Here we go again. 

This time the bad news was Bell, announcing layoffs of nearly 5,000 people, shuttering more media outlets and canceling local newscasts – including the decades-old flagship investigative news program W5 (which will be “repurposed”). 

And who is to blame? Why, the Feds of course, says Bell.

As someone who’s been in and around the media racket for more than 40 years now, I would suggest that things have always never been worse.

Not long before this, CBC was in the news, with another 600 or so staff reductions and MPs clutching pearls about “executive bonuses.” At the same time, Pierre Poilievre continues to threaten the CBC with mortal funding cuts – which is a longstanding theme for his cheering section (and his party’s fundraising letters). In between threats, he gleefully castigates other Canadian media outlets as shills for the Trudeau Liberals – despite evidence to the contrary and, frankly, outlets on the “other” side like Rebel News. He also seems to forget that the Sun/National Post chain is a money-losing U.S. hedge fund-controlled mouthpiece for the farther fringes of the Canadian right wing. 

It gets more dire. The mighty Toronto Star, once the second-largest newsroom in North America after the New York Times, with upwards of 400 journalists, is a shadow of its former self and remains mired in an existential struggle. And these days, paper copies of both the Star and the Globe and Mail hit my front porch in the mornings rolled up to approximately the size of an empty paper towel tube. 

Where does this leave us? Do we consume American news, where only Tucker Carlson (recent guest of Alberta premier Danielle Smith and BFF of Vladimir Putin) pays any attention to Canada? Do we resort to activist websites on the Left masquerading as news, with a pundit for every niche? The open sewer of Elon Musk’s X/Twitter? The barriers to entry have never been lower. Things have never been worse!

Is there a path forward? Who knows. But I submit that, in the news racket, the most valuable commodity of all is trust. Especially now, when AI is heading toward an inflection point where there’s a legitimate risk it can overturn democracy itself.

As someone who’s been in and around the media racket for more than 40 years now, I would suggest that things have always never been worse. Coming out of journalism schools, shiny young graduates faced economic slowdowns and consequent contractions in newsrooms. Resumes fluttered away on the winds of our broken dreams. Those of us lucky enough to land jobs in the business spent the following decades watching the news landscape crumble and morph, first dismissing “the interweb” as a passing fad, then waking up to a new, exciting modality that promised everything but a viable business model. Even the youngsters, with heretofore unimaginable skillsets, toiled onward, hoping someone would figure out the money thing. Hello Google. Hello Facebook. Goodbye ad revenue.

Is there a path forward? Who knows. But I submit that, in the news racket, the most valuable commodity of all is trust. Especially now, when AI is heading toward an inflection point where there’s a legitimate risk it can overturn democracy itself. If you think Trump was bad … well, hold my beer.

An optimist would say that people are smart enough to know when they’re being played. Who can decide where they can find trustworthy, accountable journalism that serves the public interest. That there are those who are willing to subscribe, with cold hard cash, to those news organizations that fulfill that mandate. They’re indeed out there. They need your support.

Like the old saying, the only way the bad guys win is when the good guys do nothing. And it’s also well to remember that other old saying: you get what you pay for.

If your communications team is feeling the pressure, let us help. Contact us today.