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 earmarking 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 (Oct. 6-12) is an opportunity to recognize the more than 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.

Paul Deegan is president and CEO of News Media Canada.