John Cruickshank, head of Canada's largest circulation newspaper, the Toronto Star, is leaving his post on May 4, the paper announced Wednesday. David Holland, president of the newspaper's parent company Torstar, will step in for an unspecified interim period.
"Today, I am announcing that I'm ready to leave scaling new journalistic heights to someone with less arthritic limbs and more recently-acquired tools and skills," Cruickshank said in a statement.
Before joining the Toronto Star in 2009, the 62-year-old former reporter held several senior management positions at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Globe and Mail and the Chicago-Sun Times when it was part of disgraced media mogul Conrad Black's Hollinger group.
Since his arrival at the Star, the Canadian media landscape has undergone major changes amid changing reader and advertising habits. Part of the Star's response was to launch a tablet version of the broadsheet last fall, but growth of the digital version has been slower than hoped.