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Winnipeg Tribune
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The Winnipeg Tribune was a metropolitan daily newspaper serving Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada from January 28, 1890 to August 27, 1980. The paper was founded by R.L. Richardson and D.L. McIntyre who acquired the press and premises of the old Winnipeg Sun newspaper. It was often viewed as a liberal newspaper focused on local news and events. The paper was owned by Southam Inc at the time of its demise.
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Encyclopedia
The Winnipeg Tribune was a metropolitan daily newspaper serving Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada from January 28, 1890 to August 27, 1980. The paper was founded by R.L. Richardson and D.L. McIntyre who acquired the press and premises of the old Winnipeg Sun newspaper. It was often viewed as a liberal newspaper focused on local news and events. The paper was owned by Southam Inc at the time of its demise. It was frequently referred to as The Trib.
History
1900–1950
During the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919, the newspaper sided with the Citizens' Committee of 1000, declaring, "Winnipeg is now under the Soviet system of government."
Southam bought the paper in 1920.
1960s
On Friday, September 5, 1969 the Trib replaced its small user-folded tv listings printed on yellow paper with a glossy-covered 32-page booklet called TV Times. The tv magazine was also featured in the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette.
1970s
On Sunday, June 21, 1970 a new Centrex telephone system was installed for advertisers and subscribers to use when calling. This allowed direct dialing without requiring the person to first contact the switchboard operator.
By the mid-1970s the Trib's daily circulation figures began to slip to 70,000, and was falling. The Southam chain decided to totally redesign the paper. The new design made its debut on September 6, 1975. Although the offset press was capable of printing a 112-page newspaper, the September 6 edition was 124-pages, including the 48-page Trib Classifieds. This forced the press operators to print the Trib Lifestyle section separately. Within a few months, The Trib's circulation gained 30,000 paid readers, which made the upgrade a success.
A few days before the design change, on September 1st, they made all private sale listings in the Trib Classified free in the form of a Want-Ad Free-for-All promotion.
In response to fierce competition between the Winnipeg Free Press and Winnipeg Tribune in the late 1970s, the Trib tried to attract more subscribers by offering Free Classified Ads.
In March 1979, they had bought some space atop the Casa Loma building (Portage Avenue & Sherbrook Street) to hold Winnipeg's largest billboard. The sign read "[logo] With the Trib, it's Winnipeg. First." The billboard was designed by the advertising firm Martel-Stewart Ltd. and was larger than any billboard seen in Winnipeg ever, and the largest in all of Western Canada. It measured 23 feet tall by 60 feet wide, and had 4,200 light bulbs. The billboard space had previously been used by Export A cigarettes as far back as 1959.
When Southam's weekend magazine The Canadian merged with FP Newspapers' Weekend, The Trib decided to differentiate itself from the Free Press by creating the locally written tabloid, Trib Magazine started November 24, 1979.
The trademark name is now owned by the Tribunes old rival, the Winnipeg Free Press.
The Tribune Closes
On August 27, 1980, without warning, the Tribune was abruptly closed and 375 people were out of work. Gene Telpner joked that he had just gotten new drapes and furniture. Val Werier, who was with the Trib for 35 years, said it was a shocking moment. But people in the pressroom knew something was coming because management had stopped the presses that morning, something they did rarely, and only for major events.
Shockwaves moved through the community also, with many Winnipeggers angry about losing a competing public voice.
Worse yet, the Trib's closure happened at the same time as the closing of the Ottawa Journal. In 1980, the Ottawa Journal had been purchased by Thomson Newspapers and was closed on August 26, 1980. This left Southam's Ottawa Citizen as the only major newspaper in Ottawa, and the Thompsons' Winnipeg Free Press the only major newspaper in Winnipeg.
The Royal Commission on Newspapers, popularly known as the [Kent Commission], was created in 1980 in response to allegations of collusion following the same-day closings of the Thomson-owned Ottawa Journal and the Southam-owned Winnipeg Tribune.
The last issue of the Trib, with the headline "It's Been 90 Great Years", remains a collector's item to this day.
After The Closing
A number of employees from the Tribune later helped form the Winnipeg Sun.
The University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections holds a collection of over 500 000 photographs, 250 000 newspaper clippings arranged into morgue files and microfilm copies of the newspaper.
In 1994 the Lion's Club announced their intention to build an 18-storey apartment tower on the old Winnipeg Tribune site. To be called Tribune Towers, it would be for seniors 55+, and contain 132 suites. There would have been skywalk connections to the Millennium Library. However something had stopped this plan from following through, and the project was cancelled.
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