In the countdown to the hotly anticipated end-of-the-month release of the 1999 NADbank newspaper readership study, Canada’s largest newspapers have not been sitting idly by.

Instead, they’ve been busy distributing thousands of free promotional copies, introducing editorial changes, and partnering with their competitors in unholy Web-based alliances.

The Toronto Star, for instance, is throwing the net wide, moving outside the city and onto college and university campuses, while the National Post is giving greater editorial attention to the local Toronto market. The Globe and Mail, for its part, has expanded its Saturday paper to compete with those editions of both the Post and the Star.

Nothing unusual there. But then, in a pact that raised more than a few eyebrows, the Star bought 40% of the Globe’s job Web site (see story, p.2) as part of a deal that will eventually see its globecareers.com brand disappear.

The reason for all this activity? NADbank’s fall readership study is now in the market and there are big bucks at stake for the competitors.

Jeffrey Shearer, vice-president of marketing for The Toronto Star, says efforts to promote the paper as far afield as Orillia are being done purely to keep up with the Joneses.

‘The Star has been distributed throughout Ontario for a ‘million’ years, but The Globe and The Toronto Sun have increased their efforts outside the city.

‘It’s simply a competitive move against the other papers that are moving more strongly outside the city than they have in past.’

Shearer says the Star’s flurry of promotional activity has nothing to do with the imminent release of the NADbank survey, which he says he’s confident will be favourable for the Star but not so favourable for The Globe.

‘To put things in context, when a good, new national paper comes to town and samples and promotes like no other paper has sampled and promoted, it’s bound to have some effect on all the papers in the market.

‘It would obviously have the smallest effect on the Sun, a little more on the Star, and it would have a hell of a lot of effect on The Globe.

‘What’s important when the results come out at the end of this month, [is] what kind of penetration of the market did the Post actually reach?’