Well, whoever saw this coming? The mainstream newspaper industry hasn’t been able to sort itself out in the four years since the Trudeau government introduced its five-year $595 million bailout program. So, anticipating an awkward crunch in 2024, it is already pro-actively asking for an extension..As detailed elsewhere, the industry association News Media Canada has formally requested the government to both double and extend the subsidy..“The financial situation for most news publishers is extremely challenging,” CEO Paul Deegan stated in a letter to the Commons Finance committee. “It will remain so for many in the short to medium term.”.What should one think of that? Is it really a good idea for the government to go on funding newspapers?.Emphatically not..This does not affect the Western Standard, by the way. Although this publication qualifies to receive government support, as a matter of policy it has never accepted it. The Western Standard view is that when people whose business it is to report on what government does, receives money from that same government, readers cannot possibly be sure that they have the whole truth unfiltered by mutual interests..Nevertheless for anybody who has ever worked for a newspaper, sentiment gets in the way of good judgment. And so, as somebody who first entered the newspaper industry 50 years ago, it is hard not to lament the cataclysm that has fallen upon one's life’s work.. Calgary HeraldThe Calgary Herald building, from the south. .One title I once published was an early victim of the collapse of advertising revenues, ceasing publication in 2015. Another that I took daily in 1976 reverted to weekly a few years ago. And of course, while the Calgary Herald where I spent ten years continues to publish, its building on Calgary’s Deerfoot Trail stands empty today as a sad metaphor for an entire industry collapse: The walls still stand and the proud name is still visible from the highway. But since the building was sold, no journalism has been done within it. Writers work from home..So, I’m conflicted. In many cases, some of these grand old titles have for more than a century really stood up for freedom, democracy, the rights of the individual and the underdogs among them — afflicting the comfortable as they loved to claim while comforting the afflicted….But sentiment cannot rule..First, supporting failed industries is costly and ultimately of no use. Never mind the cliché about buggy whip manufacturers. We do not try to rescue companies that once made VHS tapes, fountain pens, carburetors, slide rules or apparently boot polish either, because the business model succumbed to technological advance..Second, what is that you’d be trying to save?.The profession as a whole has become agenda-driven. Too many of the kids coming out of the journalism schools have been told their job is to be activist journalists — agents of progressive social change. The old idea of telling both sides of the story and leaving it to the public to decide, is considered reactionary. For many readers, uncurious coverage of government pronouncements during the COVID-19 panic was just further evidence of professional failure..Add in such professional betrayals as a recent Toronto Star columnist’s asinine suggestion that the Canadian government should own the Internet in Canada — seriously, Linda MacQuaig said that — and you can’t dodge the inevitable conclusion: the medium has brought upon itself the widespread public distrust that it so deplores..Alas, common sense says, time’s up..Good luck to those newspapers who can get it together and hang on. But once was enough for the bailout program. A second bailout would lead to demands for a third and it strains credulity to suppose that ongoing state subsidies would lead to more, rather than less intensive scrutiny of government activities..It was great while it lasted.
