Local journalism in Atlantic Canada in trouble as company known to 'slash and burn' buys dozens of newspapers
Deal likely won't lead to investments in local content, journalism prof warns
If you want to understand the struggling local news landscape, look no further than Atlantic Canada, where a takeover has kept the region's largest newspaper publisher in operation, but still leaves local journalism in a tenuous state.
Toronto-based Postmedia, whose titles include the National Post and the Montreal Gazette, has taken over the financially insolvent SaltWire Network, Halifax-based owner of daily and weekly newspapers across Atlantic Canada.
The $1-million deal, completed Monday, may have saved SaltWire's newsrooms in Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador.
"Change is difficult, but we at Postmedia believe with deep conviction in a positive, sustainable and vibrant future for news media in the Atlantic provinces and across Canada," Postmedia CEO Andrew McLeod said in an editorial published Monday.
However, the acquisition will impact the former SaltWire newspapers through layoffs, the sale of offices and printing facilities and the reduction of print editions of at least one community's long-running newspaper.
And Postmedia, which has been majority owned by U.S. hedge fund Chatham Asset Management since 2016, isn't known for investing in the future of its local newspapers, according to people familiar with the company's history with them.
"Its M.O. has been to slash and burn as much as possible to generate cash out of its property," said April Lindgren, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's (TMU) School of Journalism.
"I don't see any future that involves huge investments in content."
Stop the presses
The 145-year-old Telegram in St. John's published its final daily edition on Friday.
Under Postmedia, it will exist online and in a weekly edition that will be printed out of province.
The Telegram will also have 30 per cent fewer reporters, after four of the newsroom's 13 journalists were laid off.
"It was a pretty grim scene," Keith Gosse, local president of the union representing the paper's employees, told CBC N.L.'s On The Go last week, about the day they learned of the daily print edition's demise.
St. John's is now one of two provincial capitals without a daily newspaper, along with Fredericton, whose Daily Gleaner is delivered just three days a week — much thinner than it once was.
In 2022, Postmedia bought the Gleaner's parent company Brunswick News, formerly owned by New Brunswick's wealthy Irving family, acquiring its nine English-language newspapers.
By that point, journalist Don MacPherson had worked at the Gleaner for nearly 20 years as a court reporter, and was offered a buyout later that year.
He told CBC News he initially wanted to stay on, but knew that the cuts would mean being overworked — he said he would have been one of two reporters left in the newsroom — and he likely wouldn't have been able to focus solely on his court beat.
Aside from the reduction in staffing and publication days, he said the priorities of a company headquartered in a huge city like Toronto aren't the same as smaller cities and towns.
"There was a distinct lack of awareness of what was important to this community."
Local newsrooms a 'shadow of what they used to be'
Upon finalizing the SaltWire deal, Postmedia hailed itself as being well placed to "create crucial, innovative journalism amid rough seas."
But Lindgren, who is the principal investigator for the Local News Research Project at TMU, is skeptical. She believes the shrinking of newsrooms will limit their ability to adequately cover local news.
Postmedia-controlled newsrooms — more than 100 in six provinces and two national newspapers — are "pale shadows of what they used to be," she said.
Since 2008, the company has shut down 57 smaller community newspapers.
Lindgren said there had already been uncertainty around the future of news in Atlantic Canada due to cuts to some broadcast newsrooms this year.
Both Global News and CTV News laid off journalists in the region. CTV's parent company, Bell Media also axed the Atlantic bureau's weekend newscasts and shut down five local radio stations in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
"We're rapidly reaching a place where ... the consequences of not having robust local coverage are going to start showing," Lindgren said.
"It's going to be a case of, as Joni Mitchell said, 'You don't know what you got till it's gone.'"
An independent future for local journalism
Independent outlets that have emerged in the region are trying to filling some of those gaps.
MacPherson, for example, used the money from his buyout package and his own nest egg to start The Fredericton Independent in early 2023.
It's a one-person outlet, hosted on the digital platform Substack.
He tries to cover as much of what's happening in the capital region as he can, but he prioritizes court reporting, his bread and butter.
He said he can go to the provincial courthouse and walk away with four stories to write, but he can't then sit in a three-hour-long city council meeting at night.
The other challenge is making it financially sustainable.
MacPherson initially offered free access, but has since moved to paid subscriptions, charging $9 a month or $90 a year for access to all of his content. Some stories remain free to read.
"People are hungry for the news and they're learning that they need to pay for the news," he said, explaining that most people will subscribe to multiple entertainment streaming services, but remain reluctant to pay for news.
Since MacPherson launched it in early 2023, the newsletter has grown to have more than 4,000 subscribers, he said, and between 11 to 15 per cent are now paid subscribers.
The demand for his work is growing: Even people in other cities are asking him about getting coverage.
But he said there's no need for it to just be him doing it.
"If I was at SaltWire," he said, "I'd be looking at something like this, too."
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