Canada's Best and Worst Newspaper Websites

While old media is still the leading source of information for most people in the world. While a lot can be said for blogging (citizen journalism), photo-sharing (citizen photo-journalism), video-sharing (citizen broadcasting) and the lot, newspapers, radio and television news are still dominant. How are Canada's newspapers taking to the internet? Some better than others.

The Best: Toronto Star

Fig. 1 - Toronto Star website, March 7, 2007.

Website: http://www.thestar.com/
Offline Circulation: 3,293,031

Canada’s largest newspaper also has the best website. TheStar.com features a modern, clean and easy to navigate website. They make it easy for their readers to get what they need by offering archives that date to January 1, 1985 (older articles must be paid for); RSS feeds for nearly every section of the paper; and in a (rather effective) effort to keep up with the times, offer a multitude of blogs. An abundance of video can also be found throughout the Star’s website.

While they are relatively scant on offering much interaction on the site aside from the blogs—they could benefit from allowing user comments on the articles—they do facilitate the reader in a few ways. Like most newspaper sites, an “E-Mail Story” link. However, I especially like the “Tag and Save” to del.icio.us link offered. As a power user of that service I always enjoy seeing mainstream media websites adopt new technology, and use it well.

Honorable Mention: The Globe and Mail

The Worst: CanWest Newspapers

Fig. 2 - Calgary Herald website, March 7, 2007.

Website: http://www.canada.com/
Offline Circulation: 9,069,754+
Newspapers: National Post, Victoria Times Colonist, The Province, Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Windsor Star, Ottawa Citizen, The Gazette, and more...

All of CanWest’s eleven major newspapers are part of the venerable CanWest Global property, Canada.com. I have a real problem with the way CanWest handles the online presence for their newspapers. They do, at best, a few things right—namely the integration of the papers (major and otherwise) into the valuable canada.com portal.

I used the online classifieds service on canada.com extensively when I lived in Saskatoon and after I moved to Calgary. That all changed with the advent of renting.ca, driving.ca and working.ca. I want classifieds, not a webapp. While the idea is novel, at least give us the option to view classifieds in the traditional form. Until they do, I’ll be sticking with the dead-tree edition, as much as I despise it.

Aside from being ugly, canada.com’s newspaper websites have numerous fallbacks: the tiny typography drives me batty; there is no evidence of any RSS feeds available; I can find no evidence of even an attempt at user interaction; and the list goes on. My main gripe, however, remains their butchering of the classified services to the point of them being practically unusable.

While I will continue to read CanWest’s papers offline, good luck finding me on canada.com.

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