2 days Ago By Postmedia News
Recently, I attended an invigorating summit in Prince Edward Island, convened by the Rideau Hall Foundation, about local media. There were publishers large and small from across Canada and experts from abroad, such as Ricky Sutton from Australia and Stephen Waldman from the United States. Like many local newspapers, the Crowsnest Pass Herald has been around for a long time.
It was founded in 1930. My mom worked there and eventually became a co-owner in 1969. I’ve worked there since university and am now the sole owner.
As a small entrepreneur, in any given week, I write copy, sell ads and even deliver newspapers. Over the years, I’ve learned a few things along the way. First, Big Tech is destroying local media.
In 2014, we started doing ads with Google, which I thought was going to be a game-changer. The good news was that Google ads started popping up all over the place; the bad news was that I received a mere 17 cents from Google. Half our revenue used to come from big national brands like Ford, General Motors and Dodge.
They were doing full page ads, and things were great. We had a thriving business, but as Google and Meta got into the advertising game, I watched our national advertising shrink dramatically. To put that in perspective, since 1999, my gross revenue has dropped by two-thirds, which is tough when you’re just trying to meet payroll.
That’s why I am the lead on an $8-billion class-action lawsuit . Second, publishers are stronger when we stick together. While I was furious when most of the large news publishers cut their own one-off content licensing deals with Google and Meta, I was encouraged that they pushed for what became the Online News Act to ensure Big Tech pays not only the big guys, but community publishers like me, too.
Third, in the absence of the U.S. Department of Justice breaking up Google’s monopoly in ad tech, publishers around the world are going to continue to need some level of government support.
On this point, I’m encouraged by the words of now U.S. vice-president-elect JD Vance, who earlier posted the following on X: “Long overdue, but it’s time to break Google up.
” Fourth, when it comes to government support, we need to make sure that government supports don’t advantage one type of publisher over another. Let me give you an example. There are some who think the only solution is tax credits for readers.
Such a credit already exists — albeit not a very generous one. One digitally savvy publisher told the Neiman Lab at Harvard that the result was “ negligible .” Like all tax credits, a subscription tax credit, irrespective of its design, is limited in its ability to create demand given that many Canadians are not prepared to pay a subscription fee for news content even if a future partial reimbursement (lumped into their tax return) is foreseeable.
According to the Reuters Institute, only 15 per cent of Canadians are paying for news. Anecdotally, it is no wonder that one can regularly find the big guys in the market with incredibly discounted subscription plans. Their marketing executives are reading the same data and concluding that most new subscribers are only willing to pay a few bucks a month.
There is no question that a richer digital subscription tax credit would be a nice boutique tax break for the Starbucks-sipping Laurentian elites who are already subscribing to several newspapers. However, it would do nothing for the hundreds of weekly community newspapers across Canada. Local news, in my opinion, is not some luxury good for the privileged few.
Heck, we don’t even have a Starbucks in Crowsnest Pass, Alta. Fifth, the best supports are those that incent the right behaviours and outcomes. The Canadian journalism labour tax credit is elegant in its simplicity, and it is highly targeted to reward newsroom investment.
Sixth, governments and businesses need to step up with advertising. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has committed 25 per cent of his province’s advertising budget to support news, and we need others to do the same. To governments and corporate advertisers, if you want to reach the 5,600 good people of Crowsnest Pass and keep your money in Canada rather than seeing it flow to California, give me a holler.
Finally, the CBC is too big and bloated, and the next government needs to address that. The idea that some are advocating that its content should be shared be under a Creative Commons license where newspapers like mine would fill up our pages with CBC content is bonkers. Local news is about a balance of local perspectives — not the kind of woke lefty content we see coming from the CBC mothership in Toronto.
While it would be far too easy for me to be discouraged and just close the newspaper like so many other owners across Canada have done, I see my ownership as a legacy from my mom and a sacred commitment that she imparted in me to keep my community of 5,600 people informed. With the rise of fake news, which is only going to accelerate with advances in AI, real news is more important than ever before, and all Canadians have an interest in ensuring its long-term viability in communities across Canada. Postmedia Network Lisa Sygutek is owner and publisher of the Crowsnest Pass Herald.
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