In their drive to maximize profits, Canadian publishers abandoned partisan politics and adopted sensationalistic journalism to build audiences for advertisers. From Politics to Profit analyses the decisive period in which newspapers changed in content and appearance as the number of "fluff" pieces increased and hard news stories decreased, headlines became larger, prose became simpler, and illustrations and photographs became more abundant.

Minko Sotiron highlights the increasingly powerful role of the press barons - Lord Atholstan, John Ross Robertson, Joseph Atkinson, Walter Nichol, Clifford Sifton, and the Southam family. He provides a case study of the first Canadian newspaper chain, which formed the basis for modern mass communication empires, and shows how the Southams contributed to the disappearance of independent newspapers in Canada.