CTVNEWS

Christie Blatchford leaves Globe and Mail for Postmedia

The Canadian Press Published Wednesday, June 1, 2011 4:52PM EDT

Children's literature winner John Ibbitson and non-fiction winner Christie Blatchford pose for a photograph during the Governor General literary awards on Nov. 18, 2008 in Montreal. Postmedia Network Canada has announced that Christie Blatchford has left the Globe and Mail to become a national columnist for Postmedia News. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)

Text:

TORONTO - Columnist Christie Blatchford is leaving the Globe and Mail for Postmedia News, which she calls her "natural home."

Postmedia Network Canada, which owns the National Post newspaper, announced Wednesday that the veteran journalist would be joining the company as of June 13.

Blatchford, who has won a National Newspaper Award for column writing, previously wrote for the Post from 1998 to 2003 before heading to the Globe.

"It was just time for a change for me," she said in an interview. "I don't think the Globe was ever a particularly natural fit for me and had become less so over the last while. The Post was always my natural home, I thought."

Blatchford will file news stories for the Postmedia chain as well as a weekly National Post column to run Saturdays on what she called "the same vague, ill-defined beat" she had at the Globe and the Post before that.

She will be a "national columnist with an emphasis on the courts and, I hope, some breaking news," she said.

Blatchford, who was born in Quebec and studied journalism at Ryerson University, has worked for all four major daily newspapers in Toronto, starting as a general assignment reporter at the Globe, moving to sports then column writing.

She then worked as a reporter and columnist at the Toronto Star, followed by a turn at the Toronto Sun and a move to the National Post before returning to the Globe.

Postmedia president and CEO Paul Godfrey says the company is "thrilled" to have Blatchford.

"Christie Blatchford is a game changer in the world of journalism and we're overjoyed to have her playing on our team," he said in a statement. "People who love her, and even those few who don't, always read her."

Blatchford won the 2008 Governor General's Literary Award in non-fiction for her book about Canadian soldiers, "Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army."

Last year, Blatchford wrote a book on an ongoing aboriginal occupation in southwestern Ontario titled, "Helpless: Caledonia's Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us."

Besides the National Post, Postmedia's newspapers also include such publications as the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun.