by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
april 19, 2004
On april 5, a revamped Toronto Sun made its first appearance on the newsstands. after having been touted as "noisier, newsier, nosier" the week before, a more apt description is "trashier, tackier, tawdrier". The Sun’s sales have been sagging and the paper has lost readership to Metro, the weekday newspaper that is distributed free along major transit routes. In order to boost circulation, the Sun went to a trash tabloid format, so popular in England where Toronto Sun publisher and CEO, Neil Fowler, hails from.
The first thing that hit many readers when they opened up the paper was the print. It had become paler, closer together and appeared to be smaller although the Sun denied that it was. For those of us who can no longer be classified as kids, it was difficult to focus on the print, let alone read.
and speaking of kids, if you encountered difficulty reading the paper you could always just look at the pictures. That first edition seemed chalked full of pictures, not just of buxom young sexy women, but of young girls. On page 3 was a striking blonde wearing boxing gloves, a short tank top and low-fitting tight blue jeans. There may have been a purpose that the picture was there but it’s hard to remember. Page 5 showed two young attractive teenage girls wearing Toronto and Ottawa hockey sweaters. another young girl wearing a Maple Leaf sweater was shown on page 24 (aren’t middle aged beer-bellied men hockey fans any more?). Half of page 22 was taken up with a column called "Kid’s stuff". There were six pictures of young girls including Mary Kate and ashley Olsen. Page 24 provided a change of pace with a 1980 Sunshine Girl proudly displaying her tattooed breast. Thursday’s paper provided, in addition to a pull-out lingerie section, a section entitled "Sun Women" that displayed pictures of a 14-year-old girl in various yoga poses. If you love looking at pictures of cute little girls, this paper’s for you.
another notable feature of the new and "improved" Sun is that the amount of commentary has been severely decreased. It was the opinions of the many columnists, mostly conservative, that made the Toronto Sun into the little paper that grew. all that remained in that first issue was one main column opposite the editorial with another column, about the size of a large advertising banner, underneath. Joe Warmington’s "Night Scrawler" column also appears and has been given more prominence undoubtedly because that column always contains a lot of pictures so it blends in well with the new format. Front and centre of his april 5 column was a picture of two well-endowed "Hooters Girls".
The Sun does have more news stories but there is greater use of short pieces from wires services such as Reuters, associated Press and Canadian Press. In this respect it looks more like Metro than it does the old Sun. But unlike Metro that takes no editorial stance, the Sun claims to retain the right of centre stand that it has always had. But with less columnists and more reliance upon liberal wire services that can manage to insert a liberal bias into a two-paragraph story, the Sun will have some difficulty getting its editorial stance through to its blurry-eyed readers.
During the first week, the Sun asked its readers to write and say how they liked (or disliked) the new look. at the time of this writing, they have yet to publish many letters--rumour has it that there has been a paucity of positive comments.
By the middle of the second week, the Sun had backtracked somewhat. Pictures of cute little girls had disappeared and the number of sexy women had been reduced. The type had changed to make the paper more readable. It is hard to know whether this amounts to a tacit admission that the new format is not working or whether the changes will be gradually reintroduced in the hopes that many readers won’t notice.
One letter to editor said that the paper should follow the example of the Coca Cola company and then asked when we can expect to see a Toronto Sun Classic. The sentiments of many loyal Toronto Sun readers couldn’t have put it any better.