Canadian Journalism Has Been Devastated

 

How many people have you heard say that the reason they subscribe to a newspaper now is because they read the flyers for sales?

In that regard with the money saved at store sales, that probably more than covers than the cost of the subscription. That said, many newspapers have cut their Sunday and Monday editions so the comparison becomes a bit tenuous.

How bad is the situation in Canadian journalism? Gruesome. We’ve seen recently large layoffs at Bell Media and Rogers Communications. And below, you see the carnage that has taken place in print and its related website properties.

Big Tech Should Pay For News: POLL

The mess in the journalism business is such that Nordstar (the parent company of the Toronto Star) and Postmedia, once bitter business and political enemies, tried and failed to merge in an effort to create economies of scale. The effort in itself shows the desperate situation of publishing in this country. And the merger didn’t work.

We don’t need books, newspapers and broadcast but we do need to find a method by which we can preserve and improve the journalism and information they provide in a model that’s profitable and has the ability to grow.

That is the greatest question facing journalism today. Not the journalism itself, but a way to get that information to people fast, conveniently and in a way that is profitable. Journalism is vital in so many ways but especially to democracy. With no journalism, how can there be a working democracy? How can there be an informed discussion of public policy? Where can you get the flyers?

Below is a background segment on the unsuccessful Nordstar-Postmedia merger from the Globe and Mail. It’s the tale of the tape and it’s not pretty:

Between 2017 and 2022, Postmedia shed more than 1,200 full-time employees while revenue fell 39 per cent to $458-million. In 2020, Postmedia shut down 15 community newspapers in Manitoba and Ontario, and earlier this year shifted a dozen Alberta titles to a digital-only format. Management also announced cuts to 11 per cent of the company’s 650 editorial employees.

CBC’s Chianello Departs Ottawa City Hall

The parent company of the Toronto Star has similarly slimmed down over the years. The firm sold its Harlequin book publishing division in 2014, spent millions on an unsuccessful tablet app, outsourced printing operations, sold real estate, and shut down a number of newspapers. The company struck a deal with Postmedia in 2017 to swap 41 newspapers only for both publishers to shutter most of them in a cost-savings gambit. The Competition Bureau investigated the transaction but closed its probe in 2021 without taking further action.

The number of unionized employees at the Toronto Star dropped from 610 in 2009 to 178 last year, while the Hamilton Spectator has gone from 261 to 86 employees, according to Unifor, the largest media union in Canada.

Unfortunately the full Globe story is behind a pay wall.

Ken Gray

Digital image on front created by AI generator DALL-E.

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1 Response

  1. Been There says:

    The Globe story is behind a pay wall. If they are really interested in public opinion and perhaps picking up some new subscribers with the sympathy vote why do that?

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