Now, even those who lobbied for the disastrous Online News Act are conceding that maybe it wasn't the best idea

Weeks after declaring Bill C-18's Google fund a victory for the Liberals, Torstar admits Trudeau’s effort to force Big Tech to fund media has been (clears throat) disappointing

Photo by Arturo Castaneyra on Unsplash

The Toronto Star has admitted what everyone in the news industry knows but few will say out loud - the Online News Act has done harm to those engaged in the business of journalism.

It was only a few weeks ago that the Star, in lockstep with Postmedia, was referring to the legislation (aka Bill C-18) as, at worst, a “partial victory” for the Liberal government that implemented it.

Backers of the legislation were originally betting it would produce $500 million or more in payments from Facebook and Google, both of whom, they told their readers, were “stealing” their content. Government estimates of the loot to come were later pared down to somewhere between $234 million and $320 million.

What happened instead was that Facebook dropped carrying news links, which it estimated had a value of $230 million at no cost to the news industry, and Google coughed up $100 million for a fund. That, in turn, meant an end to the commercial and other journalism-funding agreements with both Big Tech companies. The value of those is unknown but is estimated at around $50 million. This net loss of $180 million or so is what the Star and Post reported as “victory” for Justin Trudeau’s government.

But last week, in a piece in the Los Angeles Times, Ryan Adam, vice president of government and public affairs at the Star, provided a more honest assessment. Noting his company previously had content licensing agreements with Google and Meta, Ryan told the LA Times:

“The government materially changed the legislation at the last minute and folded to Google. The Online News Act has been largely a disappointment for us.”

That’s certainly a very different take from what the Star had to say in its own June 19 story.

“All told, it was a partial victory for the Trudeau Liberals, which became one of the first governments to implement a law other jurisdictions around the world hope to adopt.”

Adams’s assessment - the government “folded” - appears to confirm suspicions that the Star might have been getting more Big Tech money before Bill C-18 was passed than it will be since.

The LA Times also offered reporting on the impact of Facebook’s departure that Canadian mainstream media has generally avoided.

“Unique visitors to Eagle Feather News, a tiny aboriginal newspaper in Saskatchewan, plummeted from about 20,000 to 12,000 a month in the five months after the Facebook ban. Ad sales revenue dropped from $19,000 to $11,000 a month during the same period.

“It’s been devastating,” Kerry Benjoe, Eagle Feather News’ managing editor, told the LA Times.

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It’s almost impossible to keep up with the pace of government subsidies for journalists these days. So much so that one wonders if it might just be cheaper to give them all government jobs.

One we haven’t talked about much is the “Special Measures for Journalism” program first announced mere weeks before the 2021 federal election to give additional temporary support to publications recovering from Covid’s impact. Right. That fund, worth $45 million over three years, was renewed in October 2022. It’s unclear why, but applications for this year’s funding were extended by two weeks until July 26. Expect this “special measure” to be enhanced and renewed again before the next election.

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The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to spread around what it thinks will be yet another $45 million in fresh loot coming into its Local Independent News Fund thanks to its new tax on streamers such as Netflix and Spotify. Originally designed to help standalone and other small independents provide news when up against large, frequently vertically integrated companies such as CTV, CityNews, CBC, TVA, etc.. the CRTC is now looking at giving Global/Corus a piece of the pie.

That might make Corus, with a share price of $0.10, happy but it’s unlikely to halt its current culling of staff. It will also make the small operators very unhappy.

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Speaking of unhappy, those assigned to pay that $45 million have, after filing court challenges seeking to overturn the CRTC’s decision, spoken out in no uncertain terms.

“Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, announced that music streaming services will need to pay an unprecedented 5% of their Canadian revenues to support the legacy broadcasting system. Almost half of that money will be used to prop up traditional radio. If that sounds like outdated thinking, it’s because it is.,” Music Canada CEO Patrick Rogers said in a news release, summarizing nicely the current government’s approach to technological change in the 21st Century.

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While most of the nation’s publishers appear to have contented themselves with begging for public funds as they transition to being permanent wards of the state, some are coming up with crazy ideas like investing in and serving their communities.

One of those appears to be Kevin Weedmark, publisher of the nation’s most audaciously-named paper, the 140-year-old Moosimin World-Spectator.

As detailed by CBC Saskatchewan, Weedmark is finding success by being relevant to his readers.

“You get more and more readers, people are relying on you … you get more and more advertisers because you have more and more readers, so the business end sort of falls into place,” he said in the piece.

You think that’s crazy? The World-Spectator even sends reporters like 19-year-old Ashley Bochek - who clearly has avoided the indoctrination of journalism school, out to meet people in person.

"I really like … going out in the community and talking to familiar faces or new faces," Bochek told CBC.

Imagine.

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Driving back from Calgary airport last week after some time on the west coast, it was hard not to notice the absence of typography on the side of what used to be the Calgary Herald building.

Overlooking the city’s main north-south corridor, the Deerfoot Trail, the words “Calgary Herald” used to proudly boast the newspaper’s presence in a community it served since 1883 - the year my great grandfather and namesake, Ottawa’s Peter Menzies, drove the first train into Calgary and, with it, the city’s first printing press.

As part of Postmedia’s strategy of sucking the marrow from the bones of once-great titles, the building was sold a couple of years ago.

But now, it too is gone. All staff work from home. All meetings are virtual. Like so many in the chain, the Herald is now official a zombie. U-Haul has taken over a building once designed to house more than 1,000 employees. The Ottawa Citizen’s former home is now a roller-skating rink. Or so I’m told.

All of which is a long-winded way of wondering what the actual the government thinks it is saving through its hundreds of millions in newspaper subsidies.

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Finally, a cautionary tale. Trained journalists know that assumptions are the Mother of all Screwups. Sportsnet’s Arash Madani seemed to forget that Friday when, in the frenzy surrounding the national women’s team’s misconduct involving use of a drone to spy on its competitors’ training sessions, he posted what he assumed to be a “gotcha.” Madani had spotted the ability to operate a drone as part of a Canada Soccer job posting. In doing so, he appears to have overlooked the fact that sports teams routinely use drones for their own training sessions. Later, he posted something more clear. Journos need to stop making assumptions. It’s embarrassing.

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Thanks last week for interview requests from the Hill Times, C2C Journal and Business in Vancouver.

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Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a former publisher of the Calgary Herald and a previous vice-chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).