HALIFAX - The Halifax Daily News ceased publication Monday as the owner of the money-losing tabloid, Montreal-based Transcontinental Media, moved ahead with a plan to replace the paper with a free daily called Metro.
The company said all but a few of the 92 employees at the Daily News will be let go.
The first edition of the free newspaper will be on the streets Thursday, said Marc-Noel Ouellette, senior vice-president of the company's newspaper group.
Transcontinental acquired the Daily News from CanWest Global Communications Corp. in 2002. The paper had a daily circulation of about 20,000 copies. It competed with the family owned Halifax Chronicle Herald, which has a circulation of about 110,000.
"We worked hard to deliver an economically viable newspaper in the Halifax market with the Daily News,'' Ouellette said in a statement.
"It was an extremely tough business decision. ... (But) in this context, we are delighted to continue our presence as a daily newspaper publisher in the Halifax market.''
The Daily News logo was stripped off the paper's website before noon and replaced with the green Metro brand.
The new newspaper, established by a partnership with Metro International S.A. and Toronto-based Torstar Corp., will have a daily circulation of 25,000 and will target a "young, urban'' audience
The Metro chain, with a total circulation of 825,000 in Canada, will now have a truly national reach, said Bill McDonald, group publisher for English Canada.
Metro newspapers are published in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Similar Metro papers are published in more than 100 major cities in Europe, North and South America and Asia.
Greg Lutes, former publisher of the Moncton Times and Transcript and the Metro daily in Toronto, has been appointed publisher of the new Halifax paper.
The Daily News can trace its roots to 1974 when David Bentley co-founded The Great Eastern News Company Ltd., publishing a weekly broadsheet from his home named the Bedford-Sackville News.
The paper switched to a tabloid format in 1979, increased publication to six days a week and changed its name to the Bedford-Sackville Daily News. It set up a bureau in downtown Halifax in 1981 and shortened its name to the Daily News.
In the years that followed, ownership changed hands several times. Newfoundland Capital Corp. bought the paper in 1985, then sold to Southam Inc., in 1997. CanWest Global took over in 2000.
Its current owner, Transcontinental, employs about 800 people in Nova Scotia, most of them working at two printing plants, 11 weekly newspapers, four other dailies in Sydney, Truro, Amherst and New Glasgow.
The company said those operations will not be affected by the shutdown.
Transcontinental describes itself as the fourth-largest print media group in Canada, with more than 3,000 employees and annual revenues of C$633 million in 2007.
It is also the largest publisher of community newspapers in Eastern Canada.
Transcontinental Media is a subsidiary of Transcontinental Inc., which has approximately 15,000 employees in Canada, the United States and Mexico and reported revenues of C$2.3 billion in 2007.
