Tuesday, October 20, 2015

The Rumours Of The Demise Of The Postmedia Print Organs...


...Have Not Been Greatly Exaggerated.


Paul Willcocks, off the blog and writing in the Tyee, has a good piece up on what those lockstep endorsements were really all about.

Here's a small chunk:

...(T)he endorsements mark a bleak day, or another bleak day, for Canadian newspapers.

Readers expect newspaper endorsements to reflect the careful judgments of editorial boards and the needs of their individual communities. A pro-Conservative Facebook friend, labouring under that delusion, celebrated the apparent tidal wave of endorsements for Harper from newspapers across the country.

Instead, it appears the endorsements actually reflect the views of one or two corporate managers in Toronto...


And just who do those 'managers' really work for?

Go read the rest of the piece to find out.


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More and more I'm wondering if we need to institute some sort of market/monopoly-busting reform in the media organ business in this country...I think Mr. W. might disagree for reasons of scale and business models and all that, but I really do wonder if a whole passel of independents might not do a better job and be more business healthy by actually operating as small scale operations.


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14 comments:

Scotty on denman said...

Are you suggesting some kind of contraindication label, or maybe mandatory front page photos of brains decayed by the cancer of disguised partisan propaganda?

RossK said...

Scotty--

Ha!

Naw...Just thinking of some sort of regulation on monopoly mongering.

.

Anonymous said...

RossK, could it be that the market/monopoly-busting reform you espouse is already under way via our refusal to buy the substandard offerings of the monoliths? If they expire in a (too) slow-motion mass suicide, might a whole passel of small-scale independents arise to fill the vacuum; barely noticeable as it might be? The sooner the better, I’d say.

e.a.f. said...

If MSM are loosing their readership and having difficulties doing business, their decision to support Harper and his Cons is just one reason. They are totally out of touch with their readership or what remains of it. Being in the media, they might have had an idea of what was going to happen. It might have been better business to just not endorse anyone, but then if they are controlled by right wing investors, they most likely wanted to give it one last shot.

IT might be a good idea if there were restrictions on how much one corporation could own in the media. That of course might infringe on some one's ability to make money, but democracy is an important thing also. On the other hand, who reads papers these days? Not even t.v. news is watched as it once was. It is so easy today for billionaires to purchase news media and control the content. That does not bode well for democracy or having an informed society.

Cathie from Canada said...

Yes they might as well just issue a corporate press release because that's all the postmedia endorsements actually are.

paul said...

I don´t see any political appetite to dismantle the big media companies, and it would be wrenching change. If the idea was that independent owners would take over existing newspapers, they would still face the same problems - high costs, falling revenues, tough competition. It´s unfortunate that there is no provision in the Competition Act to look at diversity of opinion; the decision to approve mergers is strictly based on economic impact. But I haven´t lost hope for new models that find ways to do local coverage and make enough profit to keep the owners satisfied. It would be fun to try.

RossK said...

Paul--

Is there any jurisdiction where 'diversity of opinion' is written into the law?....And, if so, does it work?

paul said...

Not that I know of. Ownership concentration seems the order of the day globally.

RossK said...

Might be worth looking at the US 'Fairness Doctrine', which was designed to decrease media consolidation in individual markets in the States to see what worked and what didn't. 'Twas eventually killed, dead, by Reagan, Bush I and Clinton too.

Anonymous said...

I'am really looking forward to the Duffy trial getting back at it . There will be no one controlling what was said in the pm's office and we should get the truth. As long as these so called news papers don't put there lying spin on what realy transpired. Maybe Harper can be sent to jail { that lying piece of shit}.

Anonymous said...

SH

News breaking one CBC radio...fingers crossed it leads the RCMP to the top of the "ostensible" food chain:

Richard Zussman ‏@richardzussman 3m3 minutes ago
No commitment from government about whether they will release a report into whether other staffers where also deleting emails. #bcpoli

Richard Zussman ‏@richardzussman 4m4 minutes ago
Virk says he can't comment on the fact one of the cases has been passed to the RCMP. #bcpoli
1 retweet 0 favorites

Richard Zussman ‏@richardzussman 8m8 minutes ago
.@christyclarkbc deputy chief of staff was caught deleting almost all of her emails. No punishment for her from govt yet. #bcpoli

Richard Zussman ‏@richardzussman 9m9 minutes ago
Political staffer has resigned from his job. He was on paid leave for the last few months while this investigation was underway. #bcpoli

paul said...

Interesting piece on a family-owned <us newspaper.
http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/380545/post-and-courier-in-charleston-shows-that-family-owned-newspapers-can-still-work/#.Vi5B7g0zjGU.twitter

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/Norm_Farrell/status/661090377147940864/photo/1

Anonymous said...

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/28/rick-mercer-rant-newspaper-endorsements_n_8408438.html