Tuesday, October 08, 2024
It is time for the Publishing Industry to Step UP!!
Yeah, I am using a coaching term, but this is appropriate for this solution. We face many industry challenges and the spiral that I am seeing in the publishing industry is going to a Black Hole, if we don’t raise our game to a new level. This discussion is happening with Newspaper Week across North America and we are joining the cause by supporting this as it takes a collective effort to fight off the digital myths of the web.
Digital Myths need to be reversed.
This is no easy task. The digital myths that we need to overcome start with this, that is typical of what people expect for their digital solutions. Just like the old days in high tech where “ Nobody got fired if they chose IBM”. Google has associated its brand with success too and took a page out of IBM's playbook.
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Here is a statement of the Industry in an Op-ed from News Media Canada CEO Paul Deegan to get the ball rolling.
National Newspaper Week is about Supporting Local Journalism
According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s Digital News Report 2024, Canadians’ trust in news is 39 per cent. For comparison, Americans’ trust is news is even lower at 32 per cent.
There are many variables at play in the decline of trust, including engagement-driven algorithms that deprioritize hard news – which traditionally provided a common set of facts – in favour of reinforcing one’s point of view rather than informing the reader. The rise of ‘fake news’, misinformation, and disinformation are among other factors in the decline of trust.
Across Canada, newspapers – whether print or digital – continue to cover school boards, cops, courts, city hall, and other issues that matter to the daily lives of Canadians. That’s why Canadians’ trust in their regional or local newspaper stands at a relatively healthy 65 per cent.
But real journalism by real journalists – not some artificial intelligence tool that scrapes the web for content, which is not always reliable – costs real money. Real local journalism involves the hard work of gathering facts, shows evidence of first-hand reporting — such as independent research, interviews, and fieldwork — and editing. The light rewriting, reproduction, or aggregation of news from external sources is not original journalism, nor is simply cutting and pasting news releases or loading up a website with copy from a wire service or with a carousel of clickbait.
While there is no one silver bullet to solve the economic crisis in journalism, there are solutions that can help.
First, businesses can support their local newspaper through advertising. Governments – federal, provincial and local – can follow the lead of the Ford government in Ontario earmark 25 per cent of advertising spend to domestic news publishers. For context, the feds spent more on China’s TikTok last year than all Canadian print publications combined.
The private sector shouldn’t be competing with the public broadcaster, which takes in $73,139,000 in digital advertising revenue while receiving $1,271,800,000 in direct annual government subsidies.
The government can provide the Competition Bureau with the tools and resources it needs to complete its investigation into online advertising practices in Canada.
And finally, Canada Post needs to return to the long-standing policy of exempting community newspapers with commercial inserts (e.g., flyers from local hardware and grocery franchisees) from the Consumers’ Choice program. Community newspapers with commercial inserts are not ‘junk mail’.
In a world where misinformation travels faster than truth, newspapers and their websites keep Canadians informed, connected, and engaged in communities from coast to coast. National Newspaper Week is an opportunity to recognize the 3,000 print journalists who work tirelessly every day to get news out to Canadians, but it’s also an opportunity to reflect on how we, as Canadians, can support their work.
About Newspapaer Week
Across North America during the week of October 6-12 is National Newspaper Week. National Newspaper Week is an annual opportunity to recognize the critical role that newspapers play in an active and healthy democracy. It is celebrated in North America on the first Sunday in October. Local newspapers deliver vital information to Canadians, connecting local communities across the country and keeping citizens informed, engaged, and connected.
We will be having a guest columnist Pepper Parr, Publisher of the Burlington Gazette during this week in the COPA Judges Blog. Learn more about National Newspaper Week at www.nationalnewspaperweek.ca or www.ChampionsoftheTruth.ca.
- Martin Seto
About Me
Martin Seto
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reflexmediasales.com or 416-907-6562, and on LinkedIn.
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| Lorene Shyba says: | |
Full of terrific information, Thanks!... |
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