NordStar Capital LP is acquiring Torstar Corp, the owner of the Toronto Star newspaper, in a deal worth Can$52m / US$38m. The Toronto Star is Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper but (not uniquely) it has struggled with the monetisation of online.
The outgoing Torstar chair John Honderich said this week: “No one disputes that the business model for newspapers has come under immense pressure. In this new digital era, with Facebook and Google taking the lion’s share of all digital advertising, media outlets have been going under across North America. The Covid-19 crisis has made the situation even worse.” He said that, although the 128-year-old daily had tried to innovate and adopt new strategies, it had been “an uphill struggle.”
