Калгари Геральд: История и трансформация газеты

Daily newspaper published in Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The Calgary Herald is a daily newspaper published in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Publication began in 1883 as The Calgary Herald, Mining and Ranche Advocate, and General Advertiser. It is owned by the Postmedia Network.

In January 1908, the Southam Company purchased a majority interest in the Calgary Herald. By 2003, Izzy Asper had built "CanWest Global into a profitable media powerhouse with annual revenues in excess of $2 billion and net earnings of $90 million."

Postmedia purchased the Calgary Herald from Canwest in 2010. CEP union spokesman Peter Murdoch said, "This is hardly of net benefit to Canadians, their communities or the critical flow of information in a democratic society." In spite of the digital innovations at the Calgary Herald in which staff did not have the protection of a union, and there were even deeper job cuts. Postmedia met with union resistance at its other papers. Frank Swanson was Calgary Herald's publisher until his retirement in July 1982. Swanson oversaw the move of their headquarters from downtown Calgary to a "$70 million plant on a hill overlooking the intersection of Deerfoot and Memorial."

Kevin Peterson, joined the Calgary Herald in 1969, first as a political reporter for the following six years, then a series of editorial positions and finally as publisher from 1989 to 1995. "[U]nder his leadership, the Herald revamped every area of content, re engineered its circulation function, and completely reorganized the complex process of selling, designing, and placing customers' advertising."

Ken King, then publisher of The Calgary Sun with an advertising background, became publisher of the Calgary Herald in February 1996. The Herald also publishes Neighbours, a weekly community newspaper that is distributed with the Herald in some parts of Calgary, and Swerve, a weekly magazine style pullout. In the spring of 2005, the Herald joined several other CanWest Global affiliates in launching Dose, a free daily newspaper targeted at younger commuters; it was discontinued as a print publication after a year.

In August 2010 Paul Godfrey President and CEO of Postmedia Network announced the appointment of Guy Huntingford as the publisher of the Calgary Herald as it "continues its transformation into an integrated multimedia brand." In April 2013 Godfrey announced that was "eliminating the publisher position at its chain of 10 newspapers, which includes the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen" and the Calgary Herald in a cost cutting measure.

Changes, including downsizing and cut wages, introduced by the Hollinger Corporation after its purchase of the Calgary Herald in 1996, led to Herald staff voting to unionize in 1998 under the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. On 8 November 1999, unionized staff at the Herald, including reporters, went on strike. The strike lasted until July 2000, during which many longtime Herald reporters left the newspaper. While some accepted a severance package, others returned to work on the condition that the union be dissolved. Many seasoned journalists were replaced by inexperienced staff and it took several years for the Herald to rebuild its readership after the strike. Former Herald staff who left during or as a result of the strike can be found working for other publications, most notably the weekly business oriented publication Business Edge. On 25 February 2011 the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) asked the federal government to review (under the Investment Canada Act) the 2010 purchase of the newspaper by Postmedia Network.

A June 2010 series, "Worked to Death" on the "human costs of Alberta's economic boom" by Chris Varcoe and research by Kelly Cryderman and Renata D'Aliesio, won the 2010 Michener Award, one of the highest distinctions in Canadian journalism. In his June 14, 2011 acceptance speech, Varcoe acknowledged the support of the newspaper, particularly editors Lorne Motley and Monica Zurowski, who invested resources for over a year to "important civic journalism". The series was the culmination of collaboration work by a "photographers, researchers, editors, graphic artists and online journalists" that spanned a year. The series resulted in changes in the way in which the Alberta government improved the province's workplace safety enforcement system.