Pilot program extends Post brands
Deal gives Edmonton Journal readers access to National Post digital products
TORONTO — The launch of a newly enhanced Edmonton Journal signals the beginning of bold changes in Postmedia Network Inc.’s stable of newspapers across the country, and will introduce the National Post brand to scores of new readers.
Postmedia unveiled the reimagined Edmonton Journal on Tuesday with a pilot program for print that will add eight to 12 pages of the National Post’s national and international news, commentary and analysis to the Alberta paper.
“This extends the National Post and the Financial Post brands in a way that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible, both on the print and the digital side,” said Gordon Fisher, president of the National Post.
The deal gives Journal readers immediate access to National Post digital products for web, smartphone and tablet. (The Edmonton Journal’s iPhone app is also enabled for the Apple Watch, the first newsroom in Postmedia to offer this technology to readers.)
“This is innovation,” Joan Brehl, vice-president and general manager of brand innovation and leadership at the Alliance for Audited Media Canada, a nonprofit industry organization that does media metrics and analysis. “The goal is to increase readership and satisfy the readers and delight them, give them something new, something interesting. And I think (the redesign) looks great.”
Fisher said giving Edmonton Journal subscribers a new package of content will enhance the local paper and aims to deepen reader engagement and loyalty.
“The value-add for an Edmonton Journal subscriber is really clear and obvious,” he said. “So much of our industry is seeing retrenchment, but this is probably the first major expansion of this kind in years.”
Fisher said similar rollouts are planned for Postmedia papers across the country, followed by the Windsor Star in October, then newspapers in Regina and Saskatoon, and in Ontario in London, St. Catharines and Kingston.
“The great thing about those markets, unlike Edmonton, is that we really have no distribution of the National Post in those markets currently,” Fisher said. “We are re-entering markets that for various reasons over the years we vacated, so it’s very exciting in that respect.”
Postmedia executives have been watching a similar program at USA Today closely over the past couple of years, one which incorporates some of its pages into its chain of local market Gannett newspapers, a program that has now rolled out to about 35 markets.
“(USA Today) has a track record of success in terms of reader engagement and increased loyalty and reduction of churn,” Fisher said — the latter an industry term for the number of annual subscriptions newspapers need to sell every year to keep a stable circulation base. “All of the things that we are hoping for, they have actually seen happen.”
The move improves the National Post’s circulation by the amount of Edmonton Journal subscribers — about 70,000, and will do the same as the National Post pages are rolled out to subsequent Postmedia papers.
Relaunched Postmedia newspapers in Ottawa, Montreal, and Calgary have added Financial Post pages to the newspapers, but not pages from other sections of the National Post.