Every Sunday for as long as I can remember, I sit down with my dad after a long and tiring week to read the “funnies” at breakfast and play a competitive game of spot-the-difference in the Calgary Herald. During my junior high and high schools years, I have also developed the habit of keeping up with current events and reading about stories near and dear to me – you guessed it – on the weekend.
I was disappointed to find out that Postmedia News (formerly Canwest) is slashing jobs and Calgary’s beloved newspaper – the Herald – is on the chopping block. An estimated more than 20 positions from each of the major Postmedia newspapers across Canada are facing the same kind of
predicament, including the Ottawa Citizen, The Montreal Gazzette and The Edmonton Journal. The repercussions of this have caused the Sunday edition of the Calgary Herald to be non-existent henceforth. I understand that Postmedia’s intentions are honourable, as they attempt to cause as little damage as possible within their company while Canada slowly spirals out of a recession and revenues continue to fall. The company claims they are having “advertising revenue challenges.” Postmedia news also seems to be touting the concept of the “digital age” and jumping on the bandwagon to promote their online Sunday edition of the cut newspapers. Well at least we’re saving some trees, eh?
All joking aside, I feel that the Sunday newspaper has played an inherent part in the culture of households for hundreds of decades. Throughout the onslaught of the digital age and through generations of “modernized thinking,” the newspaper is one of the few objects which has prevailed. It will be interesting to see how far into the future the paper copy of the newspaper can last until people find even that too archaic of a concept.