Postmedia And The American Hedge Fund Takeover Of Canada’s Newspapers

Vancouver is a city of three million people, with two major newspapers: the Vancouver Sun and the Province. Both are owned by Postmedia, which is itself majority owned by Chatham Asset Management – an American hedge fund. Postmedia owns 32 papers in Alberta, three in Saskatchewan, 57 in Ontario, the Montreal Gazette in Quebec, 10 in New Brunswick, two in Prince Edward Island, 7 in Nova Scotia, and The Telegram in Newfoundland.

Of course, that’s not counting its influential national publications – most notably, National Post and Financial Post.

When the famous Irving family controlled much of New Brunswick’s newspaper industry (they sold their papers to Postmedia in 2022), their industry dominance was justifiably held up as further evidence that New Brunswick is an Irving company town. If so much of Canada’s newspaper industry has been bought up by one corporation, is Canada just one big company town?

What happens when Postmedia buys your community’s newspaper? Cuts, layoffs, and more cuts. In August 2024, Postmedia cemented its coast to coast empire by purchasing SaltWire Network, a publisher of papers in Atlantic Canada. Here’s Philip Moscovitch summarizing how his experience as a reader changed:

“I have kept my SaltWire subscription (for now), but visiting the place has become increasingly depressing. I always feel like I need to offer the caveat here that there are good people trying their best and doing good work at the SaltWire papers. This is not a criticism of them.

Going to the SaltWire website increasingly feels to me like some kind of zombie or ghost-town experience. Sure, there is some life there, but there are also so many signs of decay, neglect, and folks higher up seemingly not caring.

One obvious difference is the reduction in new stories every day. Fewer writers = fewer stories.”

Another casualty of Postmedia’s takeover of SaltWire was Newfoundland’s The Telegram, which was gutted:

“The 145-year-old Telegram in St. John’s published its final daily edition on Friday.

Under Postmedia, it will exist online and in a weekly edition that will be printed out of province.

The Telegram will also have 30 per cent fewer reporters, after four of the newsroom’s 13 journalists were laid off…

St. John’s is now one of two provincial capitals without a daily newspaper, along with Fredericton, whose Daily Gleaner is delivered just three days a week — much thinner than it once was.”

This could have gone a different way. As Paul MacNeill, the publisher of Island Press Limited, writes:

“I’ll let you in on a secret. Our little Island company, Island Press, tried to buy the Charlottetown daily and Summerside weekly. A small team of interested Islanders submitted a viable proposal. We believed it was time for Islanders to control the destiny of these iconic Island titles and to put Island stories and opinions at the heart of everything published.

Our bid was ultimately rejected by the corporation overseeing Saltwire’s creditor protection process. Its preferred route, less complicated and costly, was to sell as much of Saltwire as possible to a single entity.

Postmedia, 66 per cent owned by US based hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, was the last bidder standing and now holds a virtual monopoly in Atlantic Canada, owning every daily and most weeklies.”

In light of the current trade war in which the United States has gone from ally to adversary, Canada finds itself forced to consider how best to reduce our dependence on the US. An important part of the effort to re-Canadianize our economy is to retake control of our media. As media expert Marc Edge puts it, don’t blame Postmedia for buying up Canada’s papers – blame our own Competition Bureau for allowing this type of monopolistic practice:

“If you’re looking for a villain in the latest crisis of Canadian journalism, don’t blame Postmedia Network. It’s just doing what comes naturally to a bottom-line corporation that is mostly owned by U.S. hedge funds that are bleeding it (and Canadian journalism) dry with high-interest loans, which they also largely hold. Postmedia is just trying to do what it thinks it can get away with to fatten the bottom line and feed its rapacious owners.

If you want to point fingers, look no farther than the federal Competition Bureau, the regulatory body that keeps letting them get away with it. The bureau, according to its website, is ‘an independent law enforcement agency’ that is supposed to ensure that ‘⁣Canadian businesses and consumers prosper in a competitive and innovative marketplace.’ ”