Frequently Asked Questions
Toronto Star printed newspaper:
Can we help you with stories and photos printed in the newspaper?
Can we help you with newspaper advertising?
Can we help you with newspaper home delivery?
Can we help you with some other information about the newspaper?
Toronto Star website (thestar.com):
Can we help you with stories and photos online?
Can we help you with online advertising?
Can we help you with an email newsletter?
Can we help you with our RSS feed?
Can we help you find something on thestar.com website?
Are you having a technical problem with thestar.com website?
If the information you need is not on this page, contact the webmaster and your inquiry will be directed to the most appropriate person upon receipt. If you know which department you need to contact, you will get faster service by contacting them directly via our Contact Us page.
Help with newspaper stories and photos
How do I find an article that previously appeared in the newspaper?
Every article written by Star staff going back to Jan. 1, 1985 is available in our online text-only database, which can be searched here. There is a small fee to purchase previously published stories, but before selecting, you can view headlines and summaries free of charge. Please note: Stories from wire services (e.g. AP, The Canadian Press, AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg), stories by freelance writers, death notices, births, advertising and photographs are not included in this database.
Many, although not all, of the articles that appear in the newspaper are also published online. If the article was published within the last 14 days, you can use our website search engine, near the top of this page, to find it. You can also browse the previous seven days of online stories. Just click the "Today's Toronto Star" link at the top of any page, then click the appropriate day you would like to look through.
For a nominal fee you can access the Toronto Star Pages of the Past, our online archive containing millions of pages as they actually appeared, from 2004 going back to Nov. 3, 1892. Pages of the Past contains all stories and photos as well as ads, birth and death notices, classified ads, stock tables, sports statistic, movie listings and so on. To use this service you will need a valid credit card to perform this secure transaction. Click here to begin your search. Pages of the Past is also available at these libraries for free.
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How can I buy a reprint of a photo that appeared in the paper?
You can purchase a print, or license a copy of photographs taken by a staff photographer and published in the Toronto Star during the past 100 years. Please note: We cannot sell wire service (e.g. The Canadian Press, AP, Getty, Reuters, LDPImages) or freelance photographers' images. Please visit our Photo & Page Sales site to browse more than 37,000 images, call Torstar Syndication Services at 416-869-4998, or email photosales@thestar.ca.
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How do I get permission to reprint an article?
To request reprint permission for an article currently available on www.thestar.com, please click on links that look like this : [
License this article] (found in a grey box near the top of Toronto Star staff-written articles). For articles or photos not available on www.thestar.com, please contact Torstar Syndication Services for reprint and licensing information by email at licensing@thestar.ca.
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How do I send a letter to the editor?
Instructions for sending letters to the editor or letters to the sports editor can be found in the editorial/newsroom section of our "Contact Us" page.
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How do I comment about something I think is inaccurate or unfair in the paper?
You can contact the Star's Bureau of Accuracy and Public Editor, Kathy English, by email at publiced@thestar.ca, by phone at 416-869-4949 or by fax at 416-869-4322.
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How do I submit a news tip or news release to the Star?
Instructions for sending us news tips or press releases can be found in the editorial/newsroom section of our "Contact Us" page.
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How do I submit an article to the newspaper?
Instructions for submitting an article to the newspaper can be found in the editorial/newsroom section of our "Contact Us" page.
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Help with newspaper advertising
How do I place an ad in the Star?
To place a classified ad in the newspaper, please visit starclassifieds.com. You may also call Star Classifieds at 416-777-7777, toll-free at 1-800-268-8323 or email starad@thestar.ca.
For information on display ads, please visit our Advertising Sales Media Kit section.
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Help with home delivery of the newspaper
How do I subscribe to the newspaper?
How do I suspend delivery of my newspaper when I go on vacation?
What do I do when my paper is missing or arrives late?
Our circulation department will be pleased to help you. For phone numbers, hours of service and further information, visit the circulation/home delivery section on our "contact us" page or email circmail@thestar.ca. If you prefer, you can also use our online subscriber self-service.
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How can I get a back issue of the Toronto Star?
The last month's issues are available for purchase in person or by mail order. For cost and contact information, visit the circulation/home delivery section on our "contact us" page or email singlecopy@thestar.ca for further information.
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Other frequently-asked questions about the Star newspaper
What is your address and phone number?
How do I reach someone at the Star?
General inquiries and correspondence can be sent to:
TORONTO STAR
1 YONGE ST
TORONTO ON
M5E 1E6
The main telephone number is 416-367-2000.
For specific departments, please see our Contact Us page. Most Star staff members can be reached by email. In most cases, the email address is the person's first initial and first six letters of the last name followed by "@thestar.ca", e.g. APerson@thestar.ca.
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How do I apply for a job or internship at the Star?
For employment opportunities, please visit our online careers section.
The Star's editorial department offers internships to a number of journalists for reporting, editing and photography positions. For information on how to apply, please visit the Internships page.
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What ink and paper do you use to print the Star?
We use soya-based ink for our colours and mineral-based ink for the black. Our newsprint is supplied from three different mills: Kruger Newsprint Co. in Trois-Rivières, Que., Tembec Newsprint Co. in Kapuskasing, Ont. and Abitibi in Thorold, Ont. Kruger and Tembec newsprint is a minimum of 40-per-cent recycled newsprint and Abitibi Thorold is 100-per-cent recycled newsprint.
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Help with online stories and photos
When is thestar.com website updated?
Thestar.com is committed to providing up-to-the-minute news and information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The day's news is posted beginning at 4:30 a.m. (EST) and is updated as news happens. Every time an article is added to thestar.com, the posting time is recorded. News and information is provided by Star journalists, thestar.com editors, newswires and a variety of other sources.
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What content from the newspaper is posted online?
The Toronto Star uses only a portion of its daily editorial content for online purposes. We publish most stories that appear on the front page of the paper, plus many of our main stories and pictures but we do not publish every article from the Star online. For example, we do not have online rights for stories, photos and cartoons from various news services, agencies and freelancers such as Agence France Press, Bloomberg, Cox news services, Getty Images, some LDPImages, Dusan and most printed crosswords and comics. Classified ads in the newspaper appear on http://www.thestar.com/classifieds. Meanwhile, thestar.com website has video from staff, The Canadian Press and AP, podcasts and blogs, different comics and puzzles and other material that does not appear in the newspaper. The web and print are complementary, but different, media.
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How do I find an article that previously appeared on thestar.com?
For the previous online stories follow the Timeline View link below our navigation and you will see the news from today, yesterday, and anything older.
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Can I get the Star in a different format than a printed newspaper or website?
The Star is available in the following formats:
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Help with online advertising
How do I place a classified ad online?
Star classified ads are located at http://www.thestar.com/classifieds, where you can place your ad both in the classified section of the newspaper and online. Also check the helpful frequently-asked questions pages http://www.thestar.com/classifieds/help.
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How do I place banner advertising online?
For full details on placing online advertising, scroll to the grey box at the bottom of most web pages on this site, and beside "Advertise With Us" click Online Advertising.
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Help with email newsletters
How do I get your news updates in my email?
We have several email newsletters to choose from, including daily headlines, daily sports headlines, weekly headlines and weekly movie times. You can subscribe free to each of these by clicking the "More" button in the main navigation and under the "Stay Up To Date" category then Newsletters. Not signed up yet? Complete this form.
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Why haven't I received my Star P.M.?
Star P.M. has been discontinued.
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How do I cancel my email newsletter?
How do I suspend delivery of my newsletter when I go on vacation?
To unsubscribe from one of our newsletters, click the "More" button on the main navigation and under the "Stay Up To Date" category click "Newsletters" then click "Unsubscribe".
We do not have a way to temporarily unsubscribe from our newsletters. You will need to unsubscribe and then resubscribe when you wish to restart the service. You can resubscribe free to each of these by clicking the "More" button in the main navigation and under the "Stay Up To Date" category then "Newsletters".
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Why didn't my newsletter come today?
When this happens, the usual cause is an over-eager spam filter, either on your email inbox or at your Internet service provider's (ISP) server. Make sure you allow incoming email from online_editor@thestar.ca by adding that address to your email address book. It may help bypass any spam filter. Also check that you don't have any spam filter rules that may be flagging the newsletter as spam. Also check with your ISP or, if you are using an email address at your workplace, check with your technical department and see if they are blocking the email from coming through.
From time to time we have had problems with Yahoo! and Rogers Yahoo! email customers not receiving the newsletter. This turns out to be a known problem with the Yahoo! email service, which Rogers packages as part of their service. You can find details here.
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Help with RSS online
What is RSS?
Our RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, feeds are XML code written to provide content summaries of thestar.com news. An RSS channel consists of a list of items, each of which contains a headline, first sentence or two of the article, and a link to a web page on thestar.com. For more details, read How to use RSS and MyYahoo!
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Help finding your way around the website
Why can't I find the obituaries on your website?
It's possible you want the death notices (classified ads) and not obituaries (news stories). Death notices are linked on the home page. From the home page, scroll halfway down the page to just below the top stories. On the left side, you'll see a light blue bar with "NOTICES: DEATHS | BIRTHS/ADOPTIONS | IN MEMORIAMS" in it. Clicking the deaths link will get you the page you are looking for. Type the last name in the search box, then click the "search for ads" button. Death notices are kept online for a year. If it is the obituaries you were looking for, they are available here in our news section.
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Why can't I find my favourite columnist on your website?
To find Star columnists, from the home page you would click "Columns", under our logo, then use the "Columnist Finder" tool which allows you to search by category or columnist. This page takes you to the most recent columns. You can also bookmark this page if you wish.
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Why can't I find the section I am looking for on your website?
Most features are found in the same area online as you would find them in the newspaper. However, if you still can't find the section you are looking for, it may be easier for you to use our site map, which is similar to the index in the printed newspaper.
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How can I find my a specific story on your website?
Most articles are kept on the website for two weeks. To search two week's worth of Toronto Star articles, please use the 14-day search engine located near the top right corner of this page (and most pages of our website). The last seven days' worth of articles can also be browsed; just click Today's Toronto Star (near the top left corner of most pages of our website), then on the page that comes up, click the day of the week you want. You can also browse columns, which are kept online three months and obituaries, which are kept for several years.
For older articles (1985 to present), please go to the ProQuest Archives section and follow the instructions, or you can also choose Pages of the Past (1892–2004), which has articles, photos and ads. There is a fee for both these services, however, Pages of the Past is available free at these libraries.
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Help with technical problems with thestar.com
What software do I need to make sure all the features on your website work for me?
In general we suggest you keep your software as up-to-date as possible. It's possible installing a newer version of the software listed below will solve any problems you may be experiencing. All of the software needed to view our site is free of charge; just click the links to download it.
- We recommend using the Mozilla Firefox 2 web browser. Apple Safari 3 and Netscape Navigator 9 should also work fine on both PCs and Macs, as should Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows. However, older versions of web browsers may have problems. Note that various parts of our site make use of cookies. Check to see make sure you have cookies turned on in your browser.
- We use a lot of Acrobat PDF documents on our website, for special graphics, special sections and crosswords. To view them, you will need Adobe Reader 5 or newer. (Also, if you happen to use McAfee's anti-virus software, you may see Adobe Reader pop up and say, "There was an error processing this page. There was a problem reading this document." Upgrading to version 7.1 (or newer) of the McAfee software will correct this issue.)
- Some videos and puzzles on our website require the Adobe Flash Player plug-in. A few videos on our website require the Apple QuickTime 7 plug-in. Another good option is VideoLAN VLC media player.
- To listen to podcasts, you will need software that plays MP3s, such as Apple ITunes or Nullsoft Winamp.
- Some features of our website require Sun Microsystems Java or Javascript to be enabled. (Mac users should just keep their operating system up to date, since it includes this software.)
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Why do I keep getting old stories on your website -- isn't it being updated?
The pages and stories are being updated, but due to "caching" issues, you may see the old pages and stories. (Web browsers don't just view web pages; they save them to your hard drive in their "cache" to make the page load faster next time you visit. You should clear this cache regularly.) Here are things you can try as workarounds:
- Holding down the shift key and clicking the reload button on your browser usually brings up the latest version of the page.
- Your browser's settings include a setting for cache size. Setting this to zero may help.
- We've found that often, though not always, the Firefox browser works better with the website than Internet Explorer.
- Trying again in a few minutes generally resolves the problem.
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Why is your website so slow?
Why does your website keep crashing my computer?
Why does your website keep giving me an error message?
Unfortunately, there is no easy solution to this problem because the answer is different for everyone. Without more details, we have no way of knowing which, if any of these will help you, but each one of them has helped a few of our readers.
- We recommend using the free Firefox web browser. However, if you do use Firefox, and have also installed any Firefox Add-ons, some can cause a problem. To check:
- In the Tools menu, select "Clear Private Data" to clear the cache, history and cookies; then close all Firefox windows.
- In Windows, go to Start > Programs > Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)
- When the popup window lets you choose, please choose "Disable all add-ons", then click the "restart" button
- When Firefox has restarted, please try go to thestar.com to see if Firefox crashes or not.
- If it has not crashed, that's good. Then try to enable the add-ons one by one (to do this, go to Tools > Add-ons in Firefox) to find which add-on causes the browser to crash when visiting thestar.com. (This may fix any browser problems you may have with other sites, too.)
- If you still use Internet Explorer 6, here is a recommendation from our technical team that may help: Microsoft released a critical update (MS06-042) that is causing Internet Explorer 6 to crash on some sites. If the users are having problems browsing from work, it's possible that this update was applied to their machines at work but not at home, or vice-versa in the reverse case. For details, go here. According to the article, Microsoft recommends turning off HTTP 1.1 in IE. You can do this by going to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > HTTP 1.1 Settings and unchecking the "Use HTTP 1.1" option. (A better option would be to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.)
- Please make sure your software is kept up to date (see our site requirements above for details.) We've also had reports from some users that installing all their Windows patches and updating their anti-virus software also solved the problem. Try turning off your anti-virus software temporarily to see if the site performance improves; if it does, adjust the settings of your anti-virus software, or upgrade it.
- If you have any pop-up ad blockers, they can cause this problem. We do not use pop-up advertising, however, our video players do pop up in a separate window. This involves use of Java/Javascript, which is what pop-up ad blockers watch out for, so this can be a problem. Try temporarily disabling the pop-up ad blocker to see if that resolves the issue. Also, ensure that Java is enabled in your web browser's Internet Options.
- Are you trying to access our website from work, or do you have a personal firewall at home? If so, there may be firewall issues and your technical support people can help you. Try temporarily turning the firewall off and see if the site becomes any faster; if it does, the firewall may have to be adjusted.
- If you are a Rogers customer, most often this problem is caused by using the Rogers proxy server and the fix is to disable it. If you are using Internet Explorer as your web browser, select Tools, Internet Options, Connections then LAN Settings. Make sure none of the boxes are checked, then click "OK" until you return to your browser. Shut down and restart Internet Explorer and your problem will most likely be solved.
- If you are unable to access your site from an older computer at home but have no problem accessing it from work, most often this is caused by an incorrect configuration of TCP/IP. If you are using an IP address that begins with 192.168, ensure that the netmask is set to 255.255.255.0. To verify your IP settings in Windows 9x/ME, click on Start, Run and key in WINIPCFG then press the key. From the drop down box, select your PC's ethernet adapter and verify your IP address and netmask. Under Windows 2000/XP, verify your IP settings by clicking Start, Run and key in CMD then press the key. This will open a command prompt window. In this window, key in IPCONFIG /ALL and your IP settings will be listed.
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Why do I keep getting a "bad referrer" error when trying to submit a form?
This error can be caused by a couple of different things:
- One is if you have saved the page to your hard drive, then tried to submit the information, the error will result. That's because, for security purposes, our server will check, "Who is calling me?" (in other words, the "referrer"). The referrer has to be our website domain (not someone's hard drive), otherwise the server will reject the request. Why we do this? Because if we don't check the referrer, any other sites can use our form like an email script to send spam to the public. To resolve this, submit your information directly into our website.
- Another way this error may arise is in the web browser's security settings. Some people have their browser security level setting very high. In that case as well, the browser won't disclose the "referrer" to our server and the error would be generated because our server doesn't know where the request is coming from. You may have to lower your browser's security settings to resolve this.
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Why can't I get the crosswords on your website to work?
The online crosswords are supplied to us by independent outside companies and the puzzles actually reside on their websites, thus you will need to contact them for further assistance. Before you do, make sure your software is up to date, as per the requirements listed on our crosswords page. Their contact information is also found on that page.
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Why can't I get the investor tools on your website to work?
The investor tools are supplied to us by Morningstar, an independent outside company, and the tools actually reside on their website. Thus you will need to contact Morningstar client relations for assistance with the new portfolio manager at 416-489-7074 ext. 336 or support@morningstar.ca.
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Why can't I get the TV listings on your website to work?
The TV listings are provided to us by Tribune Media Services, an independent third party, and are actually on their server. Thus, you would have to contact them for further information. Their frequently-asked questions page and "submit feedback" page is here.
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Why can't I get the lottery listings on your website to work?
The lottery listings are provided to us by Tinbu, LLC, an independent third party, and are actually on their server. We don't have any input as to how their service operates, thus, you would have to contact them for further information. Their "contact us" page is here.
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None of the above helped me. What else can I check?
If none of the above solutions have worked for you, or if you have found a problem with the website and want to report it, please contact us.
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More help and frequently-asked questions (faq) pages
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