It was announced this week that advanced negotiations are underway for an effective merger between Nordstar Capital, the publisher of the Toronto Star and the Metroland suburban newspapers, and Postmedia, which publishes this newspaper as well as the Sun newspapers and the principal English-language daily newspapers in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. This is not surprising, as both companies have been losing money, which is a process that even our governments in all their profligacy will eventually discover cannot continue indefinitely. The commercial advantage of such an arrangement would be to merge the business aspects of the two companies, while maintaining editorial separation: the savings would be considerable, at no cost to editorial quality.
