Such nonsense.

Facebook doesn't post news. Its users do. And the vast majority of the time, the original post is from the publication itself. And they post in the first place because the clicks from Facebook are valuable.

This is a transparent attempt to double-dip, and they have tech-illiterate politicians playing along.

Last edited by RadioAaron (February 5, 2021 8:26 pm)

the medium once was the message

Here is a front page of one of the most successful community papers that has been around since 1917.  The paper has been called the Etobicoke Guardian for a long time now but has served west Toronto for over 100 years.

I am not sure the theory of the weekly papers putting dailies out of business is correct.  Many of the weeklies were designed and still do cover specific neighbourhoods or areas of town.  Some are just wraps for flyers, and others like the Guardian or Mississauga News actually do reasonable coverage of their area with local news sports and events like a regular paid paper would. 

The two biggest owners of community papers Metroland and Post Media Network both publish daily papers. In the case of both, most of their community papers are in smaller towns that never had a daily paper.

In larger cities or towns like Brampton, Oshawa and St. Thomas who all lost their papers back in the 90's it had as much to do with their very frugal  owners, Thomson Newspapers as with any competition from weeklies. 

In the case of The Guelph Mercury and Cambridge Reporter both  had a long and damaging strike in the 90's and both papers never recovered from all of the huge circulation and advertising losses incurred during the strike.  All this happened I believe when they were still owned by Thomson.   Also in these communities, the neighbouring Kitchener/Waterloo Record covered both Guelph and Cambridge.   Toronto daily newspapers were available everyday in every convenience and grocery store. In fact most of the Toronto dailies even had carrier routes back then in Guelph and Cambridge.  So the competition was coming from much more than just the weekly papers.

Newspapers in general didn't react nearly quick enough or strong enough when the onslaught of the internet came. They could have been at the forefront of the information highway, but for the most part they were buried in the past.   Really it was a case of too little too late.  They do however have a case regarding Google and to a much lesser extent Facebook.  Is it too late?  Could be, but this issue is not just a problem in Canada, so we will need to see over the next few years what arrangements if any can be made.

Oddly enough the only major newspaper company that saw the writing on the wall ahead of everyone was Thomson, who knew when to bail out of the newspaper business here and in the US.  However they did a lot of damage to many good dailies by starving them to death and taking out big profits as long as they could.  HHmmm sound familiar??  

And look at Thomson Reuters today.  Still Canadian owned, profits sky high, unloaded all of their papers with the exception of the Globe and Mail, and they control....as "Newman" would say, "Information"...

Last edited by paterson1 (February 6, 2021 3:22 pm)