City
Toronto's New Free Daily Hits The Streets
t.o.night, Toronto's new free afternoon daily, launched yesterday. The inaugural issue, 20 pages deep, featured the expected mix of local, national and international news, business, sports, events, gossip, sudoku and, on page 8, three stories contributed by blogTO. Our daily page of local news will be just one of the ways t.o.night is aiming to distinguish itself from competitors Metro and 24 Hours, the latter of which took the opportunity to unveil a new look of its own yesterday.
The big buzz leading up to the debut of t.o.night, aside from the questions about whether now is a great time to launch anything in print, was the strategy to distribute the paper using retro-branded "newsies". In a twist from convention, there are no t.o.night boxes littering our sidewalks, but instead a number of guys and girls with yellow t.o.night branded mail sacks handing out copies outside Union Station, the Eaton Centre and other transit and TTC hubs.
Walking around the downtown core yesterday, I spotted them everywhere, some taking the time to explain to curious pedestrians what the paper was all about.
While not everyone took a copy, those who did seemed genuinely intrigued to check out whether the pages inside offered anything new and exciting to their commute home from work.
John Cameron, the young publisher of the paper, was handing out copies at the corner of Yonge and Front. Most passersby wouldn't have had a clue who the guy was that gave them their first issue, but perhaps connected the dots later when they found his mugshot (and welcome message) inside on page 3.
Have you picked up a copy of t.o.night yet? What do you think? Watch out for issue number two this afternoon. 100,000 copies are distributed daily between 3:30 and 6:30PM.
Discussion
33 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
http://tonightnewspaper.com/press.html
BOO-URNS.
"full-colour on coated, magazine paper"
DOUBLE BOO-URNS.
I'd be behind this paper if it actually employed some journalists.
Do we REALLY need another free daily? Is the news coverage REALLY that different from the rest? How many quickly designed, quickly produced, quickly thought out ideas will we have to put up with before people begin to realize that there is a such thing as QUALITY. No, 'magazine style paper and colour' doesn't mean quality.
How much money is being poured into the editors, producers, 'designers', PR, advertising, printing etc. Could this money have been used to achieve the same goals in a way that actually does something differently, rather then producing what's already out there, just a little 'different'?
Copying copies to achieve the same level of mediocrity.
Blah.
So no, no thank you to your FREE 'paper'... I prefer to pay a buck or two knowing that its supplementing our economy in creating PAID employment of journalists.
I thought they'd be shouting out the day's headlines? Maybe if they weren't so passive, people would take notice and come to them to check out what's new.
Right?
(Do I hear crickets?)
BlogTO does itself a disservice being in a "content-sharing" deal with this amateur insulting handout. Shame on you. But then again, BlogTO has always felt like a marketing vehicle with content fluff anyway.
Like people havent read the internet 5 of their 8 hours anyways.
To hell with "newspapers".
When handed it I thought it was a comic book.
just saying.
There is a reason all these dailies are going tits up.
I'll have my morning cup of coffee with milk and wifi please.
I don't think the argument is print vs. online, it's the quality of either. I love opening up a copy of the NYT Sunday edition, being able to actually touch pages, seeing images and words, beyond a pixely glow. I also like being kept up to date and that's why I read online. Both have different aesthetics, pluses/minuses. It's when either is made cheaply, doesn't employ actual journalists, photographers, and designers/art directors, it's evident.
Denouncing this paper isn't a comment on the need to banish newspapers, its a comment on banishing a lack of creativity and awareness of the times that we live in.