{"id":266028,"date":"2018-03-07T11:30:40","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T16:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/can-feds-spend-wisely-local-journalism\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T22:00:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T02:00:56","slug":"can-feds-spend-wisely-local-journalism","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2018\/03\/can-feds-spend-wisely-local-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"How can the feds spend wisely on local journalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are struggling to hear the applause that greeted the federal government\u2019s soup\u00e7on of support for Canadian journalism in last week\u2019s federal budget<\/a> \u2014 well, that\u2019s what one hand clapping sounds like. No one is putting two hands together for what, so far at least, is a vague and, to many observers, somewhat paltry commitment to do something<\/em> to arrest the precipitous decline in journalistic bandwidth in this country.<\/p>\n

To recap, \u201cthe Government proposes to provide $50 million over five years, starting in 2018\u201319, to one or more independent non-governmental organizations that will support local journalism in underserved communities.\u201d This for an industry that has lost more than 16,500 jobs<\/a> in the past decade and has seen hundreds of newspapers, broadcasters and digital sites falter, merge or disappear altogether. These were founts of local journalism, often in underserved markets.<\/p>\n

Consider that $10 million a year amounts to about 27 cents per capita per year, not even a tenth of a cent per day. The $50 million is less than the government plans to spend over five years ensuring Canadians \u201care well informed about cannabis.\u201d By one estimate it could pay for 120 to 150 journalists, which even at the high end would be less than 1 percent of the number of jobs gone. Five years in, once the money runs out, those new jobs would go too. A journalism student in Canada might well conclude that going into cannabis education is a better career move than planning to do local journalism in this country.<\/p>\n

That said, there\u2019s $50 million that wasn\u2019t there before, which might be worth a lot more in practice than it looks like on paper if Ottawa is smart about how it deploys it.<\/p>\n

Outside the Ottawa beltway, the concern is that the old interests that fumbled their way to near oblivion in recent years will somehow hook some of the money to prop up their dying operations. Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia, scathingly dismissed the government\u2019s<\/a> move on CBC\u2019s On the Money. <\/em>\u201cIt will never succeed\u2026Local newspapers are failing everywhere. It\u2019s better to give it to ones that are still surviving, rather than [give it] to start-ups because that\u2019s not going to succeed. It\u2019ll be wasted money.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, it would be an egregious waste of money to throw a lifeline to \u201csurviving\u201d newspapers that are of such irredeemably poor quality these days that it is no longer possible to equate their health with the presence or absence of good journalism in this country. It is also hard to square how giving money to the Canadian Press, a wire service owned by several large publishers including Torstar and\u00a0the Globe and Mail<\/em>, will revolutionize the provision of local journalism in places where its owners have never been, or from which they have withdrawn their services.<\/p>\n

Ventures like the Tyee<\/em>,\u00a0DeSmog Canada, Press Progress, our own Discourse Media, National Observer, the Conversation Canada, Canadaland, the Global Reporting Centre, Hakai Magazine, <\/em>iPolitics, Maisonneuve<\/em>, the Sprawl<\/em>, Ricochet, the West End Phoenix<\/em>, Ryan McMahon\u2019s Indian & Cowboy and so on are already far ahead of the digital \u201ctransition\u201d that newspapers say they need federal money to make. The list goes on of innovative platforms in this country that do several things that should catch the government\u2019s attention: publish journalism, provide jobs, serve underserved communities.<\/p>\n

The government should be engaged in a broad conversation with this country\u2019s digital journalism innovators over how the $50 million could be best spent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do we do enough of it? No. Could we do a whole lot more? Without doubt. Can the government \u2014 with a down payment of $50 million and by loosening the rules to favour charitable contributions to public-interest journalism \u2014 help speed the plow? Absolutely.<\/p>\n

The government should be engaged in a broad conversation with this country\u2019s digital journalism innovators over how the $50 million could be best spent.<\/p>\n

For example, why not support local news fellowships across the country, modelled on our own modest effort<\/a> to fund, train and publish new voices in places or about subjects that real journalism never reaches? We are doing that in three communities. Why not 300? What a perfect opportunity to partner with philanthropists \u2014 national foundations, but also provincial, regional and local foundations and civic-minded supporters concerned for the health of their community discourse \u2014 to find more resources for more voices, and to treat each death of an old model of delivering journalism not as a closing but as an opening to do something different.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Orillia, Ontario is one of the latest Canadian cities to lose its daily newspaper. The 147-year-old Orillia Packet and Times closed in November 2017. Shutterstock\/By LesPalenik<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The government could also direct some of the funds to helping journalism start-ups develop new business platforms. The goal should be to get regular people \u2014 consumers \u2014 to finance journalism. The Tyee, <\/em>for example, gets a third of its revenue from its readers. Discourse Media is poised to launch a beta version of a new audience-supported platform that will allow us to employ dozens of journalists nationally. Core funding to assist us through the development phase would be a huge boost not just to us but to a shared end goal of developing viable business models for citizen-supported journalism all over the country.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve previously proposed<\/a> that the government explore a \u201ccitizen news voucher\u201d that would permit all Canadian adults to direct $100 of their income taxes each year to support journalism content. (Our proposal is an adaptation of a concept championed by Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois.) Every Canadian adult would be entitled (but not obliged) to allocate their voucher to any eligible news outlet of their choice: print, broadcast or digital.<\/p>\n

The government has shown little appetite for opening up the tax code to an innovation of this cost and scale, but there are many different possibilities for helping local journalism grow in Canada. Among them is the signal from government that it is contemplating relaxing Canadian Revenue Agency rules to enable \u201cprivate giving and philanthropic support for trusted, professional, non-profit journalism and local news.\u201d<\/p>\n

While welcome and long overdue, will that necessarily trigger a gush of money?<\/p>\n

Kevin McCort, president and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation \u2014 far and away the largest community foundation in the country \u2014 told us that the state of Canadian media \u201cis not on people\u2019s radar like, say, opioids or homelessness. On the hierarchy of social needs, it\u2019s at or near the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCort said \u201cthere\u2019s not a lot of money sitting on the sidelines,\u201d waiting to rush in to fund public-interest journalism, but he sees an opportunity to triangulate the government\u2019s budget contribution to journalism, foundations\u2019 interest in systems change and<\/em> communities\u2019 interest in having good journalism happen.<\/p>\n

If the government engages in a conversation with digital innovators, philanthropists and the communities that are suffering from an absence of good journalism, the government\u2019s $50 million could turn into $150 million, or maybe a lot more than that. We don\u2019t need any more reviews of what ails Canadian journalism. We need the collaboration of likely suspects who will treat $50 million as a lot of money and find ways to make it go a lot further.<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0Shutterstock\/By Brian A Jackson<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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If you are struggling to hear the applause that greeted the federal government\u2019s soup\u00e7on of support for Canadian journalism in last week\u2019s federal budget \u2014 well, that\u2019s what one hand clapping sounds like. No one is putting two hands together for what, so far at least, is a vague and, to many observers, somewhat paltry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":239566,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-08-30T06:55:25Z","apple_news_api_id":"700c704a-c5cd-4a5b-a2c3-a8c76db8428f","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T02:00:59Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AcAxwSsXNSluiw6jHbbhCjw","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9385,9372],"tags":[8413],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[7136],"class_list":["post-266028","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medias-et-culture","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-journalism-fr","irpp-tag-medias-et-culture"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow can the feds spend wisely on local journalism?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2018\/03\/can-feds-spend-wisely-local-journalism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How can the feds spend wisely on local journalism?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you are struggling to hear the applause that greeted the federal government\u2019s soup\u00e7on of support for Canadian journalism in last week\u2019s federal budget \u2014 well, that\u2019s what one hand clapping sounds like. 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