Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 3 - Evidence for December 7, 2004
OTTAWA, December 7, 2004
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 9:35 a.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: I would like to welcome honourable senators, witnesses and the public to this sitting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications which is continuing its study of the Canadian news media.
The committee is studying the appropriate role of the government in helping to ensure that the Canadian news media remain healthy, independent and diverse in light of the tremendous changes that have occurred in recent years, notably, globalization, technological change, convergence and increased concentration of ownership.
[English]
Our first witness this morning is the eminent professor John Miller from the School of Journalism at Ryerson University, who knows a lot about many different areas of journalism but who is, in particular, specialized in examining the matter of diversity within newsrooms and newspapers, which should be extremely interesting to explore.
Welcome to the committee, Professor Miller. We would ask you to make a presentation of maybe 10 minutes and then we will ask you questions.
Mr. John Miller, professor, School of Journalism, Ryerson University: I am particularly happy to have this opportunity to share some research that I did into Canadian daily newspapers because it points to two possible policy areas being explored by the committee. First, are our visible minorities and Aboriginals fairly represented in the newsrooms of daily newspapers?
As you know, broadcast stations are regulated by the federal government but newspapers are not, nor do they fall under the Employment Equity Act. I was interested to see how the staffing of newspapers had kept pace with the tremendous growth of visible minorities and Aboriginals in our population.
Second, what support does journalism need most to bring diversity of voices and new ownership into the market? I know you have heard evidence that there may be a case for CBC in print, although it would be tremendously costly. I will direct your attention to local, small media as a more critical area in need of support.
In this research project, I set out to do a number of things to find out whether the racial and gender diversity of Canada's daily newsrooms matches that of the communities they serve. As important, is there diversity through the ranks of not just reporters but of people who make the decisions of what newspapers cover?
I also wanted to measure the commitment of editors to higher diversity. It is fine to look at the current situation, but one must also look at what will change. Do recent hiring trends support any movement and progress?
Are newspapers under pressure from their communities to change? If so, how many are doing something about it?
That sounds like a great deal to accomplish. I did it by sending out questionnaires to managing editors of daily newspapers across the country. I made the same measurement in 1994 for the then Canadian Daily Newspaper Association. They have not done another survey since. I thought it would be nice to take a 10-year measurement and see what has changed in that period.
We found that the number of minorities — and by that I mean people who self-identify as visible minorities or Aboriginals — employed by daily newspapers in 1994 was 67. Now it is up to 72. However, more newsroom employees were surveyed in 1994. The percentage has increased slightly from 2.5 per cent to 3.4 per cent of newsroom employees.
That is not an impressive figure when you consider that visible minorities and Aboriginals in the population now measure 16.7 per cent. The newsrooms have fallen behind from where they were 10 years ago in terms of minority representation. Even though the percentage has increased, it has not risen nearly as much as the percentage increase in visible minorities and Aboriginals in the general population.
In the 1991 census, that figure is 11.7 per cent; in the 2001 census it is 16.7 per cent. We can see that minorities are more than six times under-represented in the average daily newsroom.
How do these figures compare to the population of the communities that those newspapers serve? I broke this down to three large circulation groupings. Obviously there are different conditions in big cities than in smaller cities in terms of diversity in the population. The first grouping was for centres with a circulation of over 100,000, which are the biggest cities; the second category was a circulation of 25,000 to 100,000, which is medium-sized cities; and the third was for a circulation of less than 25,000, which is the smaller centres.
There is an obvious case for diversity in the bigger centres, but I wanted to see whether it also applies in the other centres. As we know, diversity is spreading across Canada. It is not limited to the traditional settling points of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
Here is what each of the groups looks like. The tall line represents the percentage of visible minorities and Aboriginals in the communities of the papers that responded to the survey. We can see that representation is 24.7 per cent in the biggest cities, but the percentage of minorities in the newsroom of those papers is only 4.1 per cent.
It is quite interesting to me that there are similar gaps in the other two circulation groupings. Many of the editors who responded to this survey said, "Diversity is just not a factor in our community," but you can see from these figures that it is.
These gaps have widened in 10 years owing to the tremendous growth in minorities. The gap was about 4.5 times under-represented in 1994 and now it is now up to more than six times under-represented. Since it is falling behind, you would think that there would be a stronger commitment to hire diverse staff. That is clearly not so. I was somewhat surprised by that finding.
Of the bigger papers, only 33 per cent say that they have a very strong commitment to hire diversity, which is down from 45 per cent in 1994 when I asked the same question. The biggest falloff is in the medium-sized papers, which is down to a 12.5 per cent very strong commitment. That commitment level was 40 per cent in 1994.
As the commitment level was higher 10 years ago, I expected to see more progress. However, for some reason, the commitment has fallen off and there has been no progress.
I also asked a question that some people might interpret to be directed at whether there is systemic discrimination or merely an unawareness of some of the factors that might explain these numbers. I asked the editors, "Do you think your newsrooms' traditions and culture are impeding the hiring and progress of minorities?" The almost unanimous answer was "No." There is no feeling that the lack of commitment has anything to do with the culture and traditions of the paper.
Approximately 59 per cent of the papers that responded to the survey have entirely white staffs. That number includes one in the largest cities of our country.
To get a response to this survey, I promised the newspapers anonymity because I was just interested in the overall results. Therefore, I am not at liberty to divulge the situation at a given paper. As it is, the response was less than I had hoped. As I said, 37 newspapers out of the 96 that we approached returned surveys and even answered our phone calls afterwards.
One large group, CanWest — I can say their name because they did not participate — refused to allow some of their papers to respond to the survey. CanWest said that was due to privacy concerns. When I quoted the Privacy Act as specifically exempting studies of this kind, they said, "We disagree with your advice." I got nowhere.
The representation of different minority groups was also interesting. I am comparing this information to that of 1994 to determine what has changed.
There has been an increase in Chinese journalists, but the group that is most under represented is the Aboriginal journalists. Of the 2,000 employees, only one was an Aboriginal. That is most worrisome and an obvious area for some effort. I compared the percentages in the newsroom, which is the darker line, with the percentages of these groups in our population, and you can see the Aboriginal minority group is the most under-represented, scarcely visible in daily newsrooms at all.
Are things changing? You will see this when we look at the gender figures, but it takes a long time to change large newsrooms. I asked the editors what their hiring pattern had been for the last year. I wanted to see if there was more hiring of minorities just in the last year when more visible minorities are going to journalism schools, there is more pressure from the community to better represent them and more businesses are seeing the business case for diversity and of reaching out to the fastest growing part of the populations.
Recent hiring trends show that there is some progress. The numbers and percentages are higher, mostly in the part-time area more than in the full-time area. Some newspapers are using their internship part-time summer hiring programs to get more diversity, but diversity is not a priority for full-time hiring at the biggest newspapers. There is little sign of diverse hiring in small and medium papers, which means that minorities are not getting the chance to go through the same training ground that White journalists go through in order to give them more practice and make them more qualified to work for the biggest papers. Minorities are coming into the biggest papers without that training with smaller papers, which might make it harder for them to stay at those bigger papers.
What is the pressure for action? I asked, "Has your paper been approached by any racial minority group in the past year to discuss coverage?" I also asked, "Has your paper taken any initiatives to improve the hiring and the coverage of minorities?" We can see on the second group of slides that that there is a strong correlation between the newspapers that have been approached by community groups and those that can name at least one action they have taken. It is roughly similar.
The most-mentioned reason that they are being approached by minority groups in the community was problems with coverage, and the second most-mentioned reason was lack of diversity of staff. Lack of diversity of staff is on the agenda of community groups in many of these communities.
Gertrude Robinson and Armande Saint-Jean have done studies on the gender gap in newsrooms. Their last study was in 1994, and I thought it would be interesting to see where it has gone since. There has been a steady progression of women in newsrooms, up to 34 per cent. There is still a gap in comparison to the percentage of women in the workforce, but there has been steady increase since 1974. Since I have been at Ryerson, which is now 18 years, our classes have been roughly two-thirds women during that time. Even with this preponderance of women in journalism schools, the progress of women in newsrooms has been quite slow, which perhaps indicates that minorities face an even longer time for their numbers to grow to critical mass in newsrooms.
The policy considerations that I want to throw out to you are that newspapers are not regulated, and the very idea of regulation sends them into apoplexy. However, they have a good record of self-regulation when pressed. They certainly were pressed by both the Davey commission and the Kent commission to set up press councils. Canada, thanks to that pressure and the newspaper industry's reaction, has probably the world's largest representation at press councils. Every province except Saskatchewan has a press council to which practically all the newspapers belong. I was on the Ontario Press Council when the Kent commission and various policy options were discussed. There was a veritable rush of newspapers to join the press council ahead of any federal legislation, which, of course, never happened. They have remained with those press councils.
That is an indication that they will take some action when they are pressed. What they need is a good call for action and attention to address diversity hiring in their newsrooms because Canadians use the media, and particularly the print media, as their window on the outside world. If that window does not show the diversity of our population and does not cover it professionally and inclusively, that will make social cohesion more of a problem in our country.
A good model is the Kerner commission in the United States in 1968, which fingered the media for particular attention for not reporting on some of the conditions that lead to the urban unrest in U.S. cities, particularly for the media's unwillingness to hire Black reporters who could bring their communities' concerns into the newsroom.
Some of the most proactive diversity efforts in the world are now being carried out by the newspaper industry in the United States. They do a census every year, and they measure and they pledge to try to reflect their communities in the newsroom.
The federal government also has a bit of clout to use because the most obvious option for pressuring newspapers to do something is to point out that they could be subject to the federal contractors program, which would bring them under the Employment Equity Act. It would be just a slight stretch of the way those provisions are carried, but the federal government is the fifth leading advertiser of daily newspapers in this country, and an advertising agreement is a contract. I mention that because there is evidence that the Employment Equity Act works to increase diversity in newsrooms.
The broadcasting outlets I am showing on the slide and Canadian press all have higher percentages of minorities in newsrooms than any of the newspapers that responded to the survey. I believe that is because of the fact that every year they have to account for who is in their newsroom and what their hiring plans are. It is just not on the agenda of daily newspapers.
The Chairman: I am not sure we have that slide in our printed material. Could you be sure the clerk gets it?
Mr. Miller: Yes. I am sorry. I added it at a later date. These are taken from Human Resources Development Canada, the most recent filings for the year 2002.
Senator Carney: I cannot read them.
The Chairman: You will have to explain it to us because we do not have it.
Mr. Miller: I have gone through various news agencies, including CFTO in Toronto. The number of visible minorities and Aboriginals in their newsroom is 13 per cent. For Rogers Communication, their percentage of visible minorities is 11 per cent; CHUM, 10 per cent; Craig Broadcasting in Alberta, 8.4 per cent; CBC, 6.2 per cent. These are all higher percentages than in any of the daily newspaper groupings that I measured in this survey. As a matter of fact, they are many times the number.
However, these are all employees. The numbers are not directly comparable, including newsroom employees, but it is an indication that there is considerable diversity among the companies that have to report their equity hiring plans to the federal government every year.
That is the first area, and I will cover the second area briefly.
Where does journalism need the most support? I will argue that support is most required at the local level. As a by-product of my research, I was able to compare newsroom to newsroom over a 10-year period in regards to what has happened to their staffing. To my knowledge, those figures do not exist anywhere else. These tables represent changes in staffing over 10 years, which are in the second chart in the package of handouts.
In the biggest circulation group, over 100,000, if you compare the 2004 totals with 1994 totals, you will see the change at the far right of the table. In the largest newsrooms of Canada, the overall staff in that 10-year period is up roughly 10 per cent. The large increase in the number of supervisors and copy editors has largely driven that rise. That is at the largest newspapers, which are growing and have more staff than they did 10 years ago.
It is a far different story in the medium papers, in the 25,000 to 100,000 circulation grouping. The reporting staffs have been cut by a third. There are 31 per cent fewer reporters in those newsrooms and fewer copy editors. Overall staffing levels have been cut by nearly one third. These newspapers are in medium-sized cities. Therefore, this is a directly opposite trend when compared to the biggest papers. At the smallest papers, it is a similar story. There are 35 per cent fewer supervising editors and overall staff is down 15 per cent. There are many explanations for that trend, but I cannot point to one thing.
I will just sum up my policy considerations.
On diversity, there is clearly no commitment to change by daily newspapers or even talk about it. However, there is a record in the daily newspaper industry of responding to federal government pressure, which is hopeful. I would urge you to most seriously consider doing something in that area to prod them into self-regulation or some kind of action.
On the second policy option, local voices of ownership, there are too few owners in these small and medium markets. There is a rise of regional monopolies. We see it in Kingston. We see it in Hamilton, where one owner owns the daily and the surrounding community papers, creating a stranglehold on local opinion. We can see what has happened. Perhaps that is part of the explanation for fewer reporters and supervisors, because they have pooled their talent at the local level. This has meant fewer reporters covering the news in those communities. In some of those communities, there is no other media. There is no local television and the local radio is not into news in a big way. These communities have fewer resources to cover their affairs.
If you recommend support for bringing new owners into journalism, I would argue that you support the start-up of local independent media. Get new people into the marketplace at low cost, because it is not as expensive to start local media as it is to start national media, obviously. The goal of both these policies would be to establish a diversity of voices in the market.
The Chairman: In comparing your study 10 years ago with your study today, you did not strip out from the results 10 years ago papers that responded then but did not respond now. You just took the whole universe of responses from 10 years ago and the whole universe of responses today. Is that right?
Mr. Miller: Except in the direct comparisons I did. Those were just the newspapers that responded to both.
The Chairman: I will ask you to spend five minutes with our research staff to be very sure we are all in complete understanding of what your data shows because it is very interesting.
Senator Tkachuk: We have heard a lot of discussion about diversity of voices. I am still not quite sure what that means. When I am reading a columnist, I have no idea of their ethnic background or colour background. It is a newspaper article. When people come before us, they talk about this. What do you mean by diversity of voices?
Mr. Miller: By that I mean, who is bringing their ideas to the table? In academic literature there is no direct line that says fair and accurate coverage of all people is dependent on the newsrooms reflecting society. However, there is an assumption, which I think is true, that when you have more diverse voices around the table, you will get more diverse ideas and more diverse coverage.
Newsrooms operate in many different ways, but the ideas that get into the paper each day depend on the people making decisions on whether a story is one that readers want to know about. Are these communities they have contact in? If they are excluded from the newsroom, unfortunately, they tend to be either ignored or stereotyped, which does not serve the greater good of society.
Our cities have changed quite visibly in the past 10 years. There are new communities. There is more immigration. If those issues are not covered in a very inclusive way, then we are headed for trouble because certain groups are stereotyped as troublemakers or as not part of "us." They become marginalized. There has been enough content analysis and enough case studies have been done to convince me that a more inclusive newsroom is a better newsroom.
Senator Tkachuk: If a newsman hires a Black writer, should that Black writer be in a Black neighbourhood necessarily, or should he be on a business beat? Are you saying that newsrooms then should not only hire by colour to reflect the community, but also assign by colour?
Mr. Miller: No, I am not saying that.
Senator Tkachuk: Then how would that help? If a Black writer is going to write about business in Toronto, the stock exchange, what has that got to do with anything except that he is writing about the stock exchange?
Mr. Miller: Perhaps he will discover different stories on the stock market because of his background. Perhaps he will contribute to stories outside his beat in the newsroom. Perhaps he will progress to be a supervising editor and, therefore, be able to assign other reporters and have contacts or perspectives that the newsroom never had before.
Senator Tkachuk: We talk about visible minorities, such as Asian, Black and Filipino. I was part of a minority, not a visible one. Many of us were in agriculture, engineering, medicine and education. We are probably overrepresented due to cultural matters. We were told to do that in church, by family or whatever.
Outside of maybe the Aboriginal grouping, these people do not necessarily come from democratic institutions, so that perhaps their cultural attitudes may not lead them into journalism. It may take a generation or two for that to happen. Is that part of the reason, or is it just because news people are not hiring visible minorities?
Mr. Miller: Can journalism schools do more? Yes, we can do more, but diversity is in journalism schools. We have reached that second and third generation, and even the first generation.
Many of these ethnic groups come from countries where the level of newspaper readership is much higher than in Canada. Hong Kong and India are vibrant newspaper markets. The tradition is not the explanation any longer. It is a very interesting question, and I am glad that you asked it.
The number one reason that these editors gave for not hiring diversity was that nobody applies. I do not know whether that is an excuse or whether it is reality, but it needs to be addressed. If your community is very diverse and your newsroom is not, then you should do something about that. You should be very proactive. That would be a challenge to me, if I were that editor.
I do not see that. It certainly was not reflected in the survey. Nobody is doing anything proactive. One paper mentioned a special effort, but I think it needs to be addressed.
Senator Carney: For clarification purposes, I question the usefulness of data that applies to diversity for all employees of a communications organization versus only those of the newsroom. To say that the broadcasting entities have X percentage of their employment representing diverse groups is not useful to us unless you can separate the employees of the newsroom. That is really apples and oranges.
Second, can you give more information on the 37 papers that did respond? Perhaps not now, but could you supply that information to the clerk? You said that the statistics exclude CanWest, which includes the major newspapers in the major centres. If you exclude CanWest, I would like to know where these 37 papers are located. You do not have to identify them by name, but you could identify them by market and by region so that we have a better idea of the validity of the response and how reflective it is of diversity.
Those points are subject to the chair's direction, excluding CanWest, we do not know where those 37 newspapers are and cannot identify the geographical or the census population of diverse groups.
The Chairman: With all due respect to your undertaking for confidentiality, Mr. Miller, it would helpful to us if you and our researchers could explore and dig into this issue as greatly as you can.
I would like you to clarify one of your responses. When you referred to CanWest's position, it was not clear to me whether you were saying that as a result of CanWest's views, no CanWest paper participated, or that most did not participate.
Mr. Miller: Some CanWest papers did respond. However, the problem came when other publishers and editors kicked it up to head office, which said to provide no more responses.
Senator Carney: When you suggest using the federal clout of the Employment Equity Act to include diversity, what evidence do you have that the federal legislation actually is effective in contracts? I do not mean to suggest that you use a federal hammer on an issue of diversity in newsrooms. You would need to show that that hammer is effective in other groups. Otherwise, we might be suggesting policy or legislation that is not effective. Perhaps you could reflect on that comment.
Second, we know that some groups, like Aboriginals, are not reflected professionally because they simply do not achieve the education levels. Like Senator Tkachuk's point about culture, we have trouble getting Aboriginal students past grade 7.
What role do you think that newspapers can effectively play? Given the ethnic diversity of your Ryerson classes, what barriers to entry do you note in terms of having a diverse student body? Journalism schools are the entry point to many jobs in the media. In your 17 years of experience, what are the entry barriers to people from diverse groups who wish to enter journalism schools?
Mr. Miller: To answer your first question on what evidence we have that the Employment Equity Act works, of the other agencies that I looked at, one was Canadian Press, and their report said that 90 per cent of their employees were news people. That figure of 317 employees, 25 visible minorities, two Aboriginals, adding up to 8.6 per cent, is pretty fair. That is 90 per cent newsroom.
The evidence that employment equity works is that many of the newspapers I polled did not have these figures. They had to get them. They are not even aware of who is working for them, or at least they do not keep track. As we know, if you measure it, it will get done. If you do not measure it, it probably will not.
Senator Carney: I am not suggesting employment equity does not work. It does. However, the route you suggest is the use of advertising contracts from the federal government. You would have to show me that this particular hammer is effective before you lower it on newspapers. That is a request of mine.
I am asking you about the barriers to entry into journalism by some of those groups. You are in a position to help us in that regard.
Mr. Miller: We went through this about 10 years ago at Ryerson because one of the responses to the 1994 survey was that journalism schools are not producing diversity, so how can they hire it? This was true back then.
Ryerson did a number of things to examine what systemic barriers might exist. We got permission to do a survey of our applicants to self-identify, and we found out that our applicant pool was fairly reflective of diversity in the population; but we were selecting out, if you like, or not valuing diversity.
Last year, we got 2,000 applications for our journalism program, and we only let in 150. That is a huge choice to make. Ten years ago, we re-examined our entry criteria and asked what we were valuing. Clearly, we want to let in the best. What are we valuing? We were not valuing such things as second and third languages. We were not valuing experience travelling or working for community organizations. We felt that we should, so we did and the diversity of our student body increased. We do not just take into consideration marks because our experience is that other factors go into someone being a good journalist.
As for barriers at journalism schools, one is recruiting. We have never had to recruit, so we do not do outreach. Most journalism programs in Canada have quite a few applicants, so they do not have to recruit, and I think sometimes we should, just the same as employers should be proactive.
Many other programs screen their applicants solely on marks, while ours does not. I do not know what effect that has on visible minorities and Aboriginals. It should not really have an effect, but maybe it does.
Senator Carney: The journalism school I am associated with has found that it is necessary to have a good, solid basis of English, which is a problem with some groups.
What is your correlation between employment in the ethnic press and in the mainstream press? For instance, in Vancouver, the Chinese media is huge in that market. I am not suggesting that Canadians of Chinese background only find work in the ethnic press, but I am wondering whether they are included in these 37 papers.
Mr. Miller: No.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It is wonderful to hear all of this research from Ryerson. I am very positive minded, looking at the sheet on hiring trends. If one thinks of the glass as half empty or half full, when I looked at the percentage of minorities being hired, I thought it was closer to half full.
I was impressed that of part-time positions in the last year, 21.6 per cent went to minorities, which seems to me to be excellent, and 10.2 per cent of full-time positions. Those figures are for the larger communities. When you get down to smaller communities of 25,000 to 100,000, which would be typical of New Brunswick, and we do not even have many that large, the percentage is smaller. I speak for the province I know best, but I think it is rather typical. The percentage of minorities in those small communities of 25,000 to 50,000 is very low. I would worry about the fact that there are zero in the small communities.
How do you react to the comment that maybe it is not so bad if, for instance, of the part-time positions, 21.6 per cent went to minorities in the last year and the population is only 16.7 per cent?
Mr. Miller: I certainly find that to be an encouraging sign. At least they are getting in the door. However, they are part-time positions, and I am more interested in full-time hiring, because the full-time hiring will translate into diversity through the ranks over time. It will be very interesting to watch this figure and see whether it goes up, but it is obviously encouraging at the larger papers.
I should just clarify that these are circulation numbers, not sizes of community, so some of the papers with a circulation of 25,000 are in communities with a population of over 100,000.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You still have a much smaller percentage of visible minorities. Looking at the employment market, the trend is to part-time positions, especially with the media and newspapers. One would hope that some of those people, a good percentage of them who get hired part time 10 years from now might be full time.
Senator Carney asked you about journalism schools. I do not think I heard you say what percentage of visible minorities you actually have at Ryerson. You did say that the applicant pool was a reflection of diversity.
Mr. Miller: Ten years ago.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: What percentage did you actually take in as students?
Mr. Miller: We do not count either. That is a sore point in my faculty because I think we should. I do not think we are where we want to be yet. However, anecdotally, I keep track of our graduates, and roughly 20 to 30 per cent are visible minorities in any given year.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do you have any information on other journalism schools across the country?
Mr. Miller: No, I do not.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Whether it is journalism or any other profession, I believe it is the schools that should be the trailblazers in terms of creating paths.
You say that your applicant pool is reflective of diversity, but what effort is your school and are other schools making to encourage and promote journalism among visible minorities?
Mr. Miller: Roughly 50 per cent of our students come from the Toronto area, so the high schools have a diverse population. Some of the best academic students represent diversity. We are drawing from that pool. There is a desire to enter journalism among many of these groups.
We need to do much more with the Aboriginal students. We get a few Aboriginal students, but not as many as we should. I would want to concentrate in that area.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: We had a speaker representing the ethnic press. At the end of that session, one was left with the feeling that the ethnic press — that is, the visible minorities — is focused on their publications, that this is a high priority. Do you see this competition, if you will, as a deterrent to visible minorities working for general newspapers? For instance, in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, is there great competition for writers from the ethnic press?
Mr. Miller: No. If you talk with many of the people who write for the ethnic press, their career goal is to work for The Toronto Star or The Globe and Mail.
Senator Munson: You talked about the thought of regulations as sending newspaper owners off the deep end. You also called for a need for action. Should there be a legislative requirement for owners to hire a certain number of minorities?
Mr. Miller: No, I am not arguing for that. If I can go back to a point that Senator Carney made, I am not calling for use of the contractors program. I am saying that that might be an encouragement to get newspapers to do something themselves. That program exists and might be an option, but I do not think that it should be invoked. The newspaper industry has shown that it can respond to legitimate concerns.
Senator Munson: You also talked about federal clout and the federal government being the fifth leading advertiser. Are you suggesting that if papers do not meet a certain requirement of self-regulation in hiring minority groups that the federal government withdraw some of its advertising to some of these newspapers?
Mr. Miller: That would be an extreme move that I do not think is justified yet, but it is certainly a possibility down the road.
Senator Munson: You talked about the rise of regional monopolies. Is that dangerous? How can you turn back the clock of denying an entrepreneur the right to make money through newspapers by having regional monopolies?
Mr. Miller: It is a business strategy that I think is fine, but the result is that it is taking reporters' jobs away. Each wave of regional monopolies is funded by taking costs out of the system.
I live in the small community of Port Hope, Ontario. A number of issues in our town are not being covered because there are only two reporters on the daily newspaper. Previously. there were three and a half reporters. Our community is not being served by the local media. I think there is room for encouragement of other voices.
Senator Munson: How do you encourage those voices? We have all been victims of what you have discussed.
Mr. Miller: I was operating on the testimony that you have heard already. People have suggested that the federal government support new media owners at the national level. I would say that support is needed more at the local level, whatever that may consist of. It may be in the form of start-up funds or interest free loans. That is entirely up to you.
However, if you are thinking of providing support anywhere, you will get more bang for the buck at the local level and you will also be filling a demonstrated need.
The Chairman: I would like to return to the fundamental question that Senator Tkachuk raised earlier. We need as much help as we can in understanding what difference it makes to the public to have diversity within newsrooms.
You said that there are content studies and other such works that have persuaded you that it makes a difference. We would be glad to have a guide to some of that material. As a parting shot, can you give us a concise explanation of why it matters?
Mr. Miller: I entered newspapers at a time when they were male bastions. We missed a lot of stories. When women came into the newsroom in greater numbers, news judgment changed for the better. That is a great example.
Women bringing their experience into the newsroom and gaining enough numbers to make a difference have resulted in some references and pictures no longer being seen in newspapers anymore, and good riddance. We need that effect through racial diversity.
Our country is known in the world as a model of official multiculturalism. When we look at how all the institutions are responding to that diversity, we must look at daily newspapers as being a key institution that does not have the record of supporting the goals of that official multiculturalism and all the good things that that can mean to our country. That is the strongest argument I can make.
The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Professor Miller.
Our next witness, honourable senators, is Professor Kim Kierans, Director of the School of Journalism at the University of King's College, experienced in both journalism and research. She has been working on an interesting project that she will tell us about. I do not want to take the words out of her mouth.
Ms. Kim Kierans, Director, School of Journalism, University of King's College: I look forward to your questions and want to thank you for inviting me to participate in your study of Canadian news media.
I have travelled from Halifax to appear here today. I had very much hoped to address you in Atlantic Canada, but after a year and eight months and no sign of your committee heading East, I was a bit worried that I would not get this opportunity. I very gratefully accepted the invitation to appear here today in Ottawa.
I have come here to take a little different tact and to talk about the need to strengthen the diversity of voices among community newspapers. I know you have heard a lot of testimony about national newspapers and convergence. I want to talk a bit about community newspapers. Traditionally, they have been important vehicles by which people and institutions talk to each other and they debate important issues, such as development, that affect people day to day.
Community papers are important. They are not in urban centres and do not get the same attention or coverage that, perhaps, daily news outlets would give to Toronto, to Halifax, to Saint John. People in Inverness, Cape Breton; Miramichi, New Brunswick; Montague, Prince Edward Island, cannot expect to read about local issues in their daily newspaper or see it on the six o'clock news that night when they turn on the news, whether it is CBC or Global, because the daily outlet does not have the reporters to send to small communities. The big media outlets are only interested in covering community stories when they are big stories, and they cover them in limited ways.
For example, there was an issue in northern Cape Breton about seismic testing for offshore oil, and provincial hearings were held. The CBC sent up a camera for one day of the three-week hearings. The Halifax Herald and Cape Breton Post popped in now and then. For any kind of substantial information to find out what was being said at these hearings and to get a reaction, you had to go to your community newspaper, The Inverness Oran, which devoted pages and pages to the testimony. From that, one could stimulate a debate in which citizens could make informed decisions. That is the value of community newspapers.
It is the job of community newspapers to introduce and debate ideas that will help residents in these communities to make decisions that affect their civic life. The local weekly newspaper has the audience.
An extensive study was conducted by ComBase for the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. It found that more people are reading weekly newspapers than daily newspapers, which is very interesting. That means that community newspapers have a tremendous influence. Advertisers know this. Some community newspapers — and I hope you get a chance to speak to the Canadian Community Newspapers Association — have profits of up to 40 per cent, which is pretty good. Next to the church bulletin and the notice that comes home from the schools, weekly newspapers are indeed the most direct routes of communication in a community. Business interests know this, which why they are buying up weeklies, especially in what is called "exurbia," known in Ontario as the 905 corridor surrounding Toronto. They are also buying up small town press. In Atlantic Canada, since 2002, every single weekly newspaper in Newfoundland has changed hands not once, but twice; 11 of 13 weekly newspapers in New Brunswick have changed hands; 10 out of 20 in Nova Scotia have changed hands and been bought up. In Prince Edward Island, there is still the MacNeil family. They still own the two community newspapers there.
No wonder the corporations are interested in community newspapers. They have influence, and they make money.
I believe, as I think that you do as well, that a diversity of voices is a fundamental part of a healthy democracy. At the national level, I think this diversity still exists. You have national and local newspapers, private and public broadcasters and wire services that all help to make that possible and bring forth that range of viewpoints.
In small communities, this diversity is much more difficult to achieve because there may not be a local television station. Private radio is not into news in a big way. Cable is very limited in what it can do and the Internet, in some places, is very difficult to achieve. I had better luck getting Internet access in Cambodia than I do in rural Cape Breton. Explain that to me. The local newspaper may be the last forum or the most popular mainstream forum for competing opinions.
In 1971, when I was 15, I started working at my hometown weekly newspaper in Alexandria, Ontario, the Glengarry News. I took care of subscriptions and wrote up local sports scores. Later, I returned to journalism and worked at weeklies in the Maritimes, including the Miramichi Leader, the Eastern Graphic and the Amherst Citizen. I then went to work for a daily newspaper in Prince Edward Island, but I got drawn into it. I spent most of my 30 years as a journalist in the Maritimes working for the public broadcaster, the CBC, mostly in radio. I have been teaching broadcast at the School of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax for about seven years now, but I still practice or commit the act of journalism as we like to say.
My interest in weekly newspapers never left me. As a journalism professor, I have completed research into media concentration in the weekly press in Atlantic Canada. I have given a copy of my thesis to the committee. That interest came from my work in broadcast and print journalism. For the past six years, every week I read 25 community newspapers from New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia for a column I do in the Sunday Herald and formerly did on CBC radio.
I know community newspapers. I have a great respect for the publishers, the editors and the reporters, but I have watched the industry change from when I was 15 — even five years ago. It has gone from a group of fiercely independent publishers to corporate ownership.
I am not here to make gross generalizations about media concentration or to say that all corporate owners run bad papers or that all independent papers are enterprising publications. That would be foolish and it would be wrong. What I am saying is that a diversity of ownership is good for a diversity of ideas, sources and approaches to information and the committee should encourage this.
It is good for a community when a publisher cares about producing a quality newspaper that does more than the basics, a paper that brings forth ideas and different points of view to stimulate debate in the community. We have seen this nationally with the introduction of the National Post and what it did to The Globe and Mail, how is raised the bar. In Halifax, the competition between the Halifax Herald and the Daily News has created a much livelier forum for readers in Halifax. We can remember back to the Davey committee in 1970 when the Halifax Herald was described as one of the worst papers in Canada. Now it is one of the last independently owned newspapers in Canada. Its owners have just pumped in more than $20 million into new presses and have invested money. They believe in printing and journalism.
While other medium-sized papers, as Professor Miller noted, are cutting back on reporters, the Herald has decided to set up an investigative unit. It is not good enough just to have a pretty paper. They want to add content to the paper. I admire and respect that initiative.
Diversity is good. It is more achievable in urban centres, such as Halifax and Toronto. The owners of urban dailies are buying up the weeklies in suburban and rural communities. It is easier to sell advertising when you have a critical mass of papers.
The CCNA notes that nine major corporate owners own 10 community papers or more. Of the 709 community newspapers that belong to the Canadian Community Newspapers Association, 350 are corporately owned. Black leads in B.C. with 66 community papers. Bowes has 63 papers Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and Metroland has 53 papers Ontario.
Your interim report in April noted that the corporate concentration of community newspapers in Quebec may be higher per capita than any other province or region. I would like to add some competition to that dubious distinction. In Newfoundland, Transcontinental now owns all the daily newspapers and 16 weekly newspapers. The Sunday Independent in St. John's is the only independent paper in the province. One company owns all the newspapers as well as the big presses.
In New Brunswick, Brunswick News owns all three English language daily newspapers, 10 paid circulation weeklies, along with several other free "shopper" papers. Four weeklies are all that remain of the so-called independent press of New Brunswick. That certainly limits employment for print journalists who leave Brunswick News. They either have to move into broadcast or leave the province.
In October, Brunswick News added yet another weekly — the young upstart Here newspaper. The founders were all young journalists who, for four years, struggled to provide an alternative voice for a new generation. The paper survived mostly on movie, bar and record advertisements. It was an alternative to Brunswick News in St. John. In Moncton, they opened a second paper in March 2004.
Interestingly, when Here opened its Moncton newspaper, Brunswick News quickly launched a rival youth-oriented weekly in Moncton to compete against Here and sold ads for a quarter of the price. Here, however, managed to continue to publish in Moncton. It had a strategy and a vision. It wanted to expand into Fredericton in order to be in the three major cities in New Brunswick. However, it needed capital to sustain its Moncton and Saint John operations. It needed computers and other things.
Last month, it did accept an offer from Brunswick News. The new owners are upgrading those computers in Saint John and Moncton. They are expanding into Fredericton, the capital city of New Brunswick.
The paper may grow and it will continue, but what is lost is an independent voice in New Brunswick. I hope we will talk more about this and possible public policies that can be adopted to encourage young publishers to hold on to their dreams.
The other challenge facing independent publishers is the concentration of the ownership of printing presses. Most independents are not big enough to own their own presses. They rely on services from providers such as Brunswick News or Transcontinental to print their papers.
A state of the art colour press can spit out 5,000 copies of a small weekly in 12 minutes. Presses are remarkable these days. The number of printing presses in the Maritimes has fallen with the acquisition of weeklies by Brunswick News and Transcontinental. The companies not only bought up the newspapers, but also bought the presses.
Brunswick News has closed its presses in Miramichi and Woodstock. Transcontinental has closed its presses in New Minas and Kentville, Nova Scotia, and in Grand Falls, Newfoundland. They have concentrated on bigger presses. Brunswick News has a fabulous press in Moncton. Transcontinental has one in Borden, Prince Edward Island, and one in Burnside, outside of Halifax.
That has an effect on independent publishers that rely on these companies for their papers, because they have limited choices as to who will print their paper. When the printer raises prices, it is more difficult to shop around. At one point, you could go to Advocate Printing, Cumberland Printing, Optipress or Transcontinental. You had choices when you were looking for printers. Now there are fewer choices.
The effect may well be felt. This spring the Inverness Oran in Cape Breton seriously considered its future when its printer, Transcontinental, announced an increase in its printing prices. The Oran quickly reorganized. One of the publishers said, "I do not know how long we can continue." It is a thin line for some papers between the revenues from ads and subscriptions and the cost of producing the product every week.
The Oran, for example, has no mall from which to draw advertisers. It is in a economically disadvantaged area. It survives on the support of small, independent businesses and intensely loyal readers.
In conclusion, I would urge the committee to support measures to preserve the dignity of voices in areas that are not serviced by the mainstream media. As Professor Miller pointed out, that is the starting point into national media.
I would like to offer the committee three points for consideration. I am no expert in this. First, I would recommend some kind of subsidy to new, small independent newspapers to buy equipment and pay salaries. Here, for instance, in New Brunswick, would have benefited from such a subsidy. I harken back to an earlier example of the Inverness Oran. When it started 26 years ago, it received a small $3,000 grant from the Cape Breton Development Corporation. The money was meant to buy a new duplicating machine and a typewriter. In the 25 years since, the paper has continued to hire employees. It is a viable business in a community that needs employment. It has provided a great public service as well.
Another example is L'Acadie Nouvelle, a French language daily out of Caraquet, New Brunswick. It has provincial coverage and distribution. That is assured through a trust fund created jointly by the federal and provincial governments. That is another model that is working quite successfully. It ensures the diversity of voice in the province of New Brunswick for French-speaking Acadians.
Second, the aim of the Publications Assistance Program, PAP, is to recommend sustainability within rural communities. Perhaps there should be a formula for independent weeklies that would limit the amount of subsidy to the larger corporate owners — that is, help out the little guys. Again, this is just a suggestion.
I would also urge the committee to consider ways to help independent publishers deal with the concentration of ownership of the presses through some sort of incentives. Perhaps a subsidy could be provided for newspapers with small print runs if we are serious about keeping diversity of voices and opinions in small community press and ensuring that people can continue to talk to one another.
Senator Tkachuk: I notice something in my city, Saskatoon, on the local cable channel. Shaw has a local community channel. Reporters are doing interviews with local politicians. Community events are shown live, as are high school football games. To me, the cable station is performing a community service that the television station once performed.
Ms. Kierans: Absolutely.
Senator Tkachuk: If we get rid of many of the CRTC regulations, we could actually have low-tech television in small communities. Television does not need big studios, just a garage and a way to broadcast.
Ms. Kierans: A transmitter.
Senator Tkachuk: Yes. The CRTC is keeping that from happening. More diversity requires more competition, not necessarily subsidies.
Ms. Kierans: Who would buy the equipment for the TV station?
Senator Tkachuk: Entrepreneurs, ordinary people.
Ms. Kierans: How would they continue to hire staff? It comes to the same problem as community newspapers. You have to find advertisers to do that. I think it is a great idea. I am all in favour of community television. Low-powered radio is another option. In Cheticamp, Cape Breton, and in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, they have low-powered community radio that is doing the job private radio used to do in keeping the communities informed.
Senator Tkachuk: We will leave business to the business people and talk about the CRTC and all the rest.
We have the Yorkton Enterprise, and the Prince Albert Herald. There are weeklies in other communities, such as Wilkie, but now maybe one person owns all of them. It is still one paper in each community. How have they lost any diversity of opinion? Are you saying that the owner is telling the editor in that local newspaper what to write? It seems to me they all had one local paper before; it is just that one person owns them rather than three people.
Ms. Kierans: Media concentration is a complicated issue, which is why I said not all corporate ownership is bad and not all independent owners are good. What is important is the desire for the owners to produce the best possible paper. Finances often play a role because you have a public service on one hand, that is what newspapers do, and on the other hand they are businesses that have to make money. How do you balance those two competing interests? It is difficult.
If an independent owner or community owner reinvests in the community with reporters, stories, and equipment, they will have deeper pockets when it comes to filing, for instance, freedom of information requests for issues that are happening in that community.
On a certain level, community papers will continue to provide what is happening at city hall or town hall, in the schools or in sports. We have to think about the larger issues where newspapers actually take on a public role by saying, "This is our community and we need to take on more of a watchdog role."
Senator Tkachuk: In some of the communities, 50,000 and larger, there are web services that offer newspapers. Is that happening in the smaller communities, the communities of 5,000 or 3,000 or 2,000, which would be a good alternative to a local community newspaper?
Ms. Kierans: Many of the community newspapers have websites, but you have to be a subscriber and pay to access them. Some are free and will provide the top stories as well. There are some independents. The Dominion, for instance, is an Internet paper that tries to provide an alternative voice. The Miramichi Leader has a website. If you are a subscriber you can go on that website, and it reflects what is in the newspaper.
The federal government is moving quickly, providing high speed Internet access to rural areas. They have some work to do to get people hooked up. When you get hooked up you need local content. I can find out all kinds of things about what is happening here in Ottawa and Toronto and New York, but what can I find out about what is happening in Miramichi? That is where you do not have that information. The Internet has a diversity of sources nationally, but locally you need something. It could be your cable TV.
Senator Tkachuk: Sometimes building a road will sell more cars, right?
Senator Munson: Whatever happened to The Campbellton Graphic? I used to deliver it in 1958. My father always accused me of reading the newspaper too long before delivering it.
Ms. Kierans: The Campbellton Tribune is the last independently owned newspaper in New Brunswick.
Senator Munson: I have to plead a conflict of interest here because I taught for one year at your school, although my sister did go to Ryerson, so we are even this morning.
You talked about diversity of voices and how it is healthy for democracy, and you talked about those printing presses. That is the first time I have heard about the printing presses. Is there any suggestion that any of these monopolies in Atlantic Canada are purposely trying to squeeze out the remaining independent weeklies in Atlantic Canada? I know they are doing it for their own good looks of a newspaper and profit, but is there any suggestion of trying to squeeze out these weeklies?
Ms. Kierans: There is no evidence of that at all. I know that they are interested in buying. They have made offers to buy more weekly newspapers, but there is no evidence of anything like that.
Senator Munson: I was back in New Brunswick this past weekend. There was an editorial by the Bathurst editor of The Northern Light, who was very angry over any suggestion that the owner of the newspaper would interfere in the editorial aspect of a weekly newspaper. Do you see any evidence of interference of the owner in the editorial voice of a local newspaper?
Ms. Kierans: Directly, no. The document I submitted to the committee has evidence of self-censorship and examples of choosing not to cover certain things.
The Hidden Forest is a television documentary that is coming out on The Nature of Things in January. It was launched at a film festival in New Brunswick. The local newspaper chose not to cover it because there was certain criticism of the Irving forestry industry in that film. There was definitely a sense that they chose not to cover that launch. Whatever coverage that is of other business interests involving Brunswick News and the Irvings — let me give you the example of an application to build a Big Stop in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, and the local newspaper did a story. The story is from the point of view of Irving Limited saying that it will have no trouble with the waste water and that there are no environmental concerns. The article does not give any other points of view from people in the community, the regulatory board or environmentalists to balance the story. In reading that story, you are thinking that the Big Stop in Grand Falls is a very good thing and that Irving will deal with all environmental problems. There is a sense that when the story is done, it is reported, but maybe they need another point of view.
Senator Munson: How do you get that other point of view? I have asked this question of other witnesses about turning back the clock. It is impossible.
Ms. Kierans: You are right. One independent publisher who sold out to Brunswick News said to me, "They opened the barn door, the horse is gone and they have taken the hay." I would not suggest that you turn back the clock because I do not know that it is possible. There must be some balance so that independent publishers are able to provide us with another voice.
I do not think you can regulate. You cannot tell reporters or editors. I would never suggest that the owners of Brunswick News have ever said, "You cannot cover this story." I would also say that the owners of Brunswick News and the managers have done a very good job since they have taken over some of those weekly newspapers. They have added reporters, and as they have done here, they added computers. There is a concern. How do they cover stories about themselves?
It is a unique situation in New Brunswick. You are from New Brunswick, senator, so you know this. How do you cover stories related to other industries that are involved? It is very difficult. If you do not cover them, is that in the best interests of democracy and debate? What do you do?
Senator Munson: I guess those are the questions we will try to answer over the next few months.
I have a question about private radio because I am a creature of private radio — $32 per week, first job, $65 in Yarmouth. I moved up to the big time in Bathurst, where I earned $300 a month. In those days, we actually covered the town hall, and of course there was interference in those days, too. I remember covering a story where I was not allowed to use the word propane in the newscast because there was a gas explosion and someone was killed. The person who had advertising at the radio station threatened to remove the advertising. We just had to say that there was an explosion. That was the first lesson I had in terms of corporate interference and advertisers. We actually covered stories and the meetings. I do not know whose fault it is, but it seems to me in some respects that the CRTC has a responsibility to enforce small-town radio to do its job.
Ms. Kierans: It was the CRTC that changed the rules back in the 1970s that gave private radio the option to actually abandon its role in news. It is a shame because private radio — certainly in Metro when I was a reporter there — was a competitive market, and we were all at City Hall. We all wanted the best story. We all tried to scoop one another. We were all working to tell stories in order to get listeners. It was a lively market then; it is not that way now
I do a comparison in some of my classes. I will record newscasts of one private radio station and another and then the CBC in one day. I will then go to the source material. Most of the news either comes from the newspaper or from Broadcast News. The private radio stations generate little of their own copy because they have no reporters on the streets. Halifax has five radio stations and will get some more, but there is not a single reporter on the streets.
Senator Munson: If the CRTC can make regulations and let Al-Jazeera come here under certain conditions and deny RAI television the right to broadcast in Canada, they should have a bit more muscle to force or order radio stations to do the job of covering the community.
Ms. Kierans: I would support that position. You see that in the United States. In the United States there was a shift away from news and it was all satellite programming. Americans started to tune out and started to put CDs into their cars. Now, private radio in the State in California is coming back. It is starting to do news. We will see our private stations, which are making good money according to Statistics Canada figures, start to come back into that area. Encouragement from the CRTC would not be a bad thing.
The Chairman: To clarify for the broadcast audience, Broadcast News is the broadcast arm of the Canadian Press Agency.
Ms. Kierans: That is right.
The Chairman: It is not a generic term.
Ms. Kierans: They do a fine job.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I am also a New Brunswicker.
Professor, you have been very fair in what you said about the New Brunswick newspaper situation.
I wanted to say for the benefit of people around the table that in the last two weeks there have been two bold headlines, one in the Telegraph Journal and one in the Times Transcript, to the effect that the Member of Parliament for New Brunswick Southwest, Mr. Greg Thompson, was questioning the ownership of newspapers in New Brunswick. I am referring to headlines, not text hidden somewhere in the sports pages.
Ms. Kierans: I did not see that, but I did see a small clipping in The Bugle in Woodstock, and I am hoping that may be a vindication of the new publisher of the Telegraph Journal and maybe some enterprise.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It is so easy for us in our task and perhaps in our general impressions to think that the big guys are the bad guys. I read a lot of newspapers. In my previous job, I read almost as many as you did, but I am not quite as up to date as you.
Looking at the weeklies from 2002 to 2004, you said that you read 25 every week.
Ms. Kierans: I counted.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That is all New Brunswick, I am sure. How would you rate the quality of those weeklies in New Brunswick, the readership, the local input, that is local reporters and local news?
Ms. Kierans: There have been great improvements in the design, layout and style. The newspapers are much prettier. There have been additional resources for covering stories, and here I am thinking of the King's County Record in Sussex, where they have added reporters and have expanded the coverage for that area. The Miramichi Leader has done some very good enterprise reporting involving a veneer lumber mill application in which they won awards for their coverage.
On a certain level, they are doing a community service. Again, my concern runs a little bit deeper. How do these papers cover the related interests of the owners in a fair and balanced way? There is a sense and certainly some evidence, although I think there needs to be more research, that there is self-censorship on the part of manager, editors and reporters in what they cover and how they cover it in relation to forestry and shipping. Erin Steuter at Mount Allison University has done much research into the coverage on the Irving Oil refinery strike and how it was covered.
On one level, J.D. Irving is doing a fine job, but what are we not hearing about? What is not there? How can they do that? A certain culture goes with that company.
In Newfoundland, the papers were very strong, the Transcontinental papers, when they were Robinson-Blackmore and then Optipress. The printing has improved and the reporting is similar to what it was before.
Senator Eyton: Like Senator Munson, I will declare a conflict. I had a long connection with the University of King's College, including one son, who went there, and a daughter that took journalism there and she has turned out all right. I am proud of the association.
I am not even sure that I am the best kind of member for this committee and this study because I live in the 905 area. I am one who believes, personally, that I have too much diversity, not too little. There was a time when happily I could read three papers, watch a little bit of news, listen to a little bit of radio and feel that I had covered the stories as far as I needed to cover them to get my information and consider the issues of the day.
I now regularly read four or five papers daily, probably more on the weekends. I have any number of other sources, including the old ones, the radio. I listen a great deal to CBC Radio One. Also, I have television channels through my satellite and the information through the Internet. With so many sources, there is so little time.
It means that if I took myself back 10 or 15 years I could spend more time on individual articles and perhaps have a better understanding than I can today, where I tend to skim. I read headlines and I read the first two paragraphs of a story and go on. I will argue that there is almost too much diversity and too many choices for me to be as well informed as I used to be some years ago.
As a member of this committee, the obvious questions are what should we include in our report and why? You have been quite precise, and as I understand it, you have made three particular points. The first is that the government should consider some kind of subsidy for start-ups or for the little guys.
Ms. Kierans: Yes.
Senator Eyton: The second is that you believe there could be some subsidy for the big guys but that we should eliminate it to the extent that they can found and identified. The third point you make is that there should be accessibility or access to the printing presses.
I have three questions. First, do you not consider that government subsidies are probably the worst way of getting the required capital? You mentioned the number of $2,500. Governments have a poor record of identifying the right individuals or businesses that need subsidies. There is a four-times rule with government; in words, it costs $10,000 to consider a $2,500 subsidy. Is there not a better alternative than a government subsidy?
Second, I would be interested in knowing what subsidy you think is available to the big guys such that they preclude access to the little guys in the communities you are speaking about.
Third, are there any examples? I would have thought anyone who owns a printing press, particularly one that could spin out 5,000 copies in 12 minutes, needs business. They will be looking for contract jobs of the kind that you describe. I would have thought that there is a tremendous opportunity — cheap incremental costs plus a little — to rent presses. Are they not available. If they are not, that would be a concern of mine.
Ms. Kierans: I do not think I really put a figure on the subsidy, but I know that ACOA helps a lot of businesses, at least in our region, to start up. If someone has a good business plan and has done his or her research, there are opportunities out there to get subsidies for these things. I do not know if they are part of the frame of reference because that is not my area of expertise, but I do know that a leg-up for Here magazine could have kept it in those communities and given it an opportunity to expand into Fredericton, and perhaps other smaller places might well have technology at such a cost.
Senator Eyton: Are there not other sources?
Ms. Kierans: I just raise this as a possibility. I do not know, senator.
The Publications Assistance Program is a formula I was considering. I do not think that corporate owners should be excluded from it. They have postal assistance. Perhaps there is a formula that this committee should consider to help smaller newspapers that run on a shoestring and are less advantaged than larger corporate companies that have huge buying power when it comes to going to advertisers. It is very difficult for a small paper like the Eastern Graphic or the Inverness Oran to go to advertisers in the same way that Transcontinental has a certain buying power because they can say, "We have 26 papers in two provinces and will you advertise at these rates?" A lot of the smaller papers say they cannot get in the front door with regard to advertising.
If we are interested in keeping independent weeklies alive, there must be a formula to help them ensure accessibility; otherwise their owners will come to retirement age and will sell to Transcontinental, to Brunswick News, to Bowes, to Metro or to a larger company. There is no doubt that these companies want to buy. Owners are retiring every day and they are not passing that newspaper on to their editor or their children; they are selling. It is a hard road for many of them.
The daughter of the owner of the Miramichi Leader was the co-editor of the paper. She was asked whether she wanted to take over the paper. She said that if Brunswick News wanted this market, she would take the paper over, but they could start up another paper. At some point she would just have to call it quits because she said she was not a good businesswoman in that way.
A former editor loves his paper dearly and went back and worked for Brunswick News for years editing. He said he could not afford the printing press and to take that paper. He said he could not take that kind of debt on because he was not a big corporate owner. It is a very different world.
The third question regarding the ownership of the presses is very difficult to answer. Our students print a paper at the university. Transcontinental will not even return our calls because we are so small that we are not worth making a run of 2,000 or 3,000. We end up going to a small independent printer in New Brunswick, and they ship the copies to us on a bus.
Senator Eyton: For a little while I owned some newsletters and we found the best printing cost in that business. We were running off probably 30,000 copies on a monthly basis. We had to go to the States to have it printed and brought back. Still, it was a money saver. Do you do that?
Ms. Kierans: New Brunswick is our answer at this point. We are doing a weekly newspaper. They drive it to Moncton and then it goes on a bus to Halifax. We get it within a day and distribute it. Transcontinental has a printing press in Burnside, a 15-minute drive from our school, but cannot use them.
The Chairman: In other media, the advance of technology has made it easier for small new actors to get into the business. With newspapers, it is much harder for a small operation to get started because printing presses are expensive. I am not even talking now about the cost of newsprint, but the actual presses themselves are expensive.
There is not on the horizon, is there, any improvement in technology that would enable people to go back to having a little press that would produce an acceptable small volume product in the back shop?
Ms. Kierans: Not that I know of, but that would be wonderful.
The Chairman: That is the way it used to be.
Ms. Kierans: My first newspaper was done in a back shop. We had a Linotype machine. We set up the type, and it was all done there in our shop. Now it is sent away.
The Chairman: Your testimony has been extremely interesting, Ms. Kierans, and we have copies of your thesis.
I do want to reassure you that we do still have every intention of travelling to Atlantic Canada. As you know, however, because of the various parliamentary events beyond this committee's control, our work has been delayed.
Ms. Kierans: I hope you will make it to New Brunswick, to Newfoundland and to the other provinces as well, but those provinces in particular.
The committee adjourned.