The Wall Street Journal takes a look at how our corporate cousin, The Globe and Mail, is trying to win readers:
Splashy Front Pages Help Once-Staid Newspaper Prosper
Toronto's Globe and Mail is conducting bold page-one “experiments” — oversize headlines, jumbo art — to attract readers. But one advertiser, the Bank of Nova Scotia, says that it advertises in the Globe in part because of its financial Web site, Globeinvestor.com.
The writer of the piece, Elena Cherney, is a former colleague of mine. We were both day-oners at the National Post. She now mans the Journal’s Toronto bureau. In her piece, she notes that the ‘experiment’ appears to be a success:
It's an approach [the Globe] believes is helping to boost circulation and advertising at the Globe, which has national reach. The figures bear him out. In contrast with most U.S. newspapers, which are suffering from declining circulation and seeing their share of advertisers' dollars shrink, the Globe is selling more papers and winning advertisers away from the three other daily papers that serve Toronto, Canada's largest city and home to one-quarter of the nation's population.