The evolution of journalism in the twentieth century was away from hard news aimed at citizens and toward what media critic Ben Bagdikian called “fluff” aimed at consumers and designed to attract ads. Bagdikian found that hard news made up about four pages of the average daily newspaper in 1940, and that while editions had more than doubled in size forty years later, most of the increase consisted of fluff since the amount of hard news had grown to only about five pages. “Most fluff is wanted by advertisers to create a buying mood,” noted Bagdikian, who added that surveys showed readers wanted more hard news. “An article on genuine social suffering might interrupt the ‘buying mood’ on which most ads for luxuries depend.” Fluff matched perfectly Marshall McLuhan’s description of media content as “the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.”
Hard news came to be avoided by newspapers because not only did it not attract ads—it repelled them. Newspapers arguably crossed the Rubicon in the 1930s, when they suppressed news of studies that linked cigarette smoking to cancer because tobacco companies were among their biggest advertisers. That opened the door for other advertisers to demand the removal of news that might hurt their business. Air Canada, noted Bagdikian, warned newspapers in 1978 that “its ads would be canceled as long as any news story of an Air Canada crash or hijacking ran in the paper and if its ads were carried within two pages of a news story of any crash or hijacking on any airline.” This new advertiser sensitivity to news perhaps triggered a move toward even more ad-friendly content, and newspapers weren’t shy about promoting it to ad buyers.
Starting in the 1970s, entire new sections sprang up in newspapers, devoted to such hot-selling topics as cars, travel, and real estate in order to attract ads, and they soon began to blur the line between advertising and journalism. According to Bagdikian, the fluffy features derided by journalists as “advertorials” were simply bait for advertising. Weekend editions grew fat with these special sections because people had more time for newspaper reading. Real estate advertising, in particular, was so lucrative, according to Columbia Journalism Review, that it was where “papers are most tempted to sell their soul.” Meanwhile, consumer reporting wasn’t “even a beat anymore at most papers,” having been replaced by coverage of personal finance, which was “a safe topic that usually doesn’t pinch the holy trinity of media advertisers—car dealers, supermarkets, and real estate brokers,” noted Trudy Lieberman in 1994. It ran on the business pages, she added, which “almost guarantees that it will not be hard-hitting and confrontational.” Advertiser support for personal finance content, noted CJR in 1998, was “so luxuriant as to make any publisher weak in the knee.”
The result was a turn away from accountability reporting and toward access reporting, according to Dean Starkman, who distinguished between the two types of journalism in his 2014 book The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark. Accountability reporting was pioneered by the investigative “muckrakers” of the Progressive Era in the early twentieth century who held the powerful to account by exposing corruption, health hazards, unsafe working conditions, and monopolistic business practices of the robber barons who dominated the first Gilded Age. Access journalism was instead favoured by business and public relations, as it traded access to newsmakers for publicity that helped promote products, candidates, and even ideologies. A turn to access journalism, Starkman argued, was what allowed modern-day robber barons to pillage the US economy to the extent that the housing bubble burst in 2007 and led to the Great Recession. “What journalism was able to do in 1903 it could not muster in 2003,” Starkman noted. “And that’s tragic.”
Suffice it to say that the journalism we need to save in order to preserve democracy is not fluff or advertorials but, instead, what Alex S. Jones (not the infamous talk show host) called in his 2009 book Losing the News the “iron core” of reporting on politics, government, business, the economy, the environment, and other things that citizens need to know about.
We need accountability journalism, plain and simple, so we should focus on feeding the watchdogs. If others can make money publishing celebrity news, sports reporting, or their opinions, they should be encouraged to do so at their own expense. CJR noted in 2014 that accountability journalism was “at once journalism’s most powerful and paradoxically its most vulnerable form; the riskiest, the costliest, the most technically difficult. It’s the journalism we need to worry about. Other debates are a parlor game by comparison.”
Now that advertising has largely fled newspapers and they are increasingly asking readers to pay more, perhaps they can redeem themselves by focusing on our best interests for a change. If journalism is to be subsidized by tech companies or digital taxes, or even directly from the public purse, hard news and investigative reporting are what should be prioritized. Accountability journalism is both what we need most and what is now in shortest supply.
Given the fluctuations in which party holds power in Ottawa, any prescription for fixing Canada’s news media should appeal to the fiscally conscious. Then Conservative leader Erin O’Toole promised to cancel the news media bailout during the 2021 federal election campaign, and his successor, Pierre Poilievre, has been a harsh critic of both the media and the bailout. If a Conservative government were to cancel the federal subsidies that are keeping our newspaper industry on life support, it would mean an even worse crisis, one that would take some hard thinking to resolve—which should be done in advance. What we need is a plan that reimagines our media for a digital future of news sharing enabled by the internet. Let’s forget about subsidizing old media and instead do whatever is necessary to allow digital media and new ways of communicating news to flourish in Canada. Legacy media outlets will find their own level in the new media ecosystem and may survive or perish. Most likely, some newspapers will evolve into print/online hybrids able to compete with digital media on their own terms, not on terms dictated by the government under the Online News Act. They should be given the same incentives that digital media get, in order to help them develop that side of their operations, but old media should not be privileged to the extent they have been.
We need to start afresh with a new digital-first approach to journalism that will be funded in part by the $100 million a year that Google has agreed to contribute under the Online News Act, but the company is hardly alone in reaping the riches of the digital world and thus should not be alone in subsidizing online news. The supply of accountability reporting in Canada would be boosted immensely, first, by a direct injection of Local Democracy Reporters—LDRs—into our news media, similar to what has been done in the UK and New Zealand. This would create a solid base of local reporting that could help renew interest in civic affairs and support a renovated superstructure of journalism in Canada. A thousand LDRs reporting from coast to coast could be funded by Google’s promised contribution alone and would provide even more extensive local news coverage than the 165 LDRs covering the UK, which has a much larger population. That would allow them to report on business, the justice system, other government agencies, and the environment; plus it could also staff an investigative unit for longer-term projects.
An even more comprehensive solution to our news crisis could be financed by a fund which, with contributions from other digital sources, could reach ten times what Google has agreed to pay, and it could bring nothing less than a golden age of journalism in Canada. Ottawa is already collecting taxes levied under the Online Streaming Act, which is expected to bring in about $830 million a year. Its new 3 percent Digital Services Tax on large online businesses that profit from the engagement, data, and content of internet users, as well as from the sale or licensing of their data, is estimated to reap more than $1.4 billion a year. Earmarking 10 percent of the proceeds from both of those for news provision could add $220 million a year to a news fund. Then there’s the more than $15 billion a year that our telecom companies are raking in from internet service provision at profit margins approaching 50 percent. A portion of those monopoly profits should go toward creating Canadian online news, similar to how the 5 percent levy on cable TV revenues helps fund broadcasting content. The same 5 percent levy on internet service provider revenues would add more than $750 million a year to a news fund and still leave most telcos with more than a 40 percent profit margin. These four sources, along with anything Meta might care to contribute if it could be brought back on board to help spread the news again in Canada, could bring a news fund to well over $1 billion a year.
That would be enough to fund not only 1,000 LDRs but to also pay for the payroll tax credits being handed out to legacy media under the seemingly endless news media bailout, which in 2023 was extended until 2029 at a cost of $25.8 million a year. It could also replace the tax credits by allowing daily newspapers to instead apply for formula-based funding to the Canada Periodical Fund, as News Media Canada proposed in 2017. Digital taxes could also bolster the local news-gathering capacity of the CBC and allow it to expand its digital reporting resources. They could also fund a voucher system that would give each Canadian several hundred dollars a year up front to spend on subscriptions to the online news media of their choice—and would replace the $75 tax credit we must now apply for on our annual tax return. That would allow for multiple subscriptions, so publications would likely start offering different tiers and packages of service. Vouchers could also include an allotment to make “micropayments” to read individual articles, as the Toronto Star began allowing for 75 cents each in 2024. Such a system was pioneered in 2013 by the Dutch firm Blendle, which signed up major dailies, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, but it never took off and was shut down in 2023. The Winnipeg Free Press introduced a similar payment plan, of 27 cents per article, in 2016; that also failed to gain traction and was discontinued in 2021, but it might work under a voucher system.
The possibilities are endless and could bring a robust digital “marketplace of ideas” to news. A billion-dollar annual news fund could also finance a greatly expanded non-profit news sector by allowing media outlets to qualify more easily for charitable status under a simplified set of rules. While collaboration has its place, especially between small news outlets, good journalism thrives on competition, so as much of it as possible should be encouraged. That’s why the CBC and the Canadian Press should both be bolstered and as many young journalists as possible encouraged to get into the news business, perhaps under an apprenticeship program similar to the Report for America service in the US. The CP could coordinate a Local Democracy Reporting program, as it already does with the Local Journalism Initiative, which should also be extended and expanded into even more underserved communities.
“Neither television nor the Internet have come to the rescue and stepped in to fill the hole left by legacy newspapers.”
Now here’s the part designed to warm the cockles of even the most fiscally conservative heart. Any subsidies to news media should go not to funding opinion, entertainment, or sports journalism but only to hard news. Watchdog reporting on government and business is what we need most and what has been most in decline recently, especially at the local level. Vigorous press oversight of our democratic institutions would likely save millions a year in government waste and corruption, which is what conservatives hate most. Businesses also rip off consumers and governments for millions every year, much of which could also be saved simply by exposure. As Bill Birnbauer noted in his 2019 book The Rise of Nonprofit Investigative Journalism in the United States, “investigative stories costing thousands of dollars can deliver millions of dollars of benefits to society through policy changes and social returns.” Press coverage can bring enormous savings to the public, according to a 2020 study which showed that the cost of local government borrowing rose significantly as a result of local newspaper closures. Owing to a lack of press scrutiny, “potential lenders have greater difficulty evaluating the quality of public projects and the government officials in charge of these projects.”
The political and social implications of diminished news coverage are also considerable. Civic engagement in Seattle and Denver was found to have dropped significantly after the Rocky Mountain News folded and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased printing in 2009. A study by economists showed that the 2007 closure of the Cincinnati Post lowered the number of people voting in elections there and increased an incumbent’s chances of staying in office. A 2015 study of Port Talbot, Wales, found that the town of 37,000 fell into a “news black hole that has serious democratic consequences” after its last newspaper was closed in 2009. The flow of information became dominated by word of mouth, while a decline in coverage of council and other public meetings led to confusion and a lack of knowledge about local issues. “The effects of this are in fostering rumour, speculation, confusion and lack of fore-knowledge, which seem to be linked to other effects such as powerlessness and frustration,” the study noted.
Even at surviving newspapers, falling staff levels have rendered many of them so-called “ghost” papers with greatly diminished local news coverage. The 2021 book News Hole crunched mountains of data to find a causal relationship between reduced coverage of local politics and lowered levels of civic engagement in the US. While two-thirds of registered voters in Los Angeles regularly turned out to vote in local elections during the 1980s, only 18 to 23 percent have voted more recently, in a trend seen across the country and highlighted by the dismal 6 percent turnout in Dallas in 2015. Civic knowledge has also plunged: while 70 percent of American voters could name their city’s mayor in 1966, that was down to less than 40 percent in 2016. “The declines in local knowledge and participation are puzzling,” noted authors Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless. “Turnout in presidential contests has increased. Education, one of the strongest predictors of political engagement, is at its highest level in US history. The Internet has made accessing information about public affairs easier than ever.” News Hole, which won best academic book of the year at Harvard’s prestigious Goldsmith Awards, showed that the declines were due to “the most dramatic change in the civic life US communities have experienced in the last 20 years: the decimation of the local news media.”
Cuts have largely come in local coverage of city halls, school boards, and regional governments. “Neither television nor the Internet have come to the rescue and stepped in to fill the hole left by legacy newspapers,” Hayes and Lawless noted. “Online news organizations have not reached a point where they can be considered replacements for the journalism provided by thousands of local newspapers across the country. Few can even be considered supplements.” One result in the US has been a growing “nationalization” of politics, where voter behaviour has become increasingly influenced by national politics. “With people’s social identities now linked more closely to national partisan attachments, their connection to politics in their communities has weakened. As a result, voters have become less knowledgeable and less interested in local public affairs.”
The worst thing that ever happened to newspapers, as I wrote in my 2023 book The Postmedia Effect, was that they made so much money during their heyday in the late twentieth century that they were hijacked by financiers more concerned with making a profit. This was the process known as financialization, which also came to infect other industries, often with disastrous effects. News media are different from other industries, however, as they are considered so vital to political discourse and community life in Canada that they enjoy a Charter guarantee of freedom from government interference. Media owners, who increasingly included private equity firms and US hedge funds, soon learned that they could monetize this guarantee by framing it as their right to a continuous stream of government handouts.
The profit motive may be great for some things, such as making money, but it’s not so great for others, like producing good journalism. If some news media can continue to make a modest or even a healthy profit, as the Globe and Mail and other well-managed newspapers have shown is possible, they should be encouraged and even assisted in continuing their prudent transition to sustainable hybrid digital publications. As veteran American journalist James Fallows noted, “increasing evidence suggests that the local newspaper business may still be viable, simply as a business.” He writes:
What it can no longer do is provide the super-profit levels that private equity groups expect from their holdings and that they demand as a condition of even letting the papers exist. But the same papers that are doomed under private-equity ownership might have a chance in some different economic structure.
The future is undeniably digital, although some newspapers may continue to be printed, especially where they enjoy high levels of community support. The future of media in Canada should also be non-profit, which would allow for a much more sustainable news ecosystem stocked with a variety of thriving journalism species. The merits of non-profit journalism are manifest, as research has repeatedly shown. “The enterprise has no other mission than the practice of journalism,” noted David Sassoon of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. “Nobody is in it for the money. There are no shareholders to satisfy. No media mogul can find a way to milk it dry. If a non-profit generates income, it gets plowed back into more journalism. Serving the public interest is its sole function, the practice of journalism in its noblest expression.”
As Clay Shirky noted in his seminal 2009 essay “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” the crisis isn’t just in news media, and the intervening years have demonstrated its trickle-down effects on democracy. “When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society,’ the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works,’” wrote Shirky. Among what has been lost with the ongoing diminution of local news media and increased absentee chain ownership has been nothing less than the glue that holds our communities together, which is more important now than ever. “It is the intangible, community focused aspects of journalism that appear to be most at stake in the current media crisis,” noted British journalism scholar Andrew Currah, who urged government assistance for local and regional news trusts to publish news. “In theory, these could function as either charitable or non-charitable trusts, initially seeded with public money,” he wrote. “News operations may fare better outside the prevailing commercial model, not least due to problems of indebtedness and the pressure to create shareholder value.” As Pegasus News founder Mike Orren predicted for Nieman Lab: “We’re arrived at the end of days for the local news industry as we know it. We will look back on 2024 as the year that divided what was and what will be. . . . Local news will be even more of an afterthought for citizens in 2024. We’ll be debating totalitarianism, not county taxes.”
Public funding of news media from earmarked digital taxes is required to save our news media and help us avoid a social and political cataclysm. Consider it not an expense but an investment.
Excerpted and adapted from Tomorrow’s News: How to Fix Canada’s Media by Marc Edge, 2024, published by New Star Books. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.