Toronto Star dumps P.M. mini-paper

As hard as the Toronto Star's spinmeisters try, it was difficult to see the ending today of Star P.M., the free pdf mini-paper, as anything but an admission of defeat. A little over a year ago, the 8-to-12-page downloadable formatted version of the paper was unveiled with some fanfare. TodayNext Wednesday will be its last. A message to subscribers from J. Fred Kuntz, the publisher, tried to make a positive out of it:

StarP.M. enabled commuters to print, carry and read a snapshot of top stories, selected by Star editors and squeezed into 12 letter-size pages, five days a week.

But time moves on, technology advances, and new, improved products replace old ones.

In its place, subscribers are offered thestar.com, the paper's website, and mobile.thestar.com, both of which already existed. The only difference will be that the mobile version will now offer full-length stories specially formatted for the small screen of handheld devices.

There was no information on what the uptake had been of Star P.M. But it apparently wasn't what Torstar had hoped for.