Also in this report:

* Boomers love their papers: study p.B1

* Star attempts a giant leap: Media behemoth aims to prove it can be more friendly, accommodating p.B1

* Community papers speaking from the heart: Joint campaign stresses weeklies’ emotional appeal p.B5

* Eaton’s uses newspaper to herald renewal p.B7

* Spotlight onÉNewspaper Creative p.B12

Contrary to what print media cynics have been predicting for years, the newspaper business in this country seems to be very much alive and kicking.

Consider Southam Newspapers.

It’s been just a little over a year since Hollinger nabbed control of Southam, establishing chair Conrad Black as Canada’s media baron, with ownership of more than half of the country’s dailies.

While tongues wagged and Southam employees nervously wiped their brows, Black launched a process of corporate restructuring – axing the company’s marketing department, shedding all of its non-newspaper businesses and effectively shrinking the power of Southam’s corporate head office (a move that resulted in the departure of a number of senior executives).

For Canadian newspaper readers, there have been more palpable changes – most notably, the complete overhaul and redesign of what Black hopes will become Southam’s flagship, The Ottawa Citizen, and the revamping of its English-language Montreal daily, The Gazette.

And it doesn’t stop there. The latest word from Southam is that the company plans to launch a new national daily from Toronto as early as next spring. If that plan comes to fruition, it will give Hollinger one thing it currently lacks: the ability to offer national advertisers coverage in the country’s most important market, Toronto.

‘I see it as the final link to making Southam a truly national company,’ says Gordon Fisher, the newspaper chain’s vice-president of editorial.

Under Black’s ownership, the whole corporate philosophy of Southam has undergone a fundamental transformation. Increasingly, the prevailing attitude is ‘every paper for itself’ – especially when it comes to advertising.

Fisher characterizes the change as a ‘shift towards a culture of autonomy,’ in which local newspaper publishers, editors and advertising directors run their own business without interference from a corporate head office.

‘It’s simply a strong feeling that the best people to understand and react to a local market are the people in that local market,’ says Fisher. ‘You can’t run a newspaper by remote control.’

Fisher says that Southam’s national sales organization, ADitus, still plays an important role in the chain’s operations – but it’s more consultative than in the past, driving national advertising downwards to Southam dailies.

‘I would say that marketing [responsibility] rests exclusively with individual papers,’ he says.

The move to chop Southam’s marketing department was a positive one for advertisers, Fisher argues, because it means that campaigns and pricing strategies can now be tailored to local market conditions. And without the need to get head-office approval, ad directors can respond faster to changes in those conditions.

Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, columnist and vice-president of editorial for Hollinger, have made no secret of their right-wing views – a fact that rankles some critics, who take issue with the combined media clout the couple enjoys in this country.

Despite rumblings to the contrary, however, Fisher maintains that the ‘every paper for itself’ philosophy also extends to matters of editorial direction.

‘Mr. Black and his views are extremely well known,’ he says. ‘He’s also intelligent enough to know that if he were to produce a newspaper that reflected his views only, we’d probably have a fairly limited audience.’

Media critic James Winter has a somewhat different take on the subject.

Winter, a professor in the University of Windsor’s department of communications, and co-author of a just-published tome entitled The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black, says that editorial in Southam newspapers is unquestionably shifting to the right.

According to Winter, Black is, indeed, producing newspapers that reflect his own point of view. And this just won’t cut it with Canadian readers – or advertisers, he says.

Historically, he notes, advertisers have been attracted to more objective material, and have avoided anything too opinionated. ‘What Black has done is to bring about the return of the partisan press.’

Winter also debates whether Southam newspapers are becoming more local in feel. By parroting Black’s viewpoint, he says, many are in fact running contrary to prevailing opinion in the communities on which they report.

Windsor, for example, has long been a union town, and The Windsor Star was the first Canadian newspaper to back the ndp in a federal election. Yet in last June’s election, Winter notes, the Star encouraged readers to support either the Tories or the Reform party.

This, he says, proves that the paper is out of touch with its readers. He expects to see more of the same in future – to the detriment of readership figures and advertising revenues.

Fisher, for his part, argues that Black’s changes to the newspaper chain’s editorial direction were made to correct a former imbalance.

‘It’s his view – and I support this view – that many of our newspapers, and in fact most Canadian newspapers, were not representing all views. They were probably Liberal and they were probably Left, and what he’s asked for is that the views of other constituents be represented.

‘But there has been no lurch to the right on the part of Southam newspapers. And Southam editors and publishers still determine their own policy in that regard.’