Toronto Star publisher, editor-in-chief replaced in shakeup

[CHIMO]

TORONTO — There's been a shakeup at the upper ranks of the Toronto Star, Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, with both the daily's publisher and editor-in-chief being replaced Monday.

Gone from The Star are publisher Michael Goldbloom and editor-in-chief Giles Gherson, who have run the paper since 2004.

Jagoda Pike, a former publisher of the Hamilton Spectator, was appointed publisher of the Star and president of Star Media Group. Fred Kuntz, who has been publisher of The Waterloo Region Record in southwestern Ontario, was named editor-in-chief.

The Spectator and Record are two key sister papers to the Star in southern Ontario.

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[Canadian_moderate]

1. The Toronto Star has very little diversity

for a newspaper that is supposed to be liberal and progressive. They listed pictures of their staff in last Saturday's Star and there were hardly any ethnic minorities. They don't seem to practice what they preach.

[Hoping4Change]

3. James Royce who is black covers city poltics.

Haroon Siddiqui was the Star's editorial page editor for 8 years and is now has the titleeditorial page editor emeritus, and a twice-weekly column, which focuses on national and international politics and cultural and religious diversity. He is Muslim.

I'm no fan of the Star but have you ever read it. If you did I don't think you'd hold that opinion.

[CHIMO]

2. From immigrant roots to Star publisher

Jagoda Pike, a Croatian immigrant who spoke no English when she arrived in Canada as a 9-year-old, has been appointed publisher of the Toronto Star.

Pike becomes the eighth publisher — and the first woman — to lead the Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper.

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[CHIMO]

4. Private feud, public company

The mood was understandably sombre when a group of Torstar Corp. directors gathered in August for a board meeting at the publisher's Toronto headquarters. Torstar's stock had tumbled 20 per cent in the past year, a combination of weak performance from the company's Harlequin Enterprises book publishing unit and the continued deterioration of the North American newspaper industry, which is in the grip of a punishing decline in readership and advertising sales.

Some analysts were expressing concern about the strength of the company's balance sheet, while others openly questioned its decision to buy a 20-per-cent stake in rival Bell Globemedia, owner of the CTV network and The Globe and Mail. There was little comfort to be found in the company's second-quarter financial results: Profit was down almost 30 per cent, thanks in large part to Harlequin, which got hammered by the appreciation of the Canadian dollar, and it wouldn't be long before investors began fretting over the safety of Torstar's long-entrenched dividend.

As pressing as these financial matters were, they were not the sole focus of the meeting. Instead, Torstar chairman Frank Iacobucci found himself grappling with a somewhat diversionary matter: The fate of the top two managers at the company's flagship daily paper, the Toronto Star.

Former Star publisher John Honderich, a Torstar director who chairs a voting trust comprising five families that control the company, had arrived at the meeting with a litany of criticisms of the newspaper's editorial direction. He informed the group that the families had met to discuss a variety of concerns at the Star, in particular what they perceived to be a drift away from the so-called Atkinson Principles, a commitment to social justice reporting that is formally enshrined at the paper. To make matters worse, he went on, it had been a poor year for awards at the Star, and circulation was ebbing.

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