About Postmedia News

Postmedia News

Postmedia News is the news agency and wire service of Postmedia Network, one of Canada's largest newspaper publishers. It provides news, sports, entertainment, photography, financial and feature content to Postmedia's Canadian newspapers, online properties and a number of third-party clients in Canada and the United States. Identified as a source on all of its subsidiary newspapers, it is the internal wire that binds together a chain stretching from the Vancouver Sun and The Province in the west to the Montreal Gazette and the National Post in the east.

Overview

Postmedia News is the operating news branch of Postmedia Network: a centralized newsgathering and distribution service whose copy appears, under Postmedia News or National Post News Services bylines, across the company's more than 100 newspapers and their websites. Its operations include the wire service itself and an online news component historically associated with the canada.com portal. The service functions as both an internal utility — allowing a Postmedia paper in one market to publish reporting produced in another — and a commercial wire, selling content to third-party clients in Canada and the United States.

The agency's lineage is the lineage of Canadian chain journalism itself: from Southam Newspapers, founded in 1904, through Hollinger and Canwest, to the Postmedia Network created in the wreckage of Canwest's 2010 bankruptcy. Each corporate transformation has carried the wire service forward under a new name — Southam News, Canwest News Service, Postmedia News — making it one of the oldest continuously operating news-gathering organizations in the country.

History

The wire service's story begins with Southam Inc., the newspaper service created in 1904 by William Southam. Southam had been a delivery boy for the London Free Press before becoming part owner by 1867; he bought and transformed the failing Hamilton Spectator in 1877, and in 1897 began assembling a chain that would eventually include the Calgary Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver's The Province and many more. The Southam chain operated its own internal wire service, through which newspapers across the chain were free to publish each other's stories — a system that one journalism scholar has described as, biases aside, "a fairly respectable news agency."

Southam Newspapers was sold to Hollinger Inc. in 1996. Under Hollinger control, Southam acquired many of the Canadian print holdings of Thomson Newspapers; then, on November 15, 2000, the Southam Newspapers company was broken up, with the print holdings and the Southam name sold to Canwest. In 2003, Southam Newspapers was fully absorbed into Canwest and became Canwest News Service, which began operating in Winnipeg on February 12, 2003, and moved its expanded operations to Ottawa in April 2007.

In July 2010, Canwest's publishing division was spun off into a new company, Postmedia Network — the broadcasting division having been sold to Shaw Media — led by National Post CEO Paul Godfrey, as a result of Canwest's bankruptcy. The wire service subsequently became known as Postmedia News. Under Postmedia, the service has continued to supply the chain's newspapers — the National Post, Financial Post, the Sun dailies, and the former Southam broadsheets including the Vancouver Sun, The Province, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, London Free Press and others — while also serving third-party clients. Postmedia has since grown further through acquisitions, including the 2022 purchase of Brunswick News and the 2024 acquisition of SaltWire Network, whose titles were rebranded as PNI Atlantic News.

Content

Postmedia News provides the full spectrum of wire content: breaking and daily news, sports, entertainment, photography, financial news and feature material. Its reporting covers the national agenda — federal politics from its Ottawa base, the economy, courts, national sports — as well as distinctive Postmedia strengths such as the Financial Post's business coverage. The service's copy is written for republication across the chain's diverse titles, from national broadsheets to community dailies, and is identified as a source on all of its subsidiary newspapers.

The wire's role in the Postmedia ecosystem has also made it a subject of media criticism. Analysts have noted the chain's centralized operations and the political uniformity of its newspapers' editorial direction, and the wire service — as the mechanism through which stories move across the chain — sits at the centre of debates about the concentration of Canadian newspaper ownership. In 2019 it was reported that 66 percent of Postmedia's shares were owned by Chatham Asset Management, the American media investor.

The mechanics of the wire are visible in the chain's daily output. A single Postmedia News story can appear, sometimes nearly verbatim, in the print editions of a dozen papers at once — the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Kingston Whig-Standard, Regina Leader-Post, Montreal Gazette, London Free Press, Ottawa Citizen, The Province, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Vancouver Sun and Windsor Star among them — attributed to "Postmedia News" or, for nationally produced material, "National Post News Services." That distribution power is the service's core function: reporting produced in one newsroom, whether an Ottawa political story or a Financial Post markets piece, becomes instantly available to every title in the chain, and to the third-party clients in Canada and the United States that subscribe to the wire. The Ottawa base inherited from the Canwest News Service era gives the operation a particular strength in federal political coverage, while the chain's regional newsrooms supply the local and provincial reporting that the wire redistributes nationally. Canwest News Service began operating in Winnipeg on February 12, 2003, before moving its expanded operations to Ottawa in April 2007 — the Ottawa base the wire retains today. Postmedia's later acquisitions have extended the wire's footprint: the 2022 purchase of Brunswick News brought New Brunswick dailies and weeklies into the chain, and the 2024 acquisition of SaltWire Network — rebranded that December as PNI Atlantic News — added Atlantic Canada's largest newspaper group to the titles the wire serves.

Coverage & Audience

Postmedia News serves Postmedia Network's newspapers and online properties across Canada, from British Columbia to Atlantic Canada, plus third-party clients in Canada and the United States. Its indirect audience is the readership of the Postmedia chain — millions of Canadians who encounter Postmedia News copy in their daily paper or on its websites, often under bylines such as "Postmedia News" or "National Post News Services." The service's Ottawa operations give it a particular strength in federal political coverage, while its network of chain newsrooms provides regional reporting that can be shared across the country.

Ownership

Postmedia News is the news branch of Postmedia Network Inc., the Toronto-based publisher of more than 100 newspapers including the National Post, Financial Post, the Sun chain and the former Southam broadsheets. Postmedia Network was created in July 2010 from Canwest's publishing division following Canwest's bankruptcy, led by Paul Godfrey. A majority of the company's shares have been held by Chatham Asset Management, the American investment firm, since 2019.

Digital Presence

Postmedia News has no standalone consumer website; its content is distributed through Postmedia Network's newspaper websites — nationalpost.com, the Sun sites, and the broadsheet sites from vancouversun.com to montrealgazette.com — and through the wire feeds supplied to third-party clients. The service's bylines appear daily across these properties, making Postmedia News one of the most widely published news brands in Canada despite having no public-facing portal of its own. For the industry, Postmedia Network's corporate communications describe the news agency's role within the company's operations.