SERVICES

Saturday, Feb. 4, 2006

The Globe and Mail has a long and distinguished history but the newspaper certainly wasn’t resting on its laurels as it entered a new century. Indeed, the past few years have been among the most eventful in the history of The Globe, which began publishing in Toronto during the 1840s.

On Jan. 9, 2001, The Globe and Mail became part of a new and dynamic Canadian media company, Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. The new company blends Canada’s National Newspaper, a major television network, CTV, a powerful sports broadcaster, TSN, and two powerful Internet brands, Globe Interactive and Sympatico/Lycos.

It is a fitting partnership for The Globe and Mail, which had already branched out from its newspaper roots into magazines, Web sites and even a television station.

The history of The Globe began in Toronto in 1843 with the arrival of George Brown, a tall, angular Edinburgh Scot of 25. He had come to North America in 1837 with his father, and helped the family run the British Chronicle in New York, an antislavery paper directed at British immigrants. It was while drumming up circulation for the Chronicle that Brown visited Toronto and, sensing a fertile market, persuaded his father to dispose of the New York paper and move to Toronto with him.

In August 1843, they established The Banner, a four-page weekly designed to promote the interests of the Presbyterian Church; but the younger Brown had more secular aims, and founded The Globe on March 5, 1844, as a political vehicle. It began as a weekly with a circulation of 300, and by Oct. 1, 1853, had become a daily with a circulation of 6,000.

By 1858 Brown had become a dominant figure in the Reform Party in Canada West (previously Upper Canada), and was briefly head of the Brown-Dorion government. He fought fiercely for political union in British North America, becoming in the process one of the Fathers of Confederation.

In 1880, Brown was shot in the leg by a disgruntled former employee, George Bennett, and died weeks later from an infection in the wound. The Globe was bought by a syndicate whose members included Senator Robert Jaffray. In 1888, the Jaffray family obtained control and kept it until 1936, during which time the newspaper adopted the slogan Canada’s National Newspaper as its influence and circulation grew.

In 1936, the paper (with a circulation of 78,000) was sold to a young financier named George McCullagh. McCullagh acquired The Mail and Empire (circulation 118,000) a few weeks later, and absorbed it into The Globe under the new name, The Globe and Mail. (The Mail had been established by Conservative backers in 1872, at the urging of Sir John A. Macdonald, to counter the influence of Brown’s Globe, and had merged with another Conservative paper, The Empire, in 1895.)

Three years after McCullagh’s death in 1952, the executors of his estate sold the paper to Montreal financier R. Howard Webster. Oakley Dalgleish, who had been the paper’s editor for some years, was made editor and publisher in 1957. It was during Dalgleish’s tenure, in 1962, that the newspaper added Report on Business, distributed as a separate publication outside Ontario and as a distinct section of the newspaper within the province. In 1967, Report on Business appeared on a daily basis, becoming Canada’s first national daily business newspaper. When Mr. Dalgleish died in 1963, Mr. Webster assumed the post of publisher. In 1965, he appointed James L. Cooper as publisher and Editor-in-chief. Later that year, through an exchange of shares, Mr. Webster associated The Globe and Mail with a newspaper group, FP Publications Ltd. of Toronto, headed by John Sifton, Richard S. Malone and Max Bell. In 1974, Mr. Cooper retired and Mr. Malone became publisher and Editor-in-chief.

In 1978, A. Roy Megarry succeeded Mr. Malone as publisher, and Richard J. Doyle, who had been editor of the newspaper since 1963, assumed the post of Editor-in-chief.

In 1980, Thomson Newspapers Ltd. of Toronto acquired control of FP Publications and The Globe and Mail. Mr. Doyle (who was later appointed to the Senate) was succeeded as Editor-in-chief in 1983 by Norman Webster, who was in turn succeeded by William Thorsell in 1989. In 1992, Mr. Megarry was succeeded as publisher by David Clark. Mr. Megarry returned as interim publisher in November 1993. In May 1994, Roger Parkinson was named publisher and chief executive.

Phillip Crawley was chosen to lead The Globe in October 1998, weeks before a newspaper war against a new national rival was to begin. Mr. Crawley, the Globe’s publisher and chief executive officer, had held senior editorial and executive positions with major newspapers on four continents. The Globe and Mail has remained firmly in place as Canada’s leading national newspaper and has made impressive gains in circulation and readership despite increased competition. In July 1999, Richard Addis, a veteran of London’s fierce newspaper wars, was named the newspaper’s editor.

One of the Globe’s strengths has long been its coverage of national and international news. In 1900, The Globe had its own correspondent in South Africa covering the Boer War. The Globe and Mail was the first North American newspaper to establish a resident correspondent in China, and the first Canadian newspaper to open permanent news bureaus in Africa and Latin America. The Globe had a correspondent in Quebec City in the 1850s when it was the capital of the Province of Canada, and a correspondent telegraphing regular news from Ottawa as of 1867. A full Ottawa bureau followed in time, and in 1954 The Globe and Mail became the first Ontario newspaper to open a Quebec news bureau. Beginning in 1959 with British Columbia, the newspaper established news bureaus in other regions of Canada.

In 1979, The Globe became the first newspaper in the world to produce a full text commercial database containing every story from each issue (dating back to 1977), and the first to publish electronically and in print on the same day. An electronic information division called InfoGlobe was established to offer on-line access to this database and a variety of other information sources. In 1992, InfoGlobe changed its name to Globe Information Services.

Globe Information Services later changed its name to Globe Interactive, and GI has emerged as a powerhouse in the Canadian Internet community. The signature site, globeandmail.com, launched a breaking news service in June 2000 and quickly became a leader in the Internet news field. Another site, workopolis.com, is Canada's leading site for job seekers. And the financial sites, globeinvestor.com and globefund.com, are a staple for Canadians who enjoy tracking their stocks and mutual funds. Globe Interactive also features sites that deal with books and cars.

But the Globe was spreading news and information far and wide long before the dawn of the Internet. In 1980, The Globe and Mail became Canada’s first space-age newspaper. It printed a national edition in Montreal, including general news, features and Report on Business, with the contents transmitted from the main publishing centre in Toronto to the Montreal printing plant via the Anik satellite. Since then, additional satellite printing plants have been established across the country, permitting rapid same-day distribution of the newspaper in the 10 provinces and the two territories.

In 1985, The Globe and Mail entered the consumer magazine field in a major way with the publication of Report on Business Magazine, a high-quality colour magazine distributed with the newspaper. This was soon joined by other Globe magazines covering a variety of fields.

In 1999, the Globe got into the television business with the launch of ROBTv, a cable channel devoted to business news and opinion.

The Globe and Mail underwent a major redesign in 1990, both graphically and editorially, beginning with the issue dated June 12. It was as part of this redesign that the newspaper’s editorial style book was completely revised and first published in its current form, and that The Globe produced its first visual style guide. In both 1995 and 1996, the Society of Newspaper Design named The Globe and Mail the World's Best Designed Newspaper.

On July 9, 1998, The Globe and Mail's commitment to evolution and innovation was demonstrated yet again with the introduction of editorial colour, new typography, enhancements in graphic design, and many exciting editorial additions – to make for an even livelier, more involving newspaper for Canada’s most loyal and discerning readership. That design was tweaked in September 2000 to make the paper even more inviting to readers.

The newspaper’s motto was selected by George Brown in 1844, and will be found at the top of the editorial page: "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." The quotation is from Junius, the pseudonym of an English writer of the 18th century. The Globe and Mail believes, as Brown did when he founded the newspaper, that only an informed public can defend itself against power seekers who threaten its freedoms.

Phillip Crawley was chosen to lead The Globe in October 1998, weeks before a newspaper war against a new national rival was to begin. Mr. Crawley, the Globe’s publisher and chief executive officer, had held senior editorial and executive positions with major newspapers on four continents. The Globe and Mail has remained firmly in place as Canada’s leading national newspaper and has made impressive gains in circulation and readership despite increased competition. In July 1999, Richard Addis, a veteran of London’s fierce newspaper wars, was named the newspaper’s editor.

Edward Greenspon, the current Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail and a veteran political journalist, succeeded Mr. Addis on July 22, 2002. Since joining The Globe in 1986, Mr. Greenspon has been a reporter for the Report on Business, a European-based correspondent, managing editor of the ROB, Ottawa bureau chief, deputy managing editor, and executive editor in charge of the newsroom. He also managed the launch in 2000 of globeandmail.com, the newspaper's breaking-news Web site.