iPolitics publisher James Baxter appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage today to discuss the news media in Canada. Here is his address:

Good afternoon and thank you for having me. Before I jump too far in, I think it’s probably worth my explaining how I went from ink-stained wretch to digital publisher.

I started my career in the late 1980s, following my father and grandfather into journalism, initially in radio but I soon moved to newspapers and magazines. I was born in 1964, the very last year of the baby boom.

As much as publishers would like you to believe they’ve been blindsided by the disruptive effects of the internet, this has been going on for my entire career. As a journalist, my job security and those of my entire cohort has been governed by LIFO — last in/first out. Journalism was never stable employment for anyone under 50.

Over the decades, we have moved from one advertising recession to another, never quite recovering from one before the next one hits. Publishers have known all that time that the model was fundamentally flawed.

Very few publishers appear to have taken the warning signs seriously — and then came the digital revolution. For those of us in the news media, this is nothing short of an ice age, a catastrophic change in the ecosystem.

Je suis parmi ceux qui ont eu le privilège et le luxe de passer un an à Harvard en 2007 et 2008, à titre de récipiendaire de la bourse Nieman, au même moment où l’économie s’écroulait littéralement pour l’industrie des médias, et particulièrement de nouvelles.

Of 30 fellows — 15 Americans and 15 from around the world — and some of the best in the world, eight of us had been laid off in the previous year.

I use the imagery of an ice age. Why? Because I believe everything that is big and slow-moving will inevitably perish — and that only once the existing media civilization is allowed to perish can renewal truly begin.

So I am not here for a handout. I am here with my hand up. Stop!

Fundamentally, I believe preserving the old media is not an option. I want to suggest you to save your money by asking you to not bail out my competitors. I also ask that the government stop funding the CBC’s massive expansion into digital-only news in markets where there is already brisk competition.

The CBC was created with two purposes: to provide a bulwark against America’s cultural imperialism and to fill a void in rural areas where commercial news was not viable.

While the CBC has done many wonderful things, it is important you know that, from my vantage point, it is not some wonderful, benevolent entity. It’s an uber-predator.

Because of the nature of its web content, the CBC is not competing with Huffington Post and CNN (the dreaded Americans), but instead crushes the Globe and Mail, Postmedia and … yes … iPolitics.

Funding the CBC has a profoundly chilling effect on would-be entrepreneurs in this country, particularly when there are no undertakings as to how and where that money will be spent.

Investors are justifiably reticent to put their money into (the) market — even where there is a clear void — because of the likelihood that once they prove there’s a market, the CBC will begin shifting funds there to compete.

That is the single-biggest obstacle to there being a vibrant and innovative marketplace of ideas in the media space.

I am eager to get to your questions, so I’ll jump to the lightning round:

I don’t believe the advertising market will ever revive in any meaningful way to be what it was before. Would tax incentives help? Perhaps. But it’s a blunt hammer. Subscriptions are the only viable way forward AND that demands publishers invest in quality.

Please toughen copyright protections that come with severe penalties/community service for serial offenders. Ban for-profit aggregators, which draw from the limited advertising pool without generating any original content; instead, encourage competing media to work together.

Require the CBC/Radio-Canada to refrain from posting “digital-only” content (must first be created for a TV or radio program). This is done by other public broadcasters, including the BBC, and it would go a long way toward leveling the field.

I am on record suggesting, as well, that any CBC content — video/audio/digital — be available in real time in the public domain for any other approved news site to use, as long as certain key branding requirements are met. ProPublica works this way and it ensures their stories are widely disseminated.

Insist that the CBC do joint-ventures with for-profit companies to ensure investigative journalism and other comprehensive coverage is sustained and the CBC’s wealth of experience is shared.

Focus your attention on “public interest” journalism. (There’s no real definition for “public interest” but, as Justice Potter Stewart said, “I know it when I see it.”)

Community Building (convening and alerting)

Democracy preserving (holding those in power to account)

Create a way for charitable foundations to support the creation and dissemination of “news and opinion in the public interest.” This needs to be done at arm’s-length and should only be limited to broadly-based news and opinion, not cause-specific, as that runs the risk of lobbying.

And if you really want to spend money, I will admit that the most useful program we ever had was the ill-fated Ontario Digital Media Tax Credit, though it was far too slow to be useful to a real start-up and very, very poorly designed to benefit genuine news producers.

I am certain other ideas will pop up over the course of our discussion and I look forward to exploring them with you.

Thank you.