Why government efforts to bolster local media matter

In the August issue of Saltscapes, you may have noticed a small black and white photo on page 17. It’s one that hits close to home, showing retired New Brunswick publisher Dave Cadogan and his team celebrating a big win at an annual Canadian Community Newspaper Conference — a little slice of Canadiana, a glimpse of the golden days of community journalism, reflecting what our country is losing as we witness the slow death of our newsrooms.

The photo predates my time as a journalist, but when I entered the scene in the early 1990s, community newspapers were still vibrant publications with robust advertising sales and ample page counts.

But it wasn’t long into my career that our industry felt the first vibrations of disaster. Bit by bit, corporate publishing groups gobbled up small entrepreneurial papers. While it might not seem like a monumental shift, the annual national conference that for decades was as much a family reunion and one big hug for

Canadian community publishers and their kids became a shadow of its former self, losing its soul to big media and the bigger bully: the internet. Moments like the Cadogan team celebration have never looked quite the same.

It will be too late for many media organizations, but the only way to restore journalism and have a healthy news ecosystem in Canada is to regulate the Goliaths that have been stealing our content and choking our life-giving ad revenue.

The federal government’s recent Online News Act (Bill C-18) is long overdue, drawing a much-needed line in the sand and pulling millions of dollars of advertising out of Facebook and Instagram, and others may follow suit. The question is: will they direct that money to Canadian-owned media who employ the journalists seeking out a livelihood and writing the stories that matter to our communities?

Bill C-18 gives me hope. Consumers of online news need to remember that Meta and Google’s link blocking does not mean that your news has disappeared. Urge your communities to keep supporting local media and trusted journalism, today and into the future.

Crystal Murray, President