Fate of journalism hinges on who pays for news online
Now that Plexiglas shields are standard in front of cash registers across the country, when do you think someone will complain about “paywalls”?
This is a joke that only journalists and media junkies will likely appreciate. Paywalls are the online fences that news organizations erect around material that’s available exclusively to paid subscribers. The word appears often on social media, usually prefaced with a complaint from a non-subscriber, as in: “Ugh. Paywall.”
Complaints notwithstanding, the truth is that journalism’s future hinges on the question of who pays for the news that people are consuming. This week, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault served notice that his government will be going ahead this fall with legislation to make Facebook and Google pay for the news they distribute on their platforms.
Guilbeault was talking at the Banff World Media Festival on Tuesday and said that making the tech giants pay for news would be part of legislation coming later this year that would be similar to what Australia has been doing on the same front.
“Those who benefit from the media content of our news and information agencies in Canada should be paying their fair share,” Guilbeault said.
The heritage minister also said this was a far better plan than having the government prop up the journalism business — an idea that regularly generates far more outrage on social media than paywalls do.
Journalism’s old business model — having advertisers pay for news — has been crumbling for years, but the pandemic’s economic havoc has heightened the urgency of a need for solutions. The Star, full disclosure, has been a strong voice in the chorus of newspaper owners looking for measures similar to what Guilbeault was talking about in Banff this week.
John Boynton, president and CEO of Torstar, said he was pleased with the direction the heritage minister laid out in Banff. “We welcome this decision as a mechanism for important Canadian companies to arrive at fair terms and compensation with global platforms that are massively bigger,” Boynton said in an email to me, when I let him know I was writing on this subject. “We believe this will help to create a healthier longterm ecosystem where buyers and sellers can both be successful.”
Australia and Europe have been leading the way in efforts to make the tech giants pay for news, but it’s tricky political terrain, especially with Donald Trump likely to take umbrage with any efforts to drain dollars from big U.S. companies.
Trump, as we know, is simultaneously the greatest advertisement for the reach of social media and the greatest example of why its power needs to be reined in. At this moment, he’s annoyed with social media. The president’s newest grievance was ignited a few weeks ago when Twitter made a bold move to factcheck his tweets. Trump responded with the usual fire and fury, threatening regulations or even a shutdown.
Trump tantrums haven’t always worked out well for Canada, but this particular one may serve this government well, if it means the president isn’t in a particularly protective mood toward Facebook, Google or any of the other socialmedia giants based in the U.S.
Still, if Canada is following Australia’s example in trying to get the tech companies to pay for news, it should be prepared for some blowback from the firms themselves.
This week, Facebook formally registered its opposition to the Australian proposal, saying its business model doesn’t depend on distribution of news. As well, in an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald, Facebook’s director of public policy for
Australia wrote that the relationship between old media and new media is a mutually beneficial one — and should stay that way.
Working with the big socialmedia companies, Mia Garlick wrote, “is more likely to succeed than introducing excessive penalties on tech companies; that will not help news organizations promote viable journalism, build new audiences or develop sustainable monetization strategies.”
Facebook Canada hasn’t yet issued any formal reply to what Guilbeault was signalling this week, preferring to wait until it sees details of what the government has in mind. But it, too, has been rolling out measures to cast itself as a collaborator, rather than a competitor with traditional media. One came on Tuesday: a $1-million Facebook fellowship for The Canadian Press, allowing the news organization to hire eight journalists “to report on pressing issues in local communities across Canada.”
“Ugh” is probably not the best response for customers encountering those Plexiglas shields at the cashier these days; they’re unfortunately necessary. It’s a similarly unhelpful reaction when encountering those media paywalls, too, since “ugh” doesn’t answer the question that many governments — not just Canada — are trying to answer: Who is going to pay for news?