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Tomorrow’s News: How to Fix Canada’s Media
by Marc Edge
Vancouver: New Star Books, 2024
$21 / 9781554202140
Reviewed by Jeffrey Stychin
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What dictates attention? How often are you drawn into reading news over scrolling random videos? Have you considered who funds the news? Or what affects the media as a whole and its overall credibility? Tomorrow’s News addresses these questions and many more in an incredibly dense but approachable write up on modernized and constantly shifting media.
It seems we are indeed in big trouble. Whether that’s inflation and living costs, who runs the country you live in, or where you get your news, information and ways to connect and live a purposeful, meaningful life, it’s difficult to find news content you can trust.
Marc Edge’s impressive book is split into seven chapters of discussion. The newspapers of our day seem to be in disarray, crumbling from lack of readers and funding. Struggling to continue while the government attempts to step in and help. There is always apprehension when a powerful organization steps in offering financial assistance since news organizations know there is usually a caveat.
“A dozen or so newspaper chains also went bankrupt in the US and Canada in 2009-10, which many saw as proof that newspapers were dying,” writes Edge.
Since the rise of the internet in the early 2000s, our media as a whole has been struggling to uphold itself. Although the governments of both the US and Canada viewed this as a major concern, journalists weren’t ready for their full involvement, at least as a viable long-term solution to media’s new future.
“To many journalists, however, there was indeed one thing more dangerous, and that was any government involvement in news media. . . The newspaper would subject itself to political scrutiny—and perhaps self-censorship—over whether its front-page choices, or the stories it chooses to cover at all, show a bias.”
This book discusses media in the US and Canada and touches on other countries as well, all of which share different bodies that oversee news outlets. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is one in the US that reports on the news media and its success. The counterpart to that in Canada is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
The effects of the 2008-09 recession on news media in Canada were relatively mild, except for the bankruptcy of Canwest, and the Harper Conservatives were hardly disposed to inquire into the again after so many recent federal media hearings…
The FTC issued a report outlining measures the government could take to deal with the crisis, and it quickly prompted derision. Newspapers have not yet found a new, sustainable business model, and there is reason for concern that such a business model may not emerge, the report noted.
Seeing as how both countries’ media were failing, with nowhere to go, the options seemed out of reach, at least without opinions that true journalists would not be happy with accepting.
Tomorrow’s News is filled to the brim with facts and details about the entire landscape of media discourse, I cannot possibly include all of them or explain each opinion. Just take a look at the avenues of funding of your deadbeat local or national news outlet.
So numerous were the proposals to save newspapers and/or journalism that two University of Southern California professors catalogued them in a report issued in early 2010. The proposals included national endowments for investigative journalism; matching government grants for foundation funding; production subsidies funded by a tax on print advertising; municipal ownership; government aid to innovation; increased government, private, and philanthropic funding of public service media; investing $100 million to add 1,000 public broadcasting reporters to boost local coverage; investing in efforts to improve digital delivery; taxing broadband internet service provider revenues; a national licensing system for news; paywalls for online news; community or worker owned co-ops; tax breaks on the sale of newspapers, magazines, and their advertisements; an income tax deduction on newspaper and magazine subscriptions; per-jour allow newspapers to form collectives or licensing agencies.
There are far too many options and we don’t know what ones to choose. I sure wouldn’t. With the rise of social media and online advertising, newspapers and dailies have become collectively stuck in a troubling spot. How does one get funding without completely transitioning online? Does print go away forever? How can that be the solution when many still rely on printed news, especially those in aging demographics or anyone without access to ever changing technology, this threatens community and separates us.
With all this confusion the next chapter outlines a new approach: non-profit news organizations. The argument can be made here that non-profits are in fact a viable option to news media’s new lifeblood.
“News non-profits aim for a new journalist-audience relationship borne of mutual understanding and citizen agency in information co-production.”
The main issue that arises however, is the act of charitable donations by third parties who ultimately could influence the news given their sometimes-hefty donations. Which could impart bias given the donors and journalists feeling obligated to publish with their best interests in mind. Tunneling into chapter three we head into co-op news territory, where instead of donations and charity, news creators change their approach and seek to empower its members with shared ownership.
“A 2011 study found that employee ownership ‘may give workers a greater sense of involvement with news production and the operations of a news organization [but] in practice, ESOPs can shift the costs of bad business decisions onto the shoulders of employees.’” [ESOP: employee stock ownership plan]
If you’re following me so far, we’ve met another crossroads because with many owners of the same outlet, you can run into problems when one asserts their views over others. Its muddying the waters, influencing opinion and creating its own bias. To me the news floor, office, or meeting room sounds like a dangerous, precarious place. “Nearly 4 in 10 nonprofits have been offered funding to do specific stories or investigative reporting suggested by a funder.”
Chapter five discusses sharing news, disseminating information in its forms of community-driven locals to broader news networks, and funded media companies. An example it the LDRS or (Local Democracy News Reporting Service) based in the UK, that includes 165 journalists who work together to bridge the gap in reporting local democracy issues across the country. “The LDRS was just the first of a number of news sharing systems introduced around the world, including the Local Journalism Initiative in Canada, which was founded in 2019 with the aim of improving news coverage in underserved communities.”
The landscape of community inclusion in news is dishearteningly complex. On one side you have funders, philanthropists, governments, et cetera, upset with community driven events that don’t garner a lot of views and readers. On the other, you have locals of communities who want a democratic and inclusive space for anything and everything news related, to be reported on, no matter how insignificant it might feel for larger donors. “According to former CBC English president Richard Stursberg… publishers were loath to restrict their government assistance to covering only local politics. ‘They found the concept of ‘civic journalism’ too limiting. . . They had whole sections of their publications that touched on everything from business and sport to culture and lifestyle. . .The idea that they would be reduced to covering mayoralty races and library openings filled them with dread.’”
There is much more in depth information that you’ll have to read for yourself in the tumultuous journey of Tomorrow’s News. Now, I guess these questions can be for you to ponder because it gets darker still in chapter six: let’s go onward to pink slime news and dark money. Soon after come the discussions of the rise of fake news, bogus articles, and non-human involved reporting. Unchecked stories, sometimes written by hired pen name writers and uncredited sources masquerade as local news. They sometimes are computer generated and don’t include any truth beyond pushing a bias or narrative to drive viewership. Dirty, uncivilized and not journalism. The dark money refers to money paid to influence what is reported and to change narratives and sway news bias.
The more I read this book I realized how important news is, or how it could become. Lately, I’ve felt quite disconnected from online news, but I’ve always felt truth in newspapers, there always seems to be an agenda to be had, an angle to be spun, a view to be pushed. I dislike that, but unbiased news is difficult to find these days. Whether you’re online scrolling or reading a paper, everyone has something to say, whether its truthful or not, is hard to discern. Maybe a new media could emerge from this wild history, one that weaves community empowered stories with big government and philanthropic funding, where cooperation and ownership can coalesce. I feel like there is a long road ahead.
“The future is undeniably digital, although some newspapers may continue to be printed, especially where they enjoy high levels of community support. The future for 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,” writes Marc Edge.
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Jeffrey Stychin studied verse and poetry through music and art. He began writing as a means of catharsis and as a way to communicate with himself and others. A Vancouver barber by day, a poet by night, he currently resides with his thoughts and dreams in a quiet place full of trees. [Editor’s note: Jeffrey Stychin has recently reviewed books by Jon Bartlett & Brian Robertson, Nellwyn Lampert, Pamela Oakley, Christian Smith, Gillian Turnbull (eds.), Jill Payne, Nathan Hellner-Mestelman, Lisa Hartley, and Colin Upton for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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