Regina Leader-Post

Founding

Davin's greatest coup was sending his reporter Mary McFadyen Maclean to conduct a jailhouse interview with Riel. Maclean obtained this by masquerading as a francophone Catholic cleric and interviewing Riel in French under the nose of uncomprehending anglophone watch-house guards.

Growth and absorbing competitors

Having begun with a small wooden shack before Regina had full streets, or electricity and plumbing outside Government House, The Leader soon moved to a substantial office building on the southwest corner of Hamilton Street and 11th Avenue, one block east of what was then the post office, southwest across street from City Hall. Also around this time, it was acquired by the Sifton family It then moved to a multi-story building across Hamilton Street to the south of the Simpson's department store. It ultimately relocated in the 1960s to east-city outskirts on Park Street at Victoria Avenue, where it still remains.

Newspapers were a thriving industry in the days through television's arrival in the 1950s until the Internet in the 1990s began to change people's gathering of news, compounded by the merger of local companies into ownership of local companies by national multi-corporation organizations. Other titles absorbed by the Leader-Post included the Regina Daily Star and The Province.

In 1995, the Leader-Post released an electronic version of the newspaper so that subscribers could view their newspapers on the Internet. Electronic and daily print subscribers also enjoy access to extra content not available to all readers.

Corporate ownership

Decline of local news coverage radically occurred in 1996, when the paper and its sister, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, were acquired from their owner based in Markham, Ontario, Armadale group, by Hollinger Inc., a company that was headed by the Canadian media baron Conrad Black. Within three months, the staffs at each newspaper had been cut by one quarter, which becoming a cause célèbre in Canadian journalism. The event with substantial elimination of staff and coverage of local news corresponded with one at the Regina television station CKCK-DT, once locally owned but by 1985 no longer so.

An immediate effect was a significant reduction in coverage of local and provincial news, and a greater coverage of national events. Loss of news reporter staff, the increasing television news coverage and the arrival and growth of the internet all increased difficulty in preserving, much less increasing, the Leader-Post significance.

Black's company subsequently divested itself of the Leader-Post in 2000, together with most other Canadian news media it had owned, in conjunction with Black's renunciation of his Canadian citizenship to obtain a British peerage.

Eventually branding itself as the Regina Leader-Post, the newspaper shut down its printing facilities in 2015 in favor of being printed in Saskatoon with the press of The StarPhoenix. In 2023, Postmedia announced that the StarPhoenix press would be shut down; both the StarPhoenix and Leader-Post were to continue publication, but printed at facility in Estevan.

In early 2025, the paper along with the StarPhoenix had to explore other printing options following the closure of the Estevan print facility. Both papers are now printed in Alberta, marking the end of newspaper production in Saskatchewan.

Circulation

Like most Canadian daily newspapers, the Leader-Post has seen a decline in circulation. Its total circulation dropped by percent to 34,136 copies daily from 2009 to 2015.

In popular culture

The opening sequence of the television sitcom The Big Bang Theory features a photo of the original building of The Leader.

Notable journalists

• Dave Dryburgh, sports editor from 1932 to 1948, and Canadian Football Hall of Fame inductee

Notes

Regina Public Library. Newspapers. http://www.reginalibrary.ca/prairiehistory/highlights_education.html Accessed August 13, 2015.

References

1. "2015 Daily Newspaper Circulation Spreadsheet (Excel)". News Media Canada.
2. "Regina: The Early Years." http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/central/downtown_business/CORA_RPL_B_395.html. Viewed November 16, 2012.
3. (2008-05-16). "Davin". Canadianshakespeares.ca.
4. "Regina Public Library :: Prairie History Collection :: A History of Regina in Photographs, Education".
5. (2015-10-06). "Leader-Post to stop printing its newspaper in Regina". [[CBC News]].
6. Kruger, Brooke. (2022-01-19). "StarPhoenix building for sale after serving Saskatoon for 56 years". [[Global News]].
7. News, CKOM. "Print facility closure leaves future of Sask. newspapers unclear".
8. Mitchell, Kevin. (February 20, 2025). "Blood, sweat, ink: How Saskatchewan's newspaper print shops died after 146 years".
9. "Daily Newspaper Circulation Data". News Media Canada.
10. (2021-03-26). "Big Bang Theory opening sequence features 136-year-old Regina photo".
11. (1981). "Dave Dryburgh".