Toronto Star Makes the News New Again

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Sept. 15, 2015) - The Toronto Star today launches Star Touch, an innovative and fully interactive news app designed for tablets.

Free every day and delivered to your iPad by 5:30 a.m., Star Touch allows readers to experience new layers to city, world, sports, business and entertainment news through exclusive content and surprising interactive touchpoints.

Star Touch brings stories to life with photo galleries, maps, videos, audio clips, fact boxes and more - all with a simple touch of a finger. In short, Star Touch makes the news new again.

"We're excited about the launch of Star Touch," John Cruickshank, publisher of the Toronto Star and president of Star Media Group, said. "We've dramatically changed storytelling - combining the award-winning journalism of the Star with a sense of fun and entertainment."

"Star Touch gives us the greatest opportunity in generations to showcase stories in interactive ways that appeal to broad, highly-engaged young audiences," he added.

With Star Touch, readers will be able to expand photo galleries and video to full-screen, tap into live news and weather, interact with statistical information, adjust type size and background, explore relevant links to the web and engage with advertisements.

Weekly sections are designed around special interests, from money management to finding a new car, searching for a new home, planning a holiday or gaining inspiration from interesting people:

• Tuesday - Smart Money
• Friday - Wheels
• Saturday - Properties
• Saturday - Destinations
• Saturday - Profile, with great stories of seemingly ordinary people
• Sunday - Tech
• Sunday - Book-ish

And to wind down, readers can look to Breathe, a unique section with engaging themes for each day of the week:

• Monday - Fitness
• Tuesday - Love, Etc.
• Wednesday - Feast
• Thursday - Fashion (brought to you by The Kit)
• Friday - Home
• Saturday - The Good Life
• Sunday - Family

As well, daily reader favourites include a crossword and horoscope.

In the coming days and weeks, Star Touch readers can look forward to in-depth coverage on the Toronto International Film Festival, the Toronto Blue Jays' drive for the World Series, the federal election and the continuing strife in the Middle East.

Star Touch is based on La Presse+, the free iPad app launched in 2013 by the Montreal-based French-language daily newspaper La Presse. More than 460,000 people now read La Presse+ every week, according to an independent survey. More than half of its readers are in the 25-to-54 age range.

The Star Touch app is available for free download on iPad or at www.AppStore.com/StarTouch. The Star Touch app will be available on Android tablets later this fall.

About the Toronto Star:

The Toronto Star, founded in 1892, is read in print and online (www.thestar.com) by approximately 3 million readers every week. The Toronto Star is a division of Star Media Group, which includes Toronto.com, Torstar Syndication Services and The Kit, a fashion and beauty publication. Star Media Group also includes the Metro free daily newspapers in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax and Winnipeg and the jointly-owned Chinese language newspaper Sing Tao. Star Media Group is a division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, which is a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation.