Does local journalism matter? You bet it does.
Community newspapers employ thousands of journalists across our great country. They work tirelessly, within our local communities, to bring you the stories that matter to you, the stories that are directly relevant to your life, in your neighbourhood. We write and tell the stories that no one else does. Our content is truly unique and is under significant pressure.
Just a few days ago, I received an invitation to attend, as a witness, the standing committee on Canadian heritage. Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry was requesting my appearance in Ottawa to share my thoughts and concerns about the state of local journalism and the sustainability of community newspapers.
After decades of watching an industry as it tries to reinvent itself in a digital age, our federal government is sitting up and taking notice. After the Kamloops Daily News, Nanaimo Daily News and the Guelph Mercuryshuttered their doors over the past year, it seems that all levels of government are paying attention.
In most cases, we are the only source of local news and information in our communities. There are many sources of regional, national and international news and information, but our industry is the only one to employ journalists in every community we serve, more than 1,000 communities, across Canada.
Our work is the only way to hold private and public institutions to account. We believe that local journalism and the work we do is vital to ensuring a thriving democracy and civil society.
We are not suffering an audience problem. The most recent research tells us that 87 per cent of Canadians are engaging with our content, our stories, on a weekly basis. Young and old, male and female, French and English, rich and poor, Canadians turn to our pages, whether in print, on computers, mobile or tablet. Whether you love us or hate us, most of you are certainly reading us.
What can government do to ensure the survival of local journalism and the publishers that employ them?
Firstly, we are not looking for a bailout. What we are looking for is government support as we transition from an industrial business to a knowledge-based one.
Federal government advertising has declined by 96 per cent in newspapers over the past decade. Provincial government advertising has followed suit. Local governments continue to rely on community papers, because they work. They connect their constituents like nothing else. MPs and MLAs spend their advertising dollars with community papers because they know they are read thoroughly by engaged constituents.
The federal government has an opportunity to communicate with Canadians in every corner of our great country by using our community papers and their websites, yet they choose to spend our tax dollars with U.S.-based behemoths Google and Facebook. We ask the government to help us review our advertising model, recognizing that it is paid advertising that pays for the journalism and distribution of it.
Next: copyright laws. “Fair dealing” within our Copyright Act is a significant detriment to journalism in Canada. Our creators and publishers pay to create content that many other news aggregators republish, copy, broadcast and sell advertising around without compensating the creator or copyright holder.
Then there are tax laws written before digital was even imagined. We would suggest a number of strategies that could make a significant difference to community newspaper publishers. First, consider making all subscription and newsstand sales of newspapers a tax-deductible expense for every Canadian, encouraging them in a small way to subscribe to or buy their community newspaper. Secondly, revise the tax laws that allow advertising bought from foreign-owned and -operated media companies, to be disallowed as a tax-deductible expense.
As publishers of community newspapers, we feel the obligation to serve. In many cases it is no longer about the money we once earned, but rather the obligation to serve the communities where we live. We do not want to abandon small towns, or any communities for that matter. However, we need government to accept some of the responsibility and obligation to ensure we can continue to serve Canadians with critically important local journalism for many, many years to come.
Peter Kvarnstrom is president of Glacier Media’s community newspaper group.
