It wasn’t personal when friends and family lost their journalism jobs. It fell under my radar as salaries for reporters and writers languished well below inflation. But this whole journalism is dying thing just got personal.
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For those of you who haven’t met me or seen me in a while, I’m pear-shaped. I was never athletic. So, it was a big deal for me when the Halifax Chronicle Herald put a my picture and my story on the front page of their sports section. Granted, it wasn’t because I ran or jumped or threw or caught. It was a for a sports talk app our team built. Still, for their love, HCH holds a special place in my heart.
Sigh. HCH is the largest newspaper owned by a group called Saltwire. Saltwire owns many of the newspapers in Atlantic Canada. Things like the: Annapolis Valley Register, Cole Harbour Wire, and Truro News.
Last week, the owners of Saltwire asked the court to protect it from creditors. That’s a polite term for near self-imposed bankruptcy.
No, this wasn’t some targeted assault on our democracy by private equity barons who stripped a company down, loaded it up with debt, and destroyed a free press.
The Dennis-Leger family owns Saltwire. Family. They’re generational publishers. They live in these markets. I know Mark Leger a little bit. He’s a person trying to run a business and inform Atlantic Canadians. And, despite his efforts and want to succeed, the business is struggling. That’s how hard the business of journalism is.
I’ve repeatedly rattled off the reasons the business of news is tough. Today, I’m going to add one more. I attribute my new find to the smart stuff my friend, Chand, pumps out about the perils of bureaucracy. Even when well-intentioned, the sheer weight of government intervention doesn’t just tip scales, it topples them.
One big reason Saltwire is struggling is the CBC. To some extent, public-funded news is killing private-owned news. Even the name is a joke. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. An entity entirely funded by the government should not be allowed to use the word, “Corporation.” It should tag it with a more appropriate moniker. The Canadian Broadcasting Entity whose losses are offset by taxpayer dollars and whose size and scale make private companies collateral damage assuming they don’t just bludgeon intentionally. I get that that’s too long to fit on a business card. Maybe that’s why they just say corporation.
Whatever the name, there’s a bunch of people who think it’s good and important for news to be independent of advertising. It’s the ultimate separation of editorial church and state. While here, perversely, being owned by the state. The flawed logic extends to subscribers. Not having to win subs or get ads leaves journalists at the CBC free to write what they want when they want without having to worry about the ickiness of economics. If there’s a shortfall on the dollars, the government will fill it. Yeah, some people get public journalists can lose their jobs, but there’s no real risk that entity formerly known as corporation will ever be in any real trouble.
So, we’re all good. Until we aren’t.
There’s an intrinsic problem here. That the CBC can satisfy consumer need without economics destroys the economics of non-government funded businesses.
Let’s play this out. The Halifax Mooseheads junior hockey team beat the Acadie-Bathurst Titan 9-1. With a goal and three assists, Lou Lévesque was the game’s first star. Add an, “Eh” somewhere and that’s quintessential Canadiana.
The CBC writes that. Puts it on their site. Puts it on their Halfiax TV station. Puts it on their radio station across Atlantic Canada. Puts it on their app. Pays to ensure it has max SEO so people find it on Google. OK, you caught me on that last one. Thanks to Bill C-18, Canadians won’t find Canadian stories on a Canadian website (don’t even). The CBC’s media sucks a massive amount of the consumptive air out of the system. That leaves for-profit outlets like Saltwire gasping for breath.
Yeah, the CBC sells some ads. But, those dollars are just a drizzle of gravy that tops the pheasant under glass and poutine the government served up gratis. Had the CBC not been there, those extra ads could have gone to Saltwire or one of the even smaller competitors. But, now those ad dollars are gone. Wasted actually. Pretend for a moment that those Mooseheads stories generated $1000 in ads for CBC. It makes no difference. Had it generated $487, the government of Canada would have ponied up the additional $513.
The ad dollars that Saltwire can’t win playing against a competitor on governmental steroids contributes to why Saltwire needs protection from its creditors.
Willy Palov writes about the Mooseheads for the Halifax Chornicle Herald. He wrote the story about me. He heads sports at the HFC. He’s also the President of the Halifax Typographical Union, which represents workers at the Chronicle Herald. He’s Canadian. I’ll assume he pays taxes. His taxes fund the CBC. That same CBC that upset the market that put his job in peril.
Maybe it’s time we pared back government funded public media to help save privately owned media.
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Bonus:
Obliviously and unironically, the CBC keeps updating a story bemoaning the death of news. It explains that technology revolutionized news. Losses are mounting. Newspapers are closing. Threatened by salary and job cuts, journalists went on strike. Their strikes further threatened newspapers.
This isn’t today. The CBC started writing this story in 1978. It was updated most recently last November. In forty-five years, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the CBC is (still) above the economic realities of actual businesses.
It must be nice to be a governmentally modified organization.