View source for Regina Leader-Post

{{Short description|Canadian newspaper in Saskatchewan}}
{{Infobox newspaper
| name               = Regina Leader-Post
| logo               = [[File:Regina Leader-Post Logo.svg|frameless|class=skin-invert]]
| image              = LeaderPost.jpg
| caption            = Front page of the June 5, 2020 edition
| type               = [[Daily newspaper]]
| format             = [[Broadsheet]]
| foundation         = 1883
| owners             = [[Postmedia Network]]
| headquarters       = 1964 Park Street<br />[[Regina, Saskatchewan|Regina]], [[Saskatchewan]]<br />S4P 3G4
| circulation        = 34,047 weekdays<br /> 34,581 Saturdays
| circulation_date   = 2015
| circulation_ref    = <ref name="Circulation 2015">{{cite web|url=https://nmc-mic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2015-Daily-Newspaper-Circulation-Report-by-Title-SPREADSHEET_FINAL.xlsx|title=2015 Daily Newspaper Circulation Spreadsheet (Excel)|work=News Media Canada|access-date=16 December 2017}} Numbers are based on the total circulation (print plus digital editions).</ref>
| editor             = 
| publisher          = 
| website            = {{URL|https://leaderpost.com/}}
| issn               = 0839-2870
}}

The '''''Regina Leader-Post''''' is a [[broadsheet]] newspaper published in [[Regina, Saskatchewan]], owned by [[Postmedia Network]].

==Founding==
[[File:People at the Leader Building, 1884.jpg|thumb|350px|The first Leader Building with surrounding town, Regina, 1884]]The newspaper was first published as '''''The Leader''''' in 1883 by [[Nicholas Flood Davin]], soon after [[Edgar Dewdney]], Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Territories, decided to name the vacant and featureless site of Pile-O-Bones, renamed ''Regina'' by [[Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll]], the wife of the Governor General of Canada, as territorial capital, rather than the previously-established [[Battleford]], [[Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan|Troy]] and [[Fort Qu'Appelle]], presumably because he had acquired ample land on the site for resale.

[[File:The first Leader building.jpg|thumb|The first Leader Building, Regina, Assiniboia, 1884]]"A group of prominent citizens approached lawyer [[Nicholas Flood Davin]] soon after his arrival in Regina and urged him to set up a newspaper. Davin accepted their offer{{spnd}}and their $5000 in seed money. The Regina Leader printed its first edition on March 1, 1883."<ref>"Regina: The Early Years." http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/central/downtown_business/CORA_RPL_B_395.html. Viewed November 16, 2012.</ref> Published weekly by the mercurial Davin, it almost immediately achieved national prominence during the [[North-West Rebellion]] and the subsequent [[trial of Louis Riel]]. Davin had immediate access to the developing story, and his scoops were picked up by the national press and briefly brought the ''Leader'' to national prominence.

Davin's greatest coup was sending his reporter Mary McFadyen Maclean to conduct a jailhouse interview with Riel. Maclean obtained this by masquerading as a [[francophone]] Catholic cleric and interviewing Riel in French under the nose of uncomprehending anglophone watch-house guards.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/spotlight/s_p_davin.cfm |title=Davin |publisher=Canadianshakespeares.ca |date=2008-05-16 |access-date=2013-01-07}}</ref>

==Growth and absorbing competitors==
[[File:The Leader Building, circa 1910..jpg|right|thumb|The Leader Building, 11th Avenue and Hamilton Street, downtown Regina, c. 1910.]]
Having begun with a small wooden shack before Regina had full streets, or electricity and plumbing outside [[Government House (Saskatchewan)|Government House]], ''The Leader'' soon moved to a substantial office building on the southwest corner of Hamilton Street and 11th Avenue, one block east of what was then the post office, southwest across street from [[Regina's historic buildings and precincts#Civic|City Hall]]. Also around this time, it was acquired by the Sifton family It then moved to a multi-story building across Hamilton Street to the south of the Simpson's department store. It ultimately relocated in the 1960s to east-city outskirts on Park Street at Victoria Avenue, where it still remains.

[[File:Regina Leader-Post in 1967.jpg|thumb|The third Leader-Post building, Hamilton Street west of the Simpson's store]] In 1920, the ''Leader'' merged with another paper, the '''''Regina Evening Post''''', itself in a building on Twelfth Avenue at Rose Street before the merger, and continued to publish daily editions of both before consolidating them under the title '''''The Leader-Post''''' in 1930.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.reginalibrary.ca/prairiehistory/highlights_education.html |title=Regina Public Library :: Prairie History Collection :: A History of Regina in Photographs, Education |website=www.reginalibrary.ca |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111217221815/http://reginalibrary.ca/prairiehistory/highlights_education.html |archive-date=2011-12-17}} </ref> In 1922, the paper launched one of the oldest radio stations in Canada, [[CKCK-FM|CKCK]]. Five years later, the company was purchased by the Sifton family, which launched [[CKCK-DT|CKCK-TV]], Saskatchewan's first television station, in 1954.

Newspapers were a thriving industry in the days through television's arrival in the 1950s until the Internet in the 1990s began to change people's gathering of news, compounded by the merger of local companies into ownership of local companies by national multi-corporation organizations. Other titles absorbed by the ''Leader-Post'' included the '''''Regina Daily Star''''' and '''''The Province'''''.

In 1995, the ''Leader-Post'' released an electronic version of the newspaper so that subscribers could view their newspapers on the Internet. Electronic and daily print subscribers also enjoy access to extra content not available to all readers.

==Corporate ownership==
Decline of local news coverage radically occurred in 1996, when the paper and its sister, the Saskatoon ''StarPhoenix'', were acquired from their owner based in [[Markham, Ontario]], Armadale group, by [[Hollinger Inc.]], a company that was headed by the Canadian media baron [[Conrad Black]]. Within three months, the staffs at each newspaper had been cut by one quarter, which becoming a ''cause célèbre'' in Canadian journalism.{{citation needed|date=June 2012}} The event with substantial elimination of staff and coverage of local news corresponded with one at the Regina television station [[CKCK-DT]], once locally owned but by 1985 no longer so.

An immediate effect was a significant reduction in coverage of local and provincial news, and a greater coverage of national events. Loss of news reporter staff, the increasing television news coverage and the arrival and growth of the internet all increased difficulty in preserving, much less increasing, the ''Leader-Post''{{'s}} significance.{{citation needed|date=June 2012}}

Black's company subsequently divested itself of the ''Leader-Post'' in 2000, together with most other Canadian news media it had owned, in conjunction with Black's renunciation of his [[Canadian citizenship]] to obtain a [[British peerage]].

Eventually branding itself as the ''Regina Leader-Post'', the newspaper shut down its printing facilities in 2015 in favor of being printed in Saskatoon with the press of ''[[The StarPhoenix]]''.<ref>{{cite news |url= http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/leader-post-to-stop-printing-its-newspaper-in-regina-1.3259881 |title= Leader-Post to stop printing its newspaper in Regina|publisher=[[CBC News]] |date=2015-10-06 |access-date= 2017-12-05}}</ref> In 2023, Postmedia announced that the ''StarPhoenix'' press would be shut down; both the ''StarPhoenix'' and ''Leader-Post'' were to continue publication, but printed at facility in [[Estevan]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://globalnews.ca/news/9422013/starphoenix-building-for-sale-saskatoon/ |title=StarPhoenix building for sale after serving Saskatoon for 56 years |last=Kruger |first=Brooke |work=[[Global News]] |date=2022-01-19 |access-date=2023-01-25}}</ref>

== Circulation ==
Like most [[List of newspapers in Canada#Daily newspapers|Canadian daily newspapers]], the ''Leader-Post'' has seen a decline in [[Newspaper circulation|circulation]]. Its total circulation dropped by {{formatnum: {{#expr: abs(100 - (34136 / 48611 * 100)) round 0}}}} percent to 34,136 copies daily from 2009 to 2015.<ref name="Circulation">{{cite web|url=https://nmc-mic.ca/about-newspapers/circulation/daily-newspapers/|title=Daily Newspaper Circulation Data|work=News Media Canada|access-date=16 December 2017}}</ref>

==In popular culture==
The opening sequence of the television sitcom [[The Big Bang Theory]] features a photo of the original building of ''The Leader.'' <ref>{{Cite web|date=2021-03-26|title=Big Bang Theory opening sequence features 136-year-old Regina photo|url=https://regina.ctvnews.ca/big-bang-theory-opening-sequence-features-136-year-old-regina-photo-1.5364323|access-date=2022-01-10|website=Regina|language=en}}</ref>

==Notable journalists==
* [[Dave Dryburgh]], sports editor from 1932 to 1948, and [[Canadian Football Hall of Fame]] inductee<ref>{{cite web|url=https://cfhof.ca/members/dave-dryburgh/|title=Dave Dryburgh|year=1981|website=[[Canadian Football Hall of Fame]]|access-date=January 14, 2022}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[List of newspapers in Canada]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}
Regina Public Library. Newspapers. [http://www.reginalibrary.ca/prairiehistory/highlights_education.html] Accessed August 13, 2015.

==External links==
* [https://leaderpost.com/ ''Leader-Post'']
* [http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/regina/central/downtown_business/downtown_cora_rpl_h_2.html City of Regina Archives historical notes on the ''Leader-Post'']

{{Postmedia}}
{{Canadian journalism}}

[[Category:Newspapers published in Regina, Saskatchewan]]
[[Category:Postmedia Network publications]]
[[Category:Daily newspapers published in Saskatchewan]]
[[Category:Newspapers established in 1883]]
[[Category:1883 establishments in the Northwest Territories]]