How Jordan Bitove plans to 'resurrect' the Toronto Star
CBC Radio | Posted: April 28, 2023 7:03 PM | Last Updated: April 28, 2023
'We are a progressive publication and we are the voice of a progressive group in the country,' says Bitove
The alarm bells have been ringing loud and clear about the future of the newspaper industry, but Toronto Star owner and publisher Jordan Bitove believes he can turn things around — with the help of digital subscribers and the government.
The Canadian businessman says he isn't looking for handouts to help "resurrect" the Toronto Star. What he wants is for Canadians to embrace what he calls an "ethical media supply chain" — keeping more Canadian advertising dollars in the hands of Canadian media outlets.
"Trusted media outlets play a critical role in defending democracy and informing our communities. Yet we are losing revenue to foreign players, challenging us to uphold the role," Bitove told the audience in his Wilfrid Kesterton Lecture for the Carleton University School of Journalism in March.
After his talk, he spoke to IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed about his plans for the Toronto Star and why he won't let it fail.
Can you envision a day when — I'm sure you can actually — can you imagine how close it might be that the [newspaper] business model will not include print?
The New York Times and others basically say within 15 years we won't have print. But I don't agree with that... What we need to do is understand that we own a niche in the marketplace. We are a progressive publication, and we are the voice of a progressive group in the country. And we need to deliver a great product. So maybe we're not going to have a million and a half [readers]. Maybe we're going to have 300,000. And maybe those people will pay a little bit more of a premium to have access to that quality of journalism.
The Toronto Star is known generally to be a centre or centre-left progressive voice. You have contributed to conservative politicians in the past. What does a paper like the Toronto Star look like in the Jordan Bitove era?
It's a great question and I'm almost appreciative that you're asking it because it's one of the issues that I have with technology and Twitter and Facebook, and all these things where people will anonymously post something about my donations or whatever. I donate to the person and not necessarily to a party. And I'm proud of that. I've been loyal to great candidates all over the place. And so I would be a fool, from the business point of view... to move the paper away from where its base is. We own left-of-centre, we're a progressive [newspaper] and we're the only paper of that kind in Canada.
I believe we speak for the bulk of Canadians. Canadians are progressive, I believe. I think they are left-of-centre. Maybe you've got others that are a little bit right that are more fiscally conservative, but I do think the Star speaks to the bulk of Canadians, and we will stay in that lane.
It's a very different environment now than it was when you and I were delivering newspapers when we were kids. So the reality is that if you're part of the mainstream media, it's not to be trusted and in fact, it's even viewed as an enemy. How do you go beyond preaching to the converted and into audiences that see papers like yours, and other media like ours, as the enemy?
To me, that's a beach ball you've just thrown me. Being a neophyte to the industry and not really understanding it — what I realized is [that] the Toronto Star has been around for 130 years. There's trust with the readers. When one journalist writes a piece, the editor, the managing editors, the chief editor, the publisher, the entire organization's name is on that. You think about it. That's one piece that's written and the importance of getting it right in that one piece.
And so what I ask our team is: let's make sure that we're fact-checking. Let's make sure that we're being balanced in our reporting. Let's make sure that we're being very independent on how we do things and bring that sort of approach to everything that they do.
We have a public trust editor. There's only one other news organization in Canada that has a public trust editor. He's actually Bruce Campion-Smith. He was our ombudsman who had to deal with ensuring the integrity of our organization. If you had an issue, you wrote in and it was dealt with. If we had to write a retraction, we would, and we still do.
But that's well and good for the people who read you. What about those who don't? And consider the mainstream press as the problem?
Yeah, I think we could spend two hours and I can talk about social media. I really think back to [legislative bills] C-18 [Online News Act] and C-11 [Online Streaming Act]. They were very important. Why are they important? Because when I was a kid, we had the CRTC. And like it or hate it, the CRTC served a very important role in this country. It protected our cultural identity and it protected broadcasters, radio, TV, whatever, on content. And our airwaves were not filled with American [content].
And now what we see, because we have a completely unregulated internet, is we have full infiltration through Facebook, Google, and anything else. No one regulating it. And so when two cops are shot in Barrie or in Edmonton, or a convoy happens here in Ottawa. Is that Canadian? That's not Canadian. That is Fox News and other news organizations in the States and people online posting stuff that is creating that fear, creating those issues. And I believe that we need to regulate it for our sake and for our kids' sake.
So on that issue of what the government can do, you lobbied for Bill C-18 which would force big tech companies to share the great amount of wealth that they get from linking to content on news media. Meta has threatened to block access to content if this bill goes through. Then what? What happens?
Well, they tried to do that in Australia and they failed. And there was a big pushback and I'm hoping that our friends here in Ottawa use their force and might to get them to play fair. We're not as an industry asking for anything that's unreasonable. They take 80 per cent of our revenue. They take our stories and they publish them and they sell advertising. How is that fair? That they can take your work, anyone who's writing an article, and it's being used to sell advertising — and we get zero from it.
So my ask in all this is — and we've been very clear with Google and Facebook and Apple News — is help us. Help us. Money's great but you've got global organizations and developers, and you have the ability to disseminate, help us. I'm not asking for a handout. I'm asking you to invest in our organization to help us get better so that we can compete.
I admire the optimism with which you speak about this business, but the reality speaks of something very different. And so I guess what I'm trying to ask you to put another way is that you are extremely well-positioned, perhaps more than anyone else since Joe Atkinson, to determine the direction of this paper. Will you commit today to doing more than just doing the right things, or will you go into your pocket to save this paper?
I have been going into my pocket.. And it's fair to say I have not taken a dime out of this business. I've been investing millions into it. And that's not stupidity. These are very sound business investments that I'm making to be able to support what we need to do.
We had a very antiquated publishing platform for our digital and we were leaving money on the table. We were not engaging enough. The quality of the experience, if you've looked at our app, it's improving vastly. But we had to make a decision to go to a new platform. It cost millions to do it — and we've done it.
And so to answer your question, everyone in this room that's listening is going to be very pleasantly surprised with what we do with our publication over the next couple of years. This isn't some guy just throwing money at a situation. I've got an incredible team… But the biggest thing that I just want to touch on was that whole area of — we had all these other distractions, and we are burning millions of dollars, tens of millions, and we're eliminating all that. It's now all focused on journalism.
I know you wanted to end on a positive note but what if the Toronto Star fails?
It would be a very sad day for Canada. I think that it would be a blow to society, to democracy. The Toronto Star is too important to fail. It's a public trust. I'm someone that's sort of guiding it through a period of time. I don't even really think I own it. I think that the readers own it, our journalists own it, and I'm just the custodian of it. And so what I am trying to do is just bring sound, fundamental business acumen to running the business. We've been operating in a very antiquated model and I'm hoping that with the moves that we're making, the Star doesn't just survive, but it thrives.
*Q&A edited for clarity and length. This episode was produced by Nahlah Ayed.