Toronto — Pink Triangle Press (PTP), Canada’s leading gay and lesbian publisher, today announced a major strategic re-positioning to an all-digital publishing company. As a result, next month PTP will close print editions of the Xtra gay and lesbian community newspapers in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.
PTP will focus on developing its journalism website DailyXtra.com and gay adult dating website Squirt.org. The all-digital direction is a result of an eight-month strategic assessment process senior management at PTP began in spring 2014.
The final issues of Xtra Vancouver and Xtra Ottawa will appear on streets on February 12, 2015. The Toronto edition of Xtra will close on the newspaper’s 31st anniversary; final issue on streets on February 19, 2015.
“For most of the past year our management team worked with external advisors to arrive at an answer to this question: How can we best use our resources to continue to promote sexual freedom in a financially sustainable manner? We have concluded that a complete transition to digital media offers the best opportunity to continue to engage our audiences over the long term,” says Ken Popert, Executive Director and President of PTP.
Popert says the move to all-digital journalism will bring with it significant benefits: a wider audience for PTP’s message; greater currency; more effective advocacy; and, global news combined with local action.
As part of its revised strategy, the company is also launching a new Social Sponsorship program to offer a strong, continued presence on the ground in its communities and to open up the Daily Xtra digital space in new ways to organizations and audiences, encouraging community involvement and enhancing PTP’s journalism as a social experience. The program is in an initial testing phase in the Toronto market.
“We have a good track record of online engagement through Daily Xtra and other channels like YouTube,” says David Walberg, CEO of Digital Media at PTP. “Most of our revenues already come through digital membership sales in the adult dating space, where we’ve had great success building a growing online community.”
“We are looking to hone our journalism focus and develop a number of our unique strengths,” says Walberg. “We have a particularly strong relationship with our core local communities. Our editorial voice is also unique, in that we have consistently championed sexual freedom and freedom of expression. We are one of very few entities in the world producing gay and lesbian video journalism. We are also committed to exploring an international role for the Press over the next few years.”
“PTP has survived for more than four decades because it has not been afraid to innovate in the way we earn our money and deliver our message. Over the years, Xtra took over from The Body Politic, Squirt replaced Cruiseline and DailyXtra.com supplanted Xtra.ca,” says Popert.
The newspaper closures will result next month in a staff reduction of 12 full-time employees from the company’s publishing and administration divisions. As a digital publisher, PTP will go on to employ 57 people in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.
