Article content continued

As a taxpayer I would much rather subsidize Canada’s journalists than Canada’s legacy media companies — but I would sure as hell rather subsidize neither. The more beholden to government a country’s journalists, the less free its press. Magazine writers in this country know their publications get a top-up from Ottawa in the form of the Canadian Periodical Fund. That’s not ideal. But under News Media Canada’s proposal, we would know our jobs literally depended on government largesse. I’ll take a hard pass on that.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

Publishers’ and union bosses’ claims of unanimous support notwithstanding, many unionized journalists, and many of your non-unionized friends here at the National Post, hate the idea. It risks narrowing Canada’s already remarkably narrow spectrum of acceptable ideas and arguments. It risks — no, guarantees — alienating the very consumers we need to attract. In the case of some legacy media outlets it would simply extend the runway for business models that everyone knows will never fly again. In any event, the sums being bandied about wouldn’t solve the crisis as a whole unless the solution was permanent and ever-greater government dependency. I’m amazed to see how many journalists, including some very nearly pensionable ones, support the idea.

Crises incubate ingenuity, as they have done at legacy media outlets all over the world. It is mortifying to hear the people whose job it is to innovate and adapt Canada’s outlets implying they’ll never again be able to stand on their own two feet. If I thought the only alternative was extinction, I guess I would swallow hard and support subsidy. But Telegraph Media Group is profitable. Jeff Bezos is revolutionizing The Washington Post. News Corp is still a licence to print money. It is unclear to me why such feats should be unachievable here in Canada. We have good journalists, good stories, and a market just like anywhere else. If the Canadian news media disappeared tonight people would be utterly desperate for its return by tomorrow morning.