General

Adieu, National Post?

Report warns the newspaper may close its doors as early as Friday

The New York Times‘s Ian Austen isn’t altogether kind to the National Post, which only recently celebrated its 11th anniversary. Suggesting that Conrad Black created the Post “in part to promote his political views” and that it offers readers “sharp political opinion and elastic boundaries in taste,” Austen reports the paper may well close on Friday. The Post’s losses, according to a report prepared by a bankruptcy court-appointed monitor, have been as stunning as some have believed over the course of its existence, if not worse: $139.1 million in the last seven years. In its most unprofitable year, 2001, it lost $60 million. Last month alone it lost $900,000. But Austen also relays the monitor’s explanation for how—and why—the Post could still be saved. The Supreme Court of Ontario could still approve its transfer to a new holding company, part of a process that would see it incorporated with the other CanWest dailies, including the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette. Why would the CanWest papers be interested? The monitor’s tantalizing take is they still make money from the National Post, which continues to shoulder some of those papers’ financial burdens.

The New York Times

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