OPINION | Create Big Tech fund to pay for northern journalism

There has been a lot of talk coming from governments lately, including ours, about making Big Techcompanies Facebook, Google and their ilk pay news organizations for the stories that appear on their platforms.

Last month, Facebook shocked Australian users after following through on its threat to ban news from its platform down under if the Australian government continued to pursue legislation that would force Big Tech to pay.

Facebook relented, but the message is clear: the tech giant doesn't think it owes news companies anything.

In terms of where eyeballs reading stories on news sites come from, that would be a fair point. When I was managing editor of Northern News Services, the amount of traffic that came directly from Facebook was easily 90 per cent, and surely it still is.

But it's not the quantity of news on Facebook, nor the number of eyeballs the platform pushes toward news websites, that's at issue.

Rather, it's the wholesale destruction of the news industry's ability to generate advertising revenue.

And more philosophically, it's how we maintain a robust fourth estate while independent and privately-owned press are on the ropes and only the publicly-funded CBCis big enough to keep us informed and hold governments to account in the hinterlands outside major urban centres.

When I joined Northern News Services (NNSL) as a cub reporter in 1999, I entered a newsroom stuffed to the rafters with journalists.

No one got rich on an NNSL salary, but the more advertisements sold, the more pages were needed to be filled by other stuff as well, and since poetry and jam recipes were not likely to hold readers to the page, it had to be news.

And thus, for many years, there was the expectation that a reporter would be sent to village council meetings in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., or to capture the winner and her big catch at the fishing derby in Baker Lake, Nunavut, or to get the kids' faces from soccer camp in Inuvik, N.W.T.

This model of maximum coverage is largely dead now. How do print and other traditional news media compete when the ad that used to cost $600 in the newspaper can be "boosted" on Facebook for $25?

Big Tech has wrecked the ability of news agencies to generate revenue from advertisements, especially from the private sector, whichknows a good deal when it sees one. Gone, too, are the classifieds and job ads.

Goal must be to restore community journalism

The reality came home for me in 2015 while standing at the layout board with NNSL's then-managing editor (now publisher) Bruce Valpy trying to figure out how to stuff the guts back into the Yellowknifer and News/North papers after jettisoning the arts and business pages. The following year witnessed the death of the print edition of Northern Journal, a newspaper based in Fort Smith, N.W.T. The year after that, northerners said goodbye to the NNSL-owned Deh Cho Drum.

I'm not suggesting that we somehow turn back the clock and save traditional media from its own obsolescence. But there is still a need for traditional journalists, especially in the North, where reliable reporting options are limited.

If Canada is to follow in Australia's footsteps, and it appears Trudeau's Liberal government is keen to do so, the objective must be to hire more journalists. My fear is that whatever deal is worked out will involve only a handful of the largest media companies in Canada.

Ottawa must avoid the temptation to drop out of the conversation should Big Tech and major Canadian publishers make nice and carve out their own deals, like their counterparts in Australia have been doing.

The federal government must ensure the goal is hiring more journalists and restoring journalism in communities where journalism has been lost and to make Big Tech pay for that.

Good thing there is already a precedent fund with that very aim in mind.

The Local Journalism Initiative was launched by the federal government in 2019 with a budget of $50 million over five years enough to hire between 150 to 200 journalists, by my calculation. I accessed this fund two years ago so NNSL could hire a reporter to cover Nunavut's Kitikmeot region.

The only problem, of course, is that the Local Journalism Initiative is funded by taxpayers. Canadian taxpayers are pumping cash transfusions into news companies that are simultaneously being bled dry by Silicon Valley.

Big Tech is not going to go broke if it has to start paying for news. Taking over responsibility for Canada's journalism initiative fund would be an excellent place to start. Let's make sure the idea get's a boost.