Ottawa Newspapers

Q85: Will either the Ottawa Citizen or the Ottawa Sun stop publishing by the end of 2016?
Yes: 40%
No: 60%
(A transition to a non-print or free newspaper counts.  A merger of the two newspapers (or a merger of one of them with another newspaper) counts.  A temporary suspension of publishing does not count.  A reduction in the publication days counts, as long as the paper is no longer published on the majority of days it is currently published on.  For example, reducing the Sun to a Sunday-only paper counts.)

Postmedia, the owner of the Ottawa Citizen, recently received Competition Bureau approval for its purchase of Sun Media, the owner of the Ottawa Sun.  Newspapers have been generally struggling in recent years due to digital competition and decreasing advertising revenue.  In the US, several major newspapers have closed down.  The merger of Postmedia and Sun Media makes a closure of either the Sun or the Citizen more plausible (because the other will benefit from the reduced competition).  Ottawa is a relatively small newspaper market to have two daily papers.  The President of Postmedia, Paul Godfrey, has indicated that there are no immediate plans to close any papers.

I am not optimistic about the long term fate of the Citizen and Sun.  However, they may survive for quite a while; I think it will take about 3 years on average for one of them to stop publishing.  This corresponds to about 40% odds before the end of 2016.