Charlie: "Somehow, it'll be Doug Ford's fault."

Somehow? It is Doug Ford's fault...there is no somehow, it just is...lol... 
 

Last edited by Muffaraw Joe (January 1, 2020 2:06 pm)

What's amusing is that although they did fix the headline, the URL still reads "2019" ( https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2020/01/01/resolutions-wed-like-to-see-in-2019.html ) - I assume to keep compatibility with links internally elsewhere on Thestar.com and externally. Most content management systems will maintain a static URL as an option - years ago many would have it rewritten when a story's headline is updated which for a "breaking news" story meant throughout the day any links to it would break.

Nate wrote:

AspectRatio wrote:

What's amusing is that although they did fix the headline, the URL still reads "2019" ( https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2020/01/01/resolutions-wed-like-to-see-in-2019.html ) - I assume to keep compatibility with links internally elsewhere on Thestar.com and externally. Most content management systems will maintain a static URL as an option - years ago many would have it rewritten when a story's headline is updated which for a "breaking news" story meant throughout the day any links to it would break.

...and the amateur show continues on full display over at the Star. A simple URL redirection for that particular article could have pushed folks to the correctly-labeled URL while maintaining the relevancy of existing links placed elsewhere.

It's amazing that even with the taxpayer-paid "bailout" (aka buy-off) from Trudeau, the Star still can't seem to get its act together.  Just look at the stock price!

The so called "Bail Out" needs a little context. Torstar was to get about $6 million last year.  Most of this money is actually in tax credits rather than the government writing cheques. Six million is hardly a bailout, since Torstar had total revenue in 2018 of  $543 million.  2019 year end won't be available for a little while.

Incidentally Post Media was to receive $6-8 million last year of the so called Trudeau "buy-off." Post Media, not normally big supporters of the liberals or Trudeau. And again this amount, while nice, is not going to make or break the company, and not really a significant amount to a large media company like Post Media or Torstar.

A little rich to say then that this is a bailout, or buy out, or somehow all newspapers will be bowing to the government because of some tax breaks. I am not a big fan of this either but let's keep things in perspective.

It's not really an issue of the Star not being able to get it's act together since all daily papers in the country are more or less in the same situation. Some of these problems were self inflicted but most were initially issues beyond their control. That's why various daily and weekly newspapers here and in the US have folded over the past 10 years.  Much of the revenue loss for daily newspapers has been from classified and national advertising. 

Many dailies like the Star, Globe and National Post actually have more readers than ever before, however more and more of these readers are on line and not with the print product. On line readers are much more transient and it has been  difficult to make substantial money with on line advertising. Digital advertising  has not begun to replace the hundreds of millions  that has been lost from classified, national and to a lesser extent local advertising for daily papers.