How to Get Press in Canada

Canada looks like a smaller version of the American media market and behaves differently in ways that cost people money. Fewer owners, stronger city papers, a separate French-language ecosystem, and a national tier that is genuinely difficult to reach.

Here is how the market actually works.

The structure

Four bands, and knowing which one you are aiming at prevents most wasted spend.

The national tier. The Globe and Mail, CBC, the Toronto Star, CTV and Global News. Earned coverage only. There is no fee-for-placement route into any of them, and an offer suggesting otherwise is describing something else.

The national dailies and business press. The National Post and the Financial Post. Recognisable across the country, and the business title in particular carries real weight with professional readers.

The city dailies. The Toronto Sun, Vancouver Sun, The Province, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Sun. Genuine newspapers with local authority in markets where most Canadian business actually happens.

Regional papers and lifestyle titles. The Windsor Star, The Star Phoenix, the Leader Post, plus Elle Canada and Elle Quebec on the lifestyle side.

The thing that makes Canada different

Ownership is unusually concentrated. Postmedia owns the National Post, the Financial Post and most of the major city dailies. Content is regularly shared across those titles.

This matters when you are buying. A package of five Canadian papers may represent one publisher relationship rather than five independent editorial decisions. That is still real coverage on real newspapers, and it is not five separate publications choosing you.

Spreading across owners is worth more than spreading across titles. We explain the full picture in why so many Canadian papers share the same content.

Quebec is a separate market

Worth stating plainly because outside companies get this wrong.

Quebec operates primarily in French, with its own publications, its own audiences and its own media culture. La Presse and the Quebecor titles are not simply French versions of English Canadian papers.

If Quebec matters to you, the Montreal Gazette reaches the English-speaking business community there, and Elle Quebec reaches a French-language consumer audience. Neither is a substitute for genuine French-language business press, which is a different undertaking.

If Quebec is your main market, budget for it as a separate exercise rather than an add-on.

The routes in

Earned coverage

You have news, a journalist finds it worth covering, they write it. The most valuable coverage available and the only kind with genuine editorial independence behind it.

It needs a real story and either a relationship or a pitch strong enough to survive without one. It cannot be scheduled.

Placed features

A feature written to your brief, approved by you, placed through a publication's commercial channels. Predictable, permanent, indexed, and not a journalist independently deciding you are interesting.

That is the route we sell and we say so directly. Our Canadian network covers twenty titles.

Commentary and expert sourcing

Canadian business journalists need informed sources, particularly on tax, regulation, property and sector trends. Being findable and fast gets you quoted over time.

Free, slow, effective if you persist. Most people give up first.

What Canadian editors respond to

A Canadian angle. Not optional. Canadian operations, Canadian customers, Canadian market conditions or Canadian regulation. A story about your American business is not a Canadian story.

Specifics. Numbers, places, named outcomes. Claims about being a market leader get cut.

A reason it matters now. Not why your company is interesting in general.

Do you need to be a Canadian company?

No. The requirement is relevance, not incorporation.

Overseas companies get Canadian coverage regularly, usually because they are entering the market, hiring here, partnering with a Canadian company, or have something Canadian readers would find useful. Coverage timed to a market entry is genuinely valuable, because it gives Canadian prospects something to find.

What does not work is an overseas business with no Canadian connection hoping coverage manufactures one.

Building a sensible plan

Start with one recognisable name. The Financial Post if your buyers are business people, the National Post for general credibility.

Add the city that matters to you. Toronto if you are selling nationally, since it is the commercial centre. Vancouver, Calgary or Montreal if your market is regional.

Consider a second owner. Coverage outside the Postmedia group broadens what you actually reach.

Then make it findable. Coverage that does not appear when somebody searches your name is doing a fraction of its job.

What to avoid

Anyone guaranteeing The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star or CBC for a fee. Not available, from us or anyone.

Buying five titles without asking who owns them. You may be buying one relationship described as five.

Treating Quebec as an afterthought. Either address it properly or leave it out.

Coverage with no Canadian angle. It reads as filler, because it is.

The short version

Canada's national broadcast and prestige tier is earned only. Its national business press is reachable and genuinely valuable. Its city dailies are real newspapers with local authority. Most of them share one owner.

Work out whether your buyers are national or in one city, then buy accordingly.

And ask how many publishers are in the package, not how many titles.

Our Canada page lists all twenty publications and says plainly which belong to the same group. Get in touch if you want to talk it through.