Southam Inc. was incorporated in 1904 by William Southam to manage his growing newspaper empire.[2] Once a delivery boy for The London Free Press, he had risen up the ranks to become a part owner of the paper by 1867.[1] He bought the failing Hamilton Spectator in 1877 for $5,000 and turned its fortunes around.[1] Beginning in 1897, Southam began acquiring other papers in the country including the Calgary Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver's The Province.
In 1904, Southam Inc was incorporated and grew into one of the largest newspaper chains the country with 17 daily newspapers and 56 community newspapers.[1] As the newspaper chain expanded, the associated wire service, Southam News Service, was created and expanded with it.
The Winnipeg Tribune was a Southam owned newspaper until it closed on August 27, 1980.
In 1981, it purchased the then-weekly Kamloops News.[3]
Southam Newspapers was sold to Hollinger Inc. in 1996, after Conrad Black gained a controlling stake in the company. [4]
Under Hollinger control, Southam made further acquisitions, including many of the Canadian print media holdings of Thomson Newspapers. On November 15, 2000, the Southam Newspapers company was broken up with the print media holdings and the Southam Newspapers name being sold to media company Canwest.
Canwest examined ways to integrate many of its smaller market papers into its Global television news division; however, it wasn't to be. On August 9, 2002, Canwest sold many of its smaller market newspapers to a variety of new owners, including Torstar, Transcontinental Media and Osprey Media.
In 2003, Southam Newspapers was fully absorbed into Canwest and became Canwest News Service. Canwest News Service began operating in Winnipeg on February 12, 2003, and moved its expanded operations to Ottawa in April 2007.
Following bankruptcy, Postmedia Network re-emerged as Postmedia News.
Criticism
The Asper-owned Southam newspaper empire faced criticism when it fired Russell Mills as publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, allegedly for criticizing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who was a good friend of Izzy Asper.[5]
