The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a large Canadian English language national newspaper based in Toronto.

The paper was founded as The Globe in 1844 by George Brown, who was later a Father of Confederation. Brown selected as the motto for the editorial page a quotation from Junius, "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." The quotation is carried on the editorial page daily to this day.

In 1936, after a merger with The Mail and Empire (ironically, the Mail was the paper of Brown's arch-rival, Sir John A. Macdonald), the Globe became The Globe and Mail. In 1962, the paper added its popular Report on Business section. Report on Business Magazine, published by and carried in the newspaper, would follow, as would the specialty channel Report on Business Television.

Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries the newspaper was strictly a Toronto-oriented daily, competing with The Toronto Star in a heated newspaper war. As The Globe and Mail lost ground to the Star locally, the newspaper began to circulate nationally in search of subscribers, adopting the masthead slogan "Canada's National Newspaper" in the process.

Long owned by Kenneth Thomson and his family, in 2001 control of the paper was sold to a BCE Inc., also owners of the CTV network. The network and paper are now owned by Bell Globemedia, owned 70% by Bell Canada Enterprises and 30% by the Thomson family, Several reporters from one of the outlets frequently appear on the other.

Editorially, The Globe and Mail has historically been seen as a conservative and business-oriented paper. Since the 1998 launch of rival conservative paper The National Post, the Globe has been seen as increasingly centrist or even liberal; however, no media studies have yet examined whether the editorial thrust of the paper has actually changed (as opposed to the zeitgeist changing around it) and recent anecdotal observations are typically made in comparison to the Post. Following the tenure of chief editor Edward Greenspon in 2002, The Globe and Mail has been criticized for returning to its conservative tradition; its editorial cartoonist Brian Gable has mocked it as sensationalistic, and its columnist Lawrence Martin has called for the creation of a new national newspaper [1] (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050303/COMARTIN03/TPComment/?query=lawrence+martin) (paid subscription required). Possibly due to this competition the paper has made other changes such as the introduction of colour photographs and the creation of the "Review" section on arts, entertainment and culture.

Though promoted as a national paper and sold throughout Canada, The Globe and Mail also serves as a Toronto metropolitan paper, publishing several special sections in its Toronto edition which are not included in the national edition. As such it is sometimes popularly ridiculed as being too focused on the GTA, which could be seen as part of a wider humourous notion of Torontonians sometimes being blind to the wider concerns of the nation. (A similar criticism is sometimes applied to The New York Times). For this reason, critics sometimes refer to the paper as the Toronto Globe and Mail or as Toronto's National Newspaper, but these are never correct designations for the paper.

Other satirical nicknames for the paper include Mop and Pail or Grope and Flail, both of which were coined by longtime Globe and Mail humour columnist Richard J. Needham.

The Globe and Mail has consistently outsold the National Post both in subscription and newsstand circulation.

Regular contributors

• Christie Blatchford
• John Doyle
• Allan Fotheringham
• Marcus Gee
• Lawrence Martin
• Heather Mallick
• Leah McLaren
• Rex Murphy
• Spider Robinson
• Rick Salutin
• Jeffrey Simpson
• Russell Smith
• Norman Spector
• William Thorsell
• Margaret Wente
• Hugh Winsor
• Jan Wong
• Ken Wiwa

See also

• Media in Canada

External links

• Official website (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/)
• Official history (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/services/site/history.html)