National Post discontinues Toronto "magazine" section

[This post has been updated]While it falls somewhere outside my definition of a "magazine", being really a newspaper tabloid section, it nevertheless is an unhappy indicator when the floundering National Post discontinues its Toronto magazine section. Yesterday's issue was the last and whatever is salvaged from the section will now be subsumed in the main, broadsheet pages of the weekend paper.

That this has happened in the same week when the parent company, CanWest Global saw its stock fall into penny status is no coincidence. The paper can apparently no longer afford to behave as though it has a weekend magazine, though it really hasn't since it sold Saturday Night several years ago.

[Update: The This Magazine blog wishes the National Post a happy 10th anniversary in typical cheeky fashion.]

The Toronto section had dwindled in any event; this most recent change will reduce three magazine-style features in Toronto to only one in the main paper. Whether the other, shorter items, many of which were a steady market for Toronto-based freelancers, will survive I don't know. I suspect that many readers flipped into the magazine section, in any event, to read Shinan Govani's gossip and the shopping stories (what newpapers insist on calling "style"). That will continue, anchored in a new place.

By the way, does anyone else remember that this is the second time a national newspaper has killed a magazine called Toronto? The Globe and Mail did it years ago, only that one was a glossy that tried, for a time, to compete with Toronto Life.