Postmedia to open digital lab in Communitech Hub
TORONTO—PostmediaNetwork Inc., Canada’s largest newspaper group and the publisher of the
National Post, will open a digital lab this fall at the Communitech Hub, an industry centre that works with more than 1,000 tech companies and startups in the Waterloo region of Ontario.
Thomas Jankowski, Postmedia’s Chief Digital Officer, said in a media release Tuesday the company will launch a development team solely dedicated to expanding its innovation capabilities and growing its business-to-business product strategy.
Jankowski characterized Communitech as one of the leading tech innovation centres in the world.
“As our industry continues to evolve, what’s going to predicate future success is our ability to innovate and develop new solutions in the digital world,” Andrew MacLeod, Postmedia’s Chief Commercial Officer, said in an interview. “That world is increasingly dominated by the Google and Facebook platforms. We need to be able to be fluent in these new platforms and the language of those platforms is technology oriented.”
“We look forward to collaborating with Postmedia as they grow their digital footprint,” said Iain Klugman, Communitech’s CEO, in a release.
Last month, Postmedia reported third-quarter revenue of $218.3 million, a 6.4 per cent increase over the same period the previous year, which was largely attributed to its acquisition of the Sun chain of newspapers.
Excluding the impact of the Sun acquisition, the company saw declines in the last quarter in print advertising revenue of $14.7 million (19.4 per cent) and print circulation revenue of $3.1 million ( 6.8 per cent). However, digital revenue held mostly flat, and Postmedia draws 6.1 million weekly digital readers, according to Vividata numbers released last month.
Torstar, the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country behind Postmedia, last week reported quarterly declines of 16.9 per cent in print advertising revenues and a 6.1 per cent decrease in subscriber revenue.