exceptions, is a "right wing" rag suitable for lining the bottom of my cat's kitty litter box! There's a reason no one reads that paper!!

[Spencaa]

Shucks, and I was hoping that right wing rag was gunna be scraped

[Ergon]

It has operated at a loss ever since its first issue. Because it's right wing crap in a progressive country.

[Outwestern]

It's finally living up to its nickname of "National Compost"

[klondiker]

National Post is the Canadian equivalent of the NY Post - a gossipy, right-wing rag.

[supertim]

they have one good journalist, Diane Francis, who also blogs for HP, you may wanna read her excellent articles on U.S. Healthcare Lies about the canadian medical system

U.S. healthcare lies Part I
http://tiny.cc/kuVDW

U.S. healthcare lies Part II
http://tiny.cc/UU63I

[Archivist1000]

I think it's a very frightening thing that is happening to Newspapers all over the world. We need REAL news sources and those are the reporters who actually work for Newspapers.

Once we lose print journalism, we will be left with 'blogs' as news sources .. and we can kiss real information Goodbye!

[swift goat pet for truth]

We will still have real information.
But we will have so much garbage, it will be hard to find the accurate stuff.
It is hard enough now.

And the analysis will be really messedup.

[greysells2]

The National Post has been giving away copies for years to keep their circulation figures up and consequently their ad revenues. I don't think this paper will last very long. All the print media are in danger of folding. I never invest any of my life savings in print media companies. There will some survivors but much few rags than now.

[MJinCanada]

A lot of people knew where Canwest was going right after Izzy Asper declared that his idea of creating Canadian unity was to make sure everyone had to read his opinion coast to coast. Soon enough the Aspers were making readers and staff yearn for the good old days of Conrad Black. :-P

I just hope they don't take Atlantis-Alliance down with them.

[RustyIdols]

Spectacularly lousy rag of a paper. Infamous for an approach to journalistic integrity that at best can be described as 'quirky'.

Remember the fake 'Iran is going to make Iranian Jews wear yellow badges just like the Nazi's did!' story? That was the National Post. Then there was the time Reuters had to sternly tell them to stop re-writing Reuters wire-copy any time Palestinians weren't being portrayed monstrously enough.

The Post went from the Hearstian plaything of an arrogant and corrupt millionaire and current guest of America's prison system Conrad Black, who used it to wage war on the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada and any and all progressive social policy, to becoming part of the Asper family owned CanWest chain. It continued a far right tilt both on the editorial and news pages with a special emphasis on an 'Israel right or wrong' theme. Their favorite tactic is to smear any and all of even the most minimal criticism of the state of Israel with the antisemitism brush.

The National Post and the CanWest Global chain of daily broadsheets and local TV stations across Canada are essentially the daily media arm of the Canadian Conservative party the way Fox News is the media arm of the Republican Party. The major owners of all the major mass media in Canada could fit in an office, and not even a particularly big one.

There's the context for an understandable aura of schadenfreude among Canadian progressives over CanWest's travails.

[GrizzlyBowman]

Succinct and eloquent review, Rusty. Thanks. I knew nothing about them before.

[S Cooper]

Indeed, a nice explanation in a nutshell. (From a Canadian progressive.)

It is always amusing to watch on an Air Canada flight when the flight attendants come through the cabin calling, "Globe and Mail? Globe and Mail?". Hands go up all over the plane and they hand out the copies they have. Then: "National Post? National Post?" *crickets chirping*