20 print journalists hired

CALGARY — Torstar Corp. is more than doubling the pool of reporters at its western Canadian Metro free daily newspapers, an unusual move in a shrinking industry that puts it in direct digital competition with one of its biggest rivals.

The initiative represents a major investment in journalism outside of the company’s Toronto headquarters, where it publishes the daily Toronto Star, Torstar CEO John Boynton said Monday.

Twenty reporters are being added to the current 15 at the Metros in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton and an undisclosed number of people are being added in Toronto to act as a support team, Boynton added.

“It’s an exciting day for news in Canada,” he said in an interview.

“Everybody seems to be going one way, which is a slow, eventual, continual decline in costs and a degradation of the product, and a retraction. I think we’re going completely the opposite direction, which is we’re going to invest in what we do best.”

He said the moves are designed to win new readers as well as lure audience from existing publications. He wouldn’t give financial details and said no deadline has been set to determine if the initiative is successful or not.

Torstar’s focus on western cities in which Postmedia Network Canada Corporation owns both major daily newspapers suggests it sees a competitive opportunity there, said April Lindgren, an associate professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism.

“I suspect this is a recognition of the deep cuts that have happened at the Postmedia papers in those communities,” she said.

She added “round after round of layoffs” at those newspapers have affected their ability to produce quality local and investigative news.

At the same time Torstar is ramping up competition in Western Canada, the Competition Bureau is alleging anti-competitive behaviour by the two companies in its investigation of a noncash newspaper swap late last year between the two that resulted in 41 titles changing hands and 36 being closed, mainly in Ontario regions served by multiple publications, at a cost of nearly 300 jobs.