Two views of advertising and the press

Re La Presse throws in the towel. Who’s next?, Opinion, Online May 14

Writer Daniel Bernhard bemoans the “flight of advertising money to Google and Facebook” for “sucking the life out of newsrooms.” I’d like to present the view of one of those online advertisers

My wife and I own a medium-sized business that caters to a niche market. We don’t have an advertising budget of millions or even tens of thousands of dollars. Our customer base is spread out between Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.

Were we to advertise in a Canadian newspaper, roughly one out of every 2000 readers would be interested in our product. With Facebook, we can spend $100 and reach 10,000 people who are specifically interested in what we have to offer. For these potential customers, our advertisement isn’t just white noise or filler on a page. It is something they genuinely want to learn about, share and discuss. And we can target specific ads to specific customers, based on where they live or what they like to discuss online. This has been very valuable for expanding into the American and British markets.

A significant portion of our growth can be tied directly to our highly targeted online marketing. Traditional media advertising revenues may be taking a hit, but online marketing has allowed many more niche businesses such as ours to flourish and grow. Jason Shron, Thornhill La Presse is throwing in the towel after 134 years. The far-reaching and devastating implications of this and the constant daily erosion of our fourth estate cannot be overstated. If the police are the thin blue line between civility and anarchy, the legitimate press is the even thinner line between an informed and an ignorant society.

Google and Facebook will not hold governments and corporations to account. They will not conduct on our behalf the expensive and exhaustive investigative journalism required to let us know what is really going on. Already too many people get their news from clickbait and sound-bite sources that only tell them what they want to hear. And to read that a government tax loophole that favours these entities is largely responsible for this imbalance is both sickening and intolerable.

Newspapers have fought for us for so many years to speak truth to power. Now it is our turn. Call or write to your MPP and tell them you demand a revision to the advertising tax code that may help to save the genuine press we rely on and can no longer take for granted. It is not hyperbole to say that our democracy itself depends on it. Stephen Brouitt, Richmond Hill