“It’s definitely going to be driven from the local level,’’ says Mark Lever, president and CEO of SaltWire Network Inc., the company that now owns The Guardian and Summerside’s Journal-Pioneer.
Lever told The Guardian Thursday that he would rather see his newspapers produce accurate, thorough and balanced articles than simply getting the story first.
“To me, I believe we are story tellers,’’ he says.
“Our roots are in publishing.’’
Wayne Thibodeau, regional managing editor with The Guardian, says The Guardian has always been committed to telling compelling Prince Edward Island stories.
That won’t change, added Thibodeau.
“We have a new owner who is based here in Atlantic Canada who has nearly 150 years of daily news experience,” he said.
“There are a lot of similarities between The Guardian and the Halifax Chronicle Herald. We are both the dominant news sources in our provinces. We both have a history dating back to the mid-1800s. We both have innovated to become the digital news leaders in our markets. And we both have a tremendously loyal audience in our home provinces. This makes SaltWire a strong partner for The Guardian going forward for the next 150 years."
SaltWire is a new entity made up of properties owned by The Chronicle Herald in Halifax and those, like The Guardian and Journal-Pioneer, purchased from TC Media.
Related: The Chronicle Herald acquires TC Media’s Atlantic Canada newspaper and publishing assets
The historic move – which sees the Quebec printing and media giant sell a combined 28 publications and web brands, as well as printing and distribution assets, to Herald brass – creates a media chain that covers every major market in Nova Scotia and P.E.I., as well as Newfoundland and Labrador.
Lever says the key to the biggest East Coast media shakeup in recent memory proving to be a solid business deal for SaltWire is in restoring the connections to the communities served by the media products.
“The business plan for SaltWire is to breathe life back into those brands and platforms in the communities,’’ he says.
“We’ll centralize some functional operations but really give control and autonomy back in the communities. The Guardian here is a tremendous beacon for Charlottetown and the Island. We think there’s a value in local content. We really believe this is about audience and local content and not so much about distribution platforms.’’
Lever notes SaltWire is going to be in over 30 communities in Atlantic Canada “with boots on the ground.’’
The timing of the expansion – against the backdrop of a bitter strike by members of the Halifax Typorgraphical Union – will likely cause the most debate among media analysts, the general public and union supporters.
The dispute is over a year old and has seen 55 journalists and support staff from the Herald newsroom walking the picket line.
Lever said the labour issue is very different from the dawn of SaltWire.
He says the deal is about creating platforms, which the company can grow.
“I am not naïve enough to think that there is not going to be a lot of skepticism,’’ he adds.
“We are going to have to earn that trust over time with the employee group – and certainly there is no business without an audience and we have to earn that trust.’’
Changing hands is old news for The Guardian.
After a succession of local owners, Thomson Corporation bought the newspaper in the 1950s.
Southam Newspapers acquired the paper from Thomson in 1996, before being itself acquired by Canwest Global Communications in 2000.
Canwest sold the paper to Transcontinental Media (now TC Transcontinental) in 2002.
