It is time to start imagining what local news will look like in a post-Postmedia world. And it is time to recognize that the federal government will be dragged into this next media crisis — whether it likes it or not.

On Thursday, Postmedia announced its second-quarter results and revealed that yet another round of cuts is coming. The company’s strategy appears to be to pay its debtholders and give its executives large retention bonuses that still somehow don’t get all the recipients to stay. To accomplish this important work, it will further degrade the editorial content of newspapers from which subscribers and advertisers are already fleeing.

It can’t work.

Don’t take my word for it. This is what Conrad Black, the founder of what is now Postmedia, tweeted out the other day:

“It’s too late, the bond holders control the company and are content to bleed it dry with the complicity of management. Bankruptcy is next.”

Postmedia, which now includes the Sun chain, currently runs the only major English language dailies in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, London, Windsor, Ottawa and Montreal. It has two of Toronto’s four major newspapers.

As a thought experiment, I’ve tried to consider what would happen to local news where I live in Ottawa, if Postmedia kicked the knees out from under the Citizen and Sun.

The best-case scenario, it seems to me, is that the receivers would sell off the chain’s titles for parts, and that someone, maybe a local entrepreneur with a civic conscience, might pick up the Citizen with the goal of converting it eventually to an all-digital publication.

What is the Citizen? It is the city’s strongest local news brand. It is a robust system of local newsgathering. It is a much-reduced but still richly talented and productive cadre of reporters and editors. All of this might be appealing to someone wanting to chart a course into the digital age.

But the Citizen is also a half-century-old printing press that no one could possibly want hung around their neck. And the Citizen is also a large legacy pension obligation. No one wants to buy into that.

Let’s imagine that there is no Jeff Bezos or Pierre Omidyar sitting around with crazy money and nothing better to do than have a go at reviving the Citizen. It is safe to say that there won’t be ten such saviours for the ten cities I listed above. So let’s assume Ottawa is not among the lucky ones.

Ottawa does have a giveaway daily newspaper, Metro, and a chain of neighbourhood handout papers, all owned by the Toronto Star’s parent corporation, Torstar. Conceivably they could expand to fill the gap created by the demise of the Citizen and Sun. But Torstar has its own financial problems and, if anything, has been cutting costs at its already small operations here.

Right now, the CBC has focused its energies on digital expansion and enterprise and investigative journalism, which I applaud. But it must understand that its priority as a public broadcaster must always be its civic function. Right now, the CBC has focused its energies on digital expansion and enterprise and investigative journalism, which I applaud. But it must understand that its priority as a public broadcaster must always be its civic function.

So, could there be digital outlets that would spring up and fill some of the gaps created by a Postmedia collapse? There is already a website in Ottawa called apt613.ca offering extensive coverage of arts and culture. Might it expand into something more? Possibly, though it would require significant new investment from somewhere.

It seems reasonable to suppose that Ottawa’s business community, with its lively high-tech sector, would have the resources to sustain some outlet to replace the Citizen’s business pages, though it might be behind a paywall that ordinary Ottawans would seldom climb.

Sports? The Citizen and Sun currently provide the only broad-spectrum in-depth coverage of the Senators and Redblacks and other local sports. Would Ottawa sports fans pay for a new website to replace the sports pages? Maybe. But remember that Ottawa is a city filled with people that come from elsewhere, and when the Habs or Leafs come to town, their supporters often drown out the Senators’ fans.

I am not so concerned about the cops, courts and crime. These are local clickbait, and even as the private radio and TV stations have reduced the scope of their news operations to match shrinking advertising, they continue to concentrate their coverage there.

So, what have I missed? Oh, yeah. City hall, the school board, local governance. These are at the heart of the civic function of journalism. The media are the conveyor belt of information between citizens and the people who govern them. They are the main source of external accountability. And yet covering the planning committee, or digging for news in its documents, is anything but clickbait.

It is possible to imagine an insiders’ digital newsletter springing up to replace the reporting of the newspapers, catering to lobbyists and developers and such. But it would play almost no civic role.

What you are left with is the CBC. The CBC recently hired the excellent Joanne Chianello (a refugee from the Citizen) who has greatly enriched its civic coverage. But across the country in recent years, the CBC’s commitment to core public service journalism has been uncertain. In many locations, the corporation has moved to episodic, event-drive coverage of city halls and legislatures, which means less of the deep digging we so desperately need.

I am not one of those who thinks the crisis in private sector media means we should constrain the CBC. Far from it. In the short term, the CBC will be our only robust journalistic resource in many communities as Postmedia collapses.

Right now, the CBC has focused its energies on digital expansion and enterprise and investigative journalism, which I applaud. But it must understand that its priority as a public broadcaster must always be its civic function. The government has encouraged the digital growth. It needs to send signals that covering legislatures and town halls is a core responsibility for the CBC.

Still, the CBC cannot be the only solution to the coming civic crisis of knowledge and accountability. Even the most fervent CBC supporters, of which I am one, cannot be comfortable with the public broadcaster becoming the sole source of news on local public affairs.

Nor can the CBC ever, as a national broadcaster, become a truly local voice as the Postmedia papers were before the chain started stripping them of their autonomy and resources.

A few weeks ago, the Public Policy Forum released a report called Shattered Mirror on the state of the news industry. It reads like a blueprint of options for the federal government the day after Postmedia goes down.

One of its most imaginative ideas is to create a publicly-funded but arms-length initiative that would have Canadian Press add 60 to 80 journalists to cover legislatures and city halls and make their journalism available for free to any outlets interested in using it.

It’s time to take these ideas seriously — because English Canada’s local news system is about to crash.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.