Yesterday was the inaugural edition of Star P.M., a downloadable version of The Toronto Star which is available daily after 3:30 p.m (4:15 for the final edition with market updates). You can register to receive the ‘paper’ via email as soon as it becomes available and it comes as PDF which prints out nicely on letter sized paper.

In an age where the end of print media as we know it is predicted, The Star continues to do an admirable job of staying ahead. Its website is user friendly and updated frequently, for a good start. It also boasts RSS feeds and the option of tagging articles to your Del.icio.us favourites. On top of that, many of its reporters are also bloggers and podcasters. The refreshing thing about their blogs is that they are not regurgitation of the article pubished by that author. The blog posts either expand on their written thoughts or talk about something entirely different within their area of expertise.

I think Star P.M. will only build on their momentum. I remember when the daily paper was delivered in the afternoon and it has many benefits. Reading the paper in the morning really only catches you up on the day before. You really aren’t on top of the world news unless you check online regularly or keep CP24 or CFRB-AM (or any other news oriented station) running in the background. Star P.M. allows you to catch up everything that happened while you were at work. All in a nice little package and at very little cost to Torstar.

It’s brilliant and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other dailies around the world follow suit.