Does democracy need newspapers? Not so much
It felt like a tipping point this week when Postmedia merged newsrooms in Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary and the Toronto Star confirmed the imminent closing of its printing plant in Vaughan. Ninety jobs gone at Postmedia and 13 at the Star — with more to come.
“Journalists are vital to our democracy,” tweeted Justin Trudeau. “I’m saddened to hear of the cuts at #postmedia today and my thoughts are with the affected.”
Yes, another lousy week for journalists, but why is the prime minister sharing our pain? After all, 250 potash workers in New Brunswick lost their jobs the same day and there was little official mourning. Well, newspapers are essential to democracy, right? Not really. Oops. Did I say that out loud? I’m the director of a journalism school. I worked at the Star for 20 years, and I love almost everything about newspapers. But I no longer believe they are essential to civil society.
Media economist Robert Picard argues that journalists indulge in a self-aggrandizing mythology that glorifies the 20th-century newspaper industry and obscures our ability to understand how contemporary information needs are served by new technologies and new organizations.
Consider this: democracy was functioning long before news boys started barking the headlines from corners in New York, London and Toronto. The mass-market urban daily was born when publishers figured out they could make more money selling advertising than selling subscriptions. That made it profitable to sell papers for less than the cost of production, and opened up a new market for news — the middle and working classes.
In fact, the stuff that we think of as the real news — stories that topple governments and champion the needs of the marginalized — has never been valued enough by the broad public to survive on its own. It had to be bundled with sports and fashion and crosswords and horoscopes to lure an audience large enough to attract advertisers. Today advertisers have other options — often better options — to sell us goods, ideas and opinions.
The slide has been swift. Newspaper companies have lost more than half their share of the advertising market in the last 10 years.
Consultant Ken Goldstein wrote a particularly pessimistic report last summer that predicts Canada will have “few, if any, printed newspapers” in 10 years and “no local broadcast television stations.”
Newspaper companies are trying to shift to digital, but research by Harvard’s guru of disruptive innovation, Clayton Christensen, suggests that legacy companies almost never survive paradigm-shifting new technologies, even when the core needs of their customers are unchanged.
That’s the central question: what are the core needs of newspaper readers and how will they be met?
Or, as Ken Goldstein puts it: “Who’s going to cover city hall?”
In Halifax, the answer is AllNovaScotia.com, the Halifax Examiner, The Coast, Halifax Media Co-op, @haligonia and city councillors on their own social media feeds.
Canada has a profusion of new information choices. Often they serve small, well defined markets. They may blur the lines between editorial and advertising — or eschew advertising completely. Often they have a distinct, opinionated voice.
According to Statistics Canada, just as many journalists were working in 2011, when the most recent national survey was conducted, as five years before. But they aren’t working in the same places.
Harvard’s Nieman Lab recently reported that the U.S. Senate Press Gallery includes more reporters from digital publications and niche outlets than from daily newspapers.
I still read the newspaper, but I spend more money on digital news that speaks to my specific interests: Canadaland, Kukukwes.com, the Halifax Examiner and Allnovascotia.com. Together, they employ a couple of dozen excellent journalists — and a roster of ambitious freelancers.
There are big new digital players, too: Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Vice. Some dismiss them as clickbait factories, but that’s how modern newspapers started, too. The New York Sun pioneered the advertising-supported model that morphed into what we now call mainstream media. The Sun is best remembered for its front-page exclusive about the discovery of bat-men living on the moon.
Journalism matters, but the future of newspaper companies should not be confused with the future of journalism. The demise of newspapers breaks my heart — but it won’t break democracy.