The Sudbury Star
The Sudbury Star is a Canadian daily regional newspaper published in Sudbury, Ontario. It is owned by the media company, Postmedia. It is the largest daily paper in Northeastern Ontario by circulation.
History[edit]
The Sudbury Star began as a daily in January 1909 as the Northern Daily Star,[2] in competition with the city's established daily Sudbury Journal, but it was in immediate financial trouble and folded within just six months.[2] Staff took over ownership of the struggling newspaper, led by foreman William Edge Mason, who then found 10 prominent investors to provide financial backing to the paper.[3] W.E. Mason Equipment was created to take over management of the paper,[3] and by World War I the paper was flourishing and the Sudbury Journal was out of business.[2] In 1922 Mason acquired the North Bay Nugget in North Bay.[4]
In 1935, Mason launched the city's first commercial radio station, CKSO.[2]
In 1948, Mason died and ownership of the paper was taken over by his W.E. Mason Estate.[5] The Nugget was almost immediately sold in an employee buyout,[6] but the Sudbury Star remained under the ownership of Mason's estate until 1950, when J. R. Meakes, Mason's successor as publisher and general manager, bought the paper with co-investors George Miller, Jim Cooper and Bill Plaunt.[7] The same investment group launched CKSO-TV, the city's first television station and the first television station in Canada not owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in 1953.[2]
In 1955 the paper was acquired by Thomson Newspapers.[8] Meakes remained as publisher and general manager until his retirement in 1975.[8]
In the early 1960s, the city saw a "newspaper war" between two startup weekly newspapers, the Sudbury Sun and the Star-owned Sudbury Scene. The Sun, a publication of Northland Publishers, was out of business by 1962, and filed a competition lawsuit against the Scene, alleging that the Scene had deliberately undercut the Sun's advertising rates to protect Thomson's monopoly on English-language periodical publication in the city.[9] The federal trade practices commission ruled in Thomson's favour.[9]
The paper was sold to Southam Newspapers in 1996,[10] to Osprey Media in 2001,[11] and to Sun Media in 2007.[12] In 2015 Postmedia Network acquired Sun Media.[13]
In October 2013 the paper moved from its longtime home at 33 MacKenzie Street in Sudbury to new offices at 128 Pine Street.[14]
The current managing editor of the Sudbury Star is Don MacDonald, who assumed the role in 2014.