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Tonight’s newsletter leads with the journalistic version of the Shakespearean question: what’s in a name?
My reason for asking is the renaming of the largest English daily newspaper in Quebec, formerly known as the Montreal Gazette.
Late last year, the paper rebranded itself as simply The Gazette. To complete the nod to nostalgia, the paper brought back its historic gothic font for the logo atop its printed paper and website, a change acknowledged on its front page as a back-to-the-future play.
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Late last year, the Montreal Gazette rebranded itself as simply The Gazette. (The Gazette)
At one level, the change is much ado about nothing. One of oldest newspapers in North America, the paper founded in 1778 has always been in Montreal and always called The Gazette.
In 2014, Postmedia moved to a unified style for its broadsheets across the country, which led to a new-look logo of a blue square that housed both Montreal and Gazette in the top corner.
The change back to the old banner “is more than symbolic, and serves as a powerful reminder that although the journalism of today is different than in generations past — and even though we tell stories using digital tools that would never have been imaginable in the 18th century — our high standards and promise to seek the truth remain the same,’’ editor-in-chief Lenie Lucci proclaimed in waving the retro banner.
Despite the fanfare, little else changes at a newspaper that, sadly, is a shell of its former glorious self. Not surprisingly, the rebranding saw commentors drawing on Titanic references as regards arrangement of deck chairs.
But at another level, the name game speaks to the folly of Postmedia’s strategy to homogenize its broadsheets.
You start by making them all look the same, regardless of their locale and their own proud histories. Then you move to have them all take their marching orders from one corporate HQ. In the process, you downgrade not only the local content, but also the local character, so that one hollowed-out-cookie-cutter paper doesn’t look much different from the next.
In the 151-year history of this paper, we have had a few name variations. We began as the Manitoba Free Press and became the Winnipeg Free Press in 1931. To mark our sesquicentennial, we adjusted our branding to reflect how most people refer to us: The Free Press. Given the times we live in, tying our name to the value of a free press seemed the right thing to do.
We have had a few name variations over our 151-year history. (Mike Aporius / Winnipeg Free Press files)
Throughout, we’ve always remained true to the city and province we serve by being rooted here with our readership.
Manitobans decide what is news. Manitobans decide what our front page looks like. And if we, here in Winnipeg, want to update our brand and our look, then we do it – not someone in an office in some faraway city.
I wish The Gazette the best of luck with its new/old name, because Montreal deserves a great newspaper whose history is tied to that city.
Still, I worry that which now we call The Gazette by any other name, still would not smell so sweet.
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