Toronto Star-Postmedia merger could stifle diverse opinions in legacy media, expert says
The possible merger between Postmedia and the Toronto Star—two ideologically polar media organizations now engaged in non-binding discussions—will diminish a diversity of opinions in Canada’s legacy media, asserts an industry veteran.
“The people working on mergers like this tend to sell them as a positive point, but, in fact, they never are. What they mean for media is less diversity of viewpoints and they’re going to mean layoffs,” Matthew Hays, a media studies teacher at Marianopolis College and Concordia University in Montreal, told True North.
By circulation, the Toronto Star jockeys with the Globe and Mail for highest countrywide circulation, while the Postmedia network comprises more than 130 brands, including the National Post, Toronto Sun, Ottawa Sun, and others that enjoy majority market share in small- and mid-sized cities.
Hays, also a veteran arts critic who spent more than a decade as the now-defunct Montreal Mirror’s associate editor, says past instances of news media conglomeration diminished the range of perspectives publications presented.
