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The Toronto Star has announced that its tablet app Star Touch, which it hailed as a revolutionary way for readers to get their news when it was launched less than two years ago, will cease to exist on Aug. 1.

The newspaper said it would lay off 29 full-time and one part-time employee. Among those laid off are 17 unionized content editors, production editors and designers.

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“It’s a brutal day,” said Jim Rankin, a Toronto Star journalist who spoke Monday in his capacity as chair of the Toronto Star unit at Unifor 87-M, a union for employees at the Star.

In 2015, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper took a bold step into what it thought would be the future of written journalism, launching the app, “packed with videos, photographs and interactive graphics,” using software it bought from the Montreal newspaper La Presse.

Torstar poured $11 million into the launch in its first year, and hired 70 people to produce the product.