Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 19 - Evidence - May 11, 2005
OTTAWA, Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 6:26 p.m. to pursue its study of 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: Honourable senators, welcome. This evening, we are continuing our examination of the state of the Canadian news media and the appropriate role of public policy in helping to ensure that the 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.
We have heard many witnesses over the course of our study. This evening, we welcome before the committee three witnesses who will be among the most interesting that the committee will be hearing from.
[English]
We have with us representatives of the The Globe and Mail newspaper. We welcome Mr. Greenspon, the editor-in- chief; Ms. Stead, the deputy editor; and Mr. Martin, the comment editor.
I do not think the The Globe and Mail needs introduction, certainly not to senators and probably not to the television audience. However, I do have a note before me that says that the paper's history goes back to 1844, which is respectable anywhere. There are not many newspapers older than The Globe and Mail. There is one in Canada that is older, but not many anywhere else.
Welcome, thank you very much for being with us today. I believe you know the drill. We ask you to make an opening statement and then we will ask you questions. Please proceed.
Mr. Edward Greenspon, Editor-in-chief, The Globe and Mail: Honourable senators, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. I spent some time briefing myself on your proceedings and I can see you are grappling with questions that merit serious and sober deliberation.
I intend to bring you up to date on the state of the The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper and our ambitions to make it an even better means of delivering the information and insight our readers need to build a better country and better lives. In so doing, I trust I will touch on many of your areas of interest.
I should add that when I speak of The Globe and Mail, I am speaking of more than just the newspaper. We also operate a magazine division, an online division and we launched Canada's first and only business news specialty channel, Report on Business Television. In each of these endeavours we aim to be first in our class.
Before I proceed, I would like to introduce the two Globe colleagues who have accompanied me here today. On my right is Ms. Stead, our deputy editor. Ms. Stead is a veteran of 30 years at The Globe and Mail, starting as a summer intern. She has occupied many positions of influence at the paper, including education reporter, Queen's Park reporter, assistant national editor, national editor and now deputy editor.
On my left is Mr. Martin. Mr. Martin is our comment editor, which puts him in charge of the op-ed page, ``Letters to the Editor,'' the ``Facts and Arguments'' page, and the Saturday book section. Mr. Martin is a critical player at ensuring that our paper reflects a diversity of viewpoints on issues of importance. Mr. Martin joined The Globe and Mail in 1984, after a highly successful broadcast career that included three years co-hosting CBC's Sunday Morning. He is the co-author of a book on the Progressive Conservative party's 1983 leadership race.
At The Globe and Mail, Mr. Martin has served as editor of the ``Focus'' section, our Middle East correspondent and foreign editor in addition to his current duties. He is an acknowledged foreign policy expert, speaking at numerous conferences and serving as a panellist on TV Ontario's Diplomatic Opportunity.
Both of these people are exemplary journalists and they have deep pools of knowledge, reflecting the high level of quality to which The Globe and Mail aspires.
As the chairman has mentioned, The Globe and Mail has a long and honourable place as a key institution of political, economic and cultural life of the country. The Globe and Mail was founded in 1844 by a young political reformer named George Brown and played a critical role in the political debates and processes leading up to Confederation and has been involved in every subsequent major debate in the development of the country.
Our newspaper remains true to Brown's original vision of a serious newspaper with a special emphasis on national affairs, commerce and foreign news. Brown succeeded because of his commitment to excellence, a proposition that continues to lie at the heart of our business strategy. The Globe and Mail has always been characterized by broad horizons. In 1959, we became the first Western newspaper to set up a bureau in communist China. In the late 1970s, we led the world in using satellite technology to print a newspaper simultaneously at far-flung plants. Today, we print in six locations: Halifax, Boucherville, Mississauga, Brandon, Calgary and Vancouver.
In June 2000, The Globe and Mail took another major step into the future with the launching of a 24-hour breaking news Internet service on globeandmail.com. We hired 20 additional journalists to ensure we would provide a service of genuine value. Readers of globeandmail.com have rewarded us for the effort. From25,000 unique visitors a day in 2000, today we have grown10-fold to 250,000 unique visitors every day.
We also provide a career service over the Web, complete with job postings and advice. Indeed, the success of Workopolis, our joint venture with The Toronto Star and La Presse makes Canada one of the only countries in the world to resist domination by monster.com. In Canada, a Canadian owned and operated site is the market leader.
Our websites form a key plank in our strategy for the future. It has been widely observed that the readers, especially younger ones, are increasingly turning to the Web for their news. The Internet allows for immediacy and heightened interactivity and puts an unprecedented level of control in the hands of the consumer. It is a new medium with tremendous potential not all of it yet understood. The only thing we know is that it becomes incumbent upon us to deliver news in whatever form our readers prefer. All media companies will be engaging in experimentation in the coming years. They must be left free to succeed and fail as they see fit. I am confident the end result will be nothing other than brilliant new products for consumers of news and information.
Let me return to the newspaper that remains the mother ship of the entire operation. It provides the good name, reputation and corporate culture on which we depend.
As had a national newspaper, we are primarily interested in issues that affect Canadians wherever they may live. An innovative policy approach in one province may be of great relevance to another. In order to help Canadians understand their fellow citizens in other regions, we operate a series of bureaus in 10 cities across the country, what we believe to be the largest domestic network of any print organization. We also operate the largest parliamentary print bureau in Ottawa and the largest network of foreign correspondents of any newspaper: In London, Moscow, Beijing, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Washington and New York.
The Globe and Mail is a national newspaper and not a local newspaper. Although regional news and some local news is part of our mix, we strive for stories of common interest to all Canadians. We compete against and complement local papers across the country. There is no location anywhere in Canada where we enjoy a monopoly or even a stranglehold on the market. In Vancouver, we are competing against four wholly-owned CanWest dailies: The Vancouver Sun, The Province, the National Post, Dose, and one partly owned Metro and we are gaining market share. In Toronto, we are thriving in one of the most competitive newspaper markets in North America. We provide a high-end alternative voice wherever we are distributed.
We cannot cover the world or even the country all by ourselves. We purchase a variety of wire services and actively support Canadian Press, Canada's long-standing and crucial wire-service co-operative. Phillip Crawley, our publisher, sits on the CP board and is past chair of the Canadian Newspaper Association.
Anywhere from 1 million to 1.3 million Canadians read The Globe and Mail on a given day. Over a week, 2.5 million Canadians will read at least one issue. You may have heard earlier this month of severe circulation declines hitting newspapers in Canada and the United States. The Globe and Mail is one of the few rays of good news in this otherwise gloomy picture. We are growing, albeit slowly.
Our penetration is much higher per capita than any paper in the United States. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the two largest papers in the United States, have circulations of just over 2 million people. The circulation of The New York Times is about 1.2 million daily.
As I stated earlier, we believe in quality and excellence in everything we do. That is what we see as our distinguishing characteristic in a crowded media marketplace and the simple explanation for our success.
We have invested heavily in recent years in improving our journalism and thereby our relationship with readers. We have opened new bureaus, supported in-depth reporting, expanded our web presence and recruited proven journalists. We are also nurturing a younger generation who will carry us into the future.
Let me provide several examples: In 2003, we opened a new bureau in Africa staffed by Stephanie Nolen. I think is fair to say that Ms. Nolen's award-winning work has helped raise the consciousness of Canadians about the profound health and development challenges facing the world's poorest continent.
We have also recently expanded our presence in British Columbia, our second largest market. We have heard repeatedly from British Columbians that they feel there is too much media concentration in that marketplace. We aim to do a better job there serving existing and potential readers.
We have invested heavily in major journalistic projects that we think help Canadians understand both their heritage and theon-rushing future. A few examples are our Remembrance Day, D-Day and VE Day anniversary coverage, our ``New Canada'' series and our ``China Rising'' special edition.
We are supporting a pair of dogged Ottawa-based reporters in their five-year pursuit of the sponsorship scandal. Daniel Leblanc and Campbell Clark have provided an important public service with their investigative work, and last month The Globe and Mail received the Michener Award for meritorious public service in journalism
In each of the past six years, we have led or been tied for the lead in National Newspaper Award nominations. We recently won a rare gold medal from the prestigious Society of Newspaper Design for the best use of photography of any newspaper in the world. In addition to our grand prize this year at the Michener, the work of our ``Report on Business'' staff has been cited four times in the past six years by the Michener award committee, underscoring the credibility of our business journalism on Bay Street and beyond.
Report on Business Television provides the most aggressive and unbiased business journalism you will find in Canada. We do not see its role as promoting business — our own or anyone else's — but rather as covering business. That is why, for example, the ROB has been at the forefront on governance issues with our annual ``Corporate Governance Report'' in the paper and our ``Corporate Social Responsibility Report'' in the magazine. Part of our responsibility is to promote a fair and transparent marketplace, a critical precondition of a strong economy.
High quality journalism does not come cheap. The willingness to make these investments begins with supportive shareholders who understand that The Globe and Mail is not any old business, but one that fulfills an important public service function. We are a profit-making enterprise, but one with a bedrock appreciation that good journalism is good business.
Our shareholders do not intervene in the editorial positions of The Globe and Mail. They appoint the publisher, who appoints the editor. The Thomson family is famous for leaving journalists to do their job without fear or favour. This philosophy is transposed into Bell Globemedia, jointly owned by Bell Canada Enterprises and the Thomson family.
We have aggressively covered various business events involving BCE, notably the controversy regarding the handling of its Teleglobe Inc. subsidiary. These stories would not have been pleasant for BCE executives, but they neither intervened nor attempted to intervene. As for our corporate cousins at CTV, we review their programs in the same manner as those on Global or CBC. Our letters to the editor page has featured several missives from CTV executives criticizing aspects of our coverage.
This committee is concerned with the issue of cross-media ownership. The Globe and Mail shares the same corporate owners as CTV News. However, my mandate is clear: To always act in the best interests of The Globe and Mail. Some of our bureaus are co-located with CTV. Even where offices are co-located, we operate two bureaus with discrete staffs and leadership.
The only formal area of editorial partnership is our political polling, a relationship that predates our current ownership structure. Sometimes we poll in conjunction with La Presse or CFRB radio as well. Our journalists often appear on CBC TV and CBC Radio programs as well as on TVO and CTV.
While we are not captives of convergence, we see benefits in our cross-ownership structure. Many of these exist on an informal, grassroots level. A number of instances exist where The Globe and Mail and CTV journalists have teamed up in the belief that they could enhance the quality of their journalism. A notable example was the extraordinary work of CTV health reporter Avis Favaro and Globe health reporter André Picard on trans fats. Their reporting galvanized Canadians and led a number of industry players to alter the ingredients in their processed foods.
While our news decisions are made independently, oftentimes we benefit from shared intelligence gathering. Such was the case recently when Katherine Harding The Globe's correspondent in Edmonton learned from local CTV colleagues of a shooting in rural Alberta. This tip gave her an important jump in reporting the story of the four slain RCMP. Readers ended up with superior coverage as a result.
In that case and in others, such as the 2003 summer fires around Kelowna, we have gained access as well to visual information thanks to CTV helicopters and camera operators. It is always The Globe and Mail's choice which stories to cover, but our partnership with a large network of broadcast journalists gives us the ability to compete on a more level playing field with chain newspapers.
The key point is that it is always The Globe and Mail's choice. Our reporters and editors decide what is best for us and our readers.
Rather than inhibiting our ability to act in the interests of our readers, cross-ownership has enhanced that ability. This is true of our current operations but could be even more so as the Internet evolves in indeterminate ways. One of the most exciting aspects of my job as a journalist is to try to figure out how to tap the unique characteristics of the Internet for the benefits of news consumers. The ability to work closely with a broadcast partner may well prove indispensable in helping us find the answers.
I have spoken of how our shareholders support our freedom to practice our craft as we see fit, and our unwavering commitment to press freedom extends to our relationship with government. The free flow of information is integral to the functioning of a democratic state. The principles of free press and democracy are inseparable. That is why press freedom was enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights in 1982.
History shows us that in any conflict with the press, governments will be tempted to use their powers, large and small, to protect their own interests in the name of the public interest. That is the lesson from the Pentagon Papers on down.
Today in Canada, our ability to report the news is often encumbered by the misapplication of access to information laws or the overzealousness of privacy laws. We are also disturbed by a trend of some elements of the judiciary to the increased use of publication bans and even secret proceedings. The Globe and Mail regularly intervenes to keep the arteries of information flowing.
We must always be mindful to resist the siren call of government intervention in the newsrooms of the nation no matter how well intentioned. The marketplace is the best place to sort out perceived shortcomings of any media company or news organization. If a media outlet is not delivering the goods, readers or viewers will make their views known.
The Globe and Mail has no fear of being judged in the marketplace. If we fail to serve those Canadians, they will let us know. If our competitors fail to serve them, readers will let them know.
We are certainly mindful of our responsibilities: To report fairly and accurately and to provide a range of viewpoints on issues of public importance. We take great pride in the fact that The Globe and Mail has a strong reputation for authority and integrity. It is an inheritance passed down through the generations, and one we will not jeopardize in our own.
Our readers speak to us in a variety of ways, including 200 to 300 letters to the editor every day. We are a member of the Ontario Press Council and, as such, are subject to public complaints and judgments against us, which we are obliged to publish. We run corrections on page two of the paper every day. We maintain a formal code of conduct, which is publicly available in The Globe and Mail style book. Our code explicitly states that:
The Globe and Mail will seek to provide reasonable accounts of competing views in any controversy so as to enable readers to make up their own minds.
Indeed, we actively invite a diversity of voices into our comment pages. We reject the notion of some newspapers that use opinion pages to reinforce the political opinions of the proprietors. Our comment pages and our editorial space are under the command of different editors, both reporting to the editor-in-chief. The mandate of one is to express the considered opinions of the editorial board; the mandate of the other is to ensure that we promote a lively exchange of different perspectives and viewpoints.
On our comment page, you will find an enormous range of voices speaking from every corner of the country and around the globe. In the past year alone, you will have read Robert Bateman and David Suzuki, the Aga Khan and Prince Hassan of Jordan, Anne Golden and Fraser Mustard, Jeffrey Sachs and Danny Williams, Sheema Khan and Lorna Dueck, Rami Khouri and Shira Herzog, to name just a few. They have argued everything from the merits of the Kyoto Protocol to the folly of climate change, from ways to reform the United Nations to the reasons it should be abolished, from the inviolability of traditional marriage to the case for same-sex weddings.
The Globe and Mail's independence is not in any way compromised by our ownership structure. Indeed, the opposite is true. Our owners have invested heavily in journalist quality and have not intervened in editorial decisions.
While owned by Bell Globemedia, The Globe and Mail is mandated to operate in its own best interests. It is a model of the right kind of convergence, one that allows for combining strengths as make sense rather than homogenizing content, limiting points of view and dulling independent thought.
Unlike many other Canadian dailies, The Globe and Mail does not operate in a quasi- or full-monopoly market. As Canada's national newspaper, it competes in markets throughout the country, offering a unique alternative to other media outlets.
The growth of the Internet will almost certainly enhance a diversity of media voices, but the development of the potential of the Internet will require experimentation and investment. The bringing together of different journalistic orientations should fertilize the creative process.
The Globe and Mail is a forum for a wide diversity of voices and points of view. It encourages debate in its opinion pages. It does not practice a rigid house orthodoxy on issues by banishing unwanted points of view from its pages. Rather, it actively seeks out alternative perspectives.
A free press can only thrive in a free marketplace.
My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to your questions.
The Chairman: Thank you, and thank you also for bringing your code of conduct. That is always handy to have.
Senator Tkachuk: Thank you. In our study, one of the key areas that we are looking at is the issue of convergence. Why is Mr. Sabia, the owner and chief executive officer of BCE, who was invited, not here with you?
Mr. Greenspon: Senator, as you will appreciate, that is a decision that I do not know very much about at all. Mr. Sabia does not get involved in my affairs, which I appreciate, and I do not get involved in his affairs. I know I was asked by the committee to come and I was happy to come.
Senator Tkachuk: In our study of convergence, would not the obvious people for us to talk to be the people who have instigated and organized the convergence, that is, the owners of BCE, who own CTV and The Globe and Mail?
They have been reluctant to come. This reluctance, I might say, chairman, is not unique to BCE, but it has been unique to the owners of CanWest. I do not think it is a good thing, but I do not know.
Do you not believe that these people would have been good people for us to talk to concerning convergence?
Mr. Greenspon: I would like to think that if you want to talk convergence, that we will add some value to the discussion.
Senator Tkachuk: I am not saying you will not, but we would like to see those people as well.
Mr. Greenspon: Ultimately, the benefits that we will see from new technologies in delivering product that is useful and helpful to people, will be the creation of journalists. It is hard for me to speak to why anybody has or has not come before the committee other than my colleagues and me.
If convergence is an issue in which you are interested, we can tell you how it is developing in The Globe and Mail world.
Senator Tkachuk: I like The Globe and Mail. It is a great newspaper not only in the Canadian context but in the world context. I am not just trying to be nice. I am trying to tell you what I think.
When you became part of this, were there changes made? In the beginning, how did The Globe and Mail approach its relationship with CTV? Were there layoffs? Was there a wall put up so you could cover each other? How do those decisions take place? Does the management of both The Globe and Mail and CTV make the decisions together? How does all this happen?
Mr. Greenspon: At the time, I was here in Ottawa. I was not the editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail at that time, but I think we all understood that we had our own interests to serve, and there would not be a forced march to uniformity but that there would be certain benefits.
I speak from my perspective. Craig Oliver, who was running the CTV Ottawa bureau and I exchanged information perhaps more freely than we might have previously. All journalists on the hill have their informal relationships in any case, but now we had some structure. Mr. Oliver might give me a heads-up on a story that was coming that evening. It usually worked more that way than the other way, unfortunately.
As well, we collocated. We moved into a bureau together, but it was very clear that we would not merge our management, that The Globe and Mail bureau was separate, even in its space, from CTV in that collocation. There is a division. Some people were concerned that their stories might get on the national news before they could get it into the pages of The Globe and Mail.
We made distinctions to serve our best interests and for CTV to serve theirs, and where we could have some mutual benefit, we had that mutual benefit. As I said, we already had a polling relationship. We had worked with CTV previously as we had years before with CBC in a polling relationship.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you still compete for news with CTV?
Mr. Greenspon: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: That has not been affected? You mentioned Craig Oliver.
Mr. Greenspon: The sponsorship scandal coverage would be one example of that. The Globe and Mail has to offer something of value every morning. It cannot just offer anyone's warmed over TV news from the night before. Something of value comes in the form of unique news, unique perspectives, viewpoints and analysis. There are many different ways to get at that point. Probably the sharpest and best way is to have a goodold-fashioned scoop, and we very much preserve our ability to do that. That is an important aspect of picking up your paper in the morning.
Senator Tkachuk: We had some discussion on the fact that most of the newspapers that do not belong to broadcast companies really do not have any sort of government intervention. Broadcasters are used to being regulated. They have to appear before the CRTC. They have to make application. They have to justify their existence every five years. I am not sure whether any of that matters, because none of them are turned down. Nevertheless, they have to perform that procedure.
Do you believe that you cover all the regulatory environments as critically as you did before the convergence?
Mr. Greenspon: Yes, I do. We have an unwritten contract with our readers that goes to the heart of The Globe and Mail as a quality newspaper. Our readers will know in a minute if we are not acting in their best interests, if we have someone else's interests at heart.
As I say, we are a growing proposition in a marketplace for newspapers that has been shrinking. Our great value proposition is that we have authority and integrity. Our owners, the other editors of the paper and I will not risk our reputation for authority on any story of the sort to which you refer. The proof is in the pudding. The proof is in the coverage that we gave to BCE's problems in the period from two to four years ago when they were having great difficulties. We review CTV programming. We get letters to the editor occasionally from the vice-president of programming at CTV or the vice-president of communications at CTV.
Mr. Patrick Martin, Comment Editor, The Globe and Mail: I might add that columnists such as Eric Reguly in ``Report on Business'' speak plainly, when it comes to dealing with Michael Sabia himself or others. He pulls no punches in this area.
``Report on Business'' is a model in its coverage of the industry, and our television columnists have not shied away at all, nor have they been asked to, from the coverage of the television season. You will see on any given day comments that have elicited a number of letters from the various vice-presidents critical of that point of view, or at least putting forward a different point of view. We see that as a mark of our independence.
Senator Tkachuk: Has the news desk of The Globe and Mail and, to your knowledge, other major papers made a decision that the Senate is irrelevant? You never cover it.
Mr. Greenspon: No, we actually have not had that discussion.
Senator Tkachuk: You might now, though.
Mr. Greenspon: It is an interesting question, but we have not had the discussion. There are important junctures at which the Senate has shown itself to be very relevant. I think of certain inquiries that the Senate has made. I think back to the Pearson airport inquiry, which I think you may have been part of, Senator Tkachuk.
Senator Tkachuk: I was a part of the inquiry.
Mr. Greenspon: The Senate has to fight for news space along with all of the other stories out there, and this week perhaps the House of Commons is winning that fight, but there is no conscious decision on our part not to cover the business of the Senate.
The Chairman: As an addendum to Senator Tkachuk's question about Mr. Sabia, I would observe, for the record, that the publisher of The Globe and Mail also has chosen not to appear before this committee and did so via you, Mr. Greenspon, in a letter very elegantly phrased, as I recall. It simply said he would not be available — not that he would not be available on a given date, just that he would not be available.
We will end up having to ask you some questions that would normally be more properly directed to the publisher, but since you stand in his stead, welcome.
Senator Johnson: It is nice to see you all this evening. I commend you on your many accomplishments. I think you have a terrific newspaper. I am very impressed with some of the newer things you are doing, like the work of Stephanie Nolen. Her work is excellent, and many young people I know are learning a tremendous amount from her form of journalism. Good journalism is good business.
You said:
One of the most exciting aspects of my job as a journalist is to try to figure out how to tap the unique characteristics of the Internet for the benefits of news consumers.
Please elaborate on that statement.
Mr. Greenspon: I will elaborate as much as I feel comfortable with the presence in the room of a CanWest executive.
The Chairman: I should point out that this hearing is open to anyone who wants to attend. You do understand that.
Mr. Greenspon: I do, senator.
I was the launch editor of globeandmail.com in June 2000. I was not an Internet buff in any way, shape or form, just a journalist asked to do this as an assignment. It immediately became apparent that it is a unique medium with extraordinarily unique properties. It is not just a combination of newspapers and television. It can do much of what print can do, although not everything. It can probably do everything that television can do. In addition, it has an immediacy that is more like radio and interactivity like nothing we have ever seen.
The sense of the relationship between an editor and a reader is changing. The kind of hierarchical gatekeeping type of function where the editor decides the news and the reader is a passive recipient of the editor's decision is passing. We live in a blogsphere world where readers engage with our columnists immediately. You have an email world. You have all sorts of different things going on. The Internet has phenomenal computing power, so you can build tools into it.
In the last election, we built tools that allowed people to look at different ridings and to slice up the history of voting. People can immediately look at stocks and make decisions concerning their investments. There are all kinds of possibilities when you bring that all together, if you are really creative and invent something that will be unique and powerful and will put power in the hands of the consumer more than the producer. That might be frightening to some producers, but I find it exciting.
Ms. Stead, Deputy Editor, The Globe and Mail: It is also limitless. That is one of the unique things about the Internet. For example, for people who are deeply interested in any subject we have covered, for instance, VE day, we can put up all of the The Globe and Mail front pages and all of the information that has come into us on that subject. There is no space requirement on the Internet as there is in television or in print.
Senator Johnson: We have had many witnesses before us talking about cultural diversity and ethnicity. What is the ethnic makeup of The Globe and Mail's newsroom?
Do you believe the lack of minorities in the mainstream media is a problem, and if so, what is the cause of this or what measures could have been taken to address this problem?
Many witnesses have told us that Canadian newsrooms are not representative of the general population because of the lack of visible or other minorities. Newspapers do not come under the Employment Equity Act, as it applies to broadcasters. It is part of our study in many dimensions and minorities.
Mr. Greenspon: The first thing that we have done — which does not directly answer the question in terms of personnel — that we thought we could do with the newspaper is make its pages more representative of the country as a whole in our story and photo selection. Our New Canada series is a statement that The Globe and Mail is not your grandfather's Globe and Mail. It is a Globe and Mail that recognizes the extraordinary diversity of this country, particularly its urban areas. We put a lot of coverage into that and continue to put coverage into that section.
Like many organizations, we do not have an employee structure that is fully representative of the diversity of this country. We struggle with that, as many organizations are struggling to try to get that right, particularly given the rapid nature of the change that we have seen in the country. It is hard to keep up with that change. We very consciously are trying to hire, recruit, and nurture people in order to be more reflective because that is just good business too and makes sense for us to understand the predominant communities across the country of which there is many.
Ms. Stead: Ryerson University has been doing a study on this for the past few years and collecting data from a number of sources.
Senator Johnson: This testimony was from Mr. John Miller of Ryerson.
Ms. Stead: We certainly are increasing the representation, but Mr. Greenspon is right, we are not there yet. We are making efforts. We make efforts within our summer program and within hiring to do this. We have made several hires recently that reflect that representation.
There is also the story question as well, that even if you cannot fully reflect in terms of the people you can in terms of the stories. We have done New Canada and we have a full-time immigration reporter who writes about these issues of interest. Ms. Jan Wong just did a series on Chinatown. Ms. Petti Fong in Vancouver covers similar types of stories in Vancouver. Ms. Wong also spent a long time in a very interesting community in Toronto called Thorncliffe Park, where she explained that wonderfulmulti-cultural community to Canadians. Recently in Toronto we had a reporter and a photographer spend a month in Regent Park, which is also very ethnically diverse, not just to write a story, but to live there and experience the area first hand.
Mr. Martin: You will find in the op-ed page of The Globe and Mail and in many other pages, a wide variety of voices. On any given day, you will find people from all backgrounds and all different parts of the country. We are very proud of that fact. Yesterday, Mr. Joseph Wong spoke on the China-Japan issue. The Jewish and Muslim communities also have a home on our op-ed page and back page and various other ways within the newspaper.
On a personal note, I would like to indicate that The Globe and Mail suffers from what many institutions suffer. Many of our staff has been with us for quite some time. The changing nature of Canada is dramatic.
If you had asked about the ethnic makeup of this paper25 years ago, you might wonder why there are not enough Italian and Greek and other voices. We have those voices now and we are trying to catch up to the other ones that need to be represented in the paper.
The Chairman: What is the proportion of women on your staff?
Ms. Stead: I do not know offhand, I would guess slightly less than half.
The Chairman: It is worth checking.
Ms. Stead: As Mr. Greenspon pointed out, in the 30 years that I have been at The Globe and Mail there has been a dramatic change from a handful of women journalists then, to aboutone-half now. It feels more or less equal.
The Chairman: My experience has been that people always overestimate. I am not saying it applies to you. There is a point somewhere between 15 per cent and 20 per cent at which people start to overestimate the number of women who are present in the workplace. When it gets to be 25 per cent, an astonishing number of people will say in all sincerity, that the number is 50/50. So, please do check.
Ms. Stead: Yes.
Senator Johnson: That also begs the question, as a national newspaper, what do you think your responsibility is in this respect? You cannot reflect everything. There are other newspapers. There are community and ethnic newspapers. I am trying to find how much of it is up to you, to be totally representative of all the minorities of Canada in your newspaper.
Mr. Greenspon: It is important for us because we are trying to speak to a country and we are trying to gain more readers and maintain our reputation of authority. If we do not understand the country and the important currents that are driving the country, that will not reflect very well on The Globe and Mail. People are living a reality in this country and if we are living a different reality that is not a good thing. We strive to understand the reality of the people who live in this country.
Indeed, each journalist who comes to the table with their ideas, as well as many outsiders, is an individual with children and school, with spouses and other businesses, they are living the Canadian reality themselves. They expect to see that reflected in the pages.
The pages are to some extent a little less institutional than they were 20 years ago. It is not all about what happened at city hall yesterday.
It is about what is happening in the city, the country, in Africa. We try to capture more trends and not just events that might have occurred yesterday, although events sometimes are very good ways to get into trends journalistically.
Geographically, of course we will not capture every slice of Canada in every issue of the paper. Over the course of a reasonable period, we will capture essential stories and important stories that speak to Canadians as a group whether by geographic region, ethnic diversity, global diversity or the many different ways you can slice up the pie.
Senator Johnson: I noticed that in the last couple of years, you have upped the ``Report on Business'' section and downsized the arts section during the week, but you make up for it on the weekends or you have added to it on the weekends. The arts and culture pages rest under the sports pages or after the sports pages.
Mr. Greenspon: The sports pages generally rest under the arts and culture pages in the national edition, except on Monday when you have a lot of weekend sports.
Senator Johnson: Are you balancing that section with the weekend edition? I am interested in culture and I follow the arts. I like to know what is happening in Canada in the arts.
Will you continue with that type of format vis-à-vis the arts?
Mr. Greenspon: Senator Johnson, the space we devote to arts and culture and entertainment issues is as robust as it has been before, and certainly, the proportion of staff is. We have full-time theatre, music and visual arts critics as well as many arts feature writers. That is an important area for us and I do not think that we have downgraded it at the expense of business.
Business coverage over the last 20 years, in a long arc, has grown in pretty well all newspapers around the world. One of the pillars of the The Globe and Mail is the ``Report on Business.'' There is no doubt about that at all. It is a very important part of our coverage.
I would not say that has occurred at the expense of our arts coverage at all. We have just increased our arts coverage. We just hired somebody recently in British Columbia to increase outside of the Toronto region.
Senator Johnson: How has the National Post affected your newspaper in terms of the competition?
Mr. Greenspon: That is a big question in some ways. The competitive nature of the The Globe and Mail and the National Post is nowadays like this: My left hand is the The Globe and Mail and my right hand is the National Post.
There is a widening gap at each census taking. Readership studies by NADbank or circulation studies by the Audit Bureau of Circulation determine the rate of growth et cetera in our business. With each subsequent set of numbers, the gap between us widens.
We are growing, as I said, slowly. We have grown 2 per cent or 3 per cent over the past year and they are shrinking. This is no longer our daily fixation.
Mr. Martin: You asked a question about the gender make up of the paper. In my small area, I have 16 direct reports. You were right; it is not quite half-and-half. I have 16 direct reporters, six of whom are women, ten of whom are men.
The Chairman: I have seen worse ratios, but I bet you thought it was a higher percentage than that.
Mr. Martin: I did.
Senator Milne: How does the globeandmail.com affects your other circulation? There is no doubt about it; this is an age-based issue. Younger readers are on the Internet much more than people my age.
Is it affecting your sales, or is it increasing them?
Mr. Greenspon: At the The Globe and Mail, there is no evidence whatsoever that it is eating into circulation. Circulation is growing, but it is a mature industry, the newspaper industry. After 161 years, you will not see fast growth.
Senator Milne: It grows as the population grows.
Mr. Greenspon: Yes. The population is not growing quickly either, but we are growing. We are very encouraged because the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers, which came out last week, show that three Canadian newspapers are growing, and we are one of those three. I believe we have the greatest growth of the three and certainly, in the highest quality circulation. Fully paid subscribers are our strongest point of growth.
The Internet is growing much faster than the newspaper is growing.
Senator Milne: Twenty-five thousand to 250,000 in five years.
Mr. Greenspon: On a daily basis.
Senator Milne: Is that paid subscriptions?
Mr. Greenspon: We have several different ways that people come to the Internet. The largest way is free advertiser supported on globeandmail.com. We also have something called INSIDER Edition. About 10 per cent of our content is INSIDER Edition, and subscribers pay to come into that site. Then we have our financial sites, and Globeinvestor is a freely accessible site, but globeinvestorGOLD.com is a subscription site.
I think everybody is experimenting a bit. You can see The Wall Street Journal has only a subscriber access to their site. They have experimented recently by opening up at certain times certain little bits of it. The New York Times has had a free-type site, but they have experimented as well.
Senator Milne: I have to pay for The New York Times in order to get the crossword puzzle.
Mr. Greenspon: You pay for certain content, the most valuable content, like the crossword puzzle. Everybody is feeling their way in this industry, and you do pay for it, I take it?
Senator Milne: Yes. I am concerned because I do not want to see newspapers in the traditional sense disappearing in the future.
I was hoping that I would hear from you that a young person subscribing first to the free stuff online and then subscribing online, would eventually mature into reading an actual newspaper.
Mr. Greenspon: That is our expectation and hope. One quarter of our readers is under between 18 years and 34 years of age. It is not as if there is an insubstantial number in that category.
Our expectation is that as people become more attached to society, let me put it that way, as they purchase a home, have a family and send their children to school, as they take out their first RRSP, they are more likely to become readers. That trend line is still occurring. Having said that, there is a great deal of concern in the international industry generally about the kinds of issues and trends you have pointed out.
It seems that the metropolitan dailies have much steeper circulation declines than our type of high quality national newspaper.
Senator Milne: Have you done any studies on the demographics of your readership, other than the one you mentioned?
I am not a regular member of this committee so I have not heard that particular group of witnesses.
Mr. Greenspon, you just spoke about the rapid nature of change in the country. You were talking about 35 per cent of your readers, are under 35 years of age?
Mr. Greenspon: Twenty-five per cent of our readers are under 35 years.
Senator Milne: Does the tie-in between the print media and the television affect these numbers?
Do you see any sort of gain or loss because there is more government control at CTV, certainly more than at your newspaper?
Do you feel threatened by the government control of the television media? Do you have concerns that government control may spill over into your newspapers?
Mr. Greenspon: Let me deal with the philosophical part of your question. Ms. Stead is very involved in the partnership arrangements and she might want to talk about some of the benefits or costs that she sees in those arrangements.
Philosophically, you are right, and one of the other senators spoke about this too, the regulation of broadcast versus print. We come out of a free press tradition that is hundreds of years old, in which governments do not intervene in the affairs of a newspaper and newspapers live and die by their readers in a free ``marketplace of ideas,'' as characterized by John Milton.
Broadcast began, given the scarcity of airwaves, as a regulated industry. We would very much not want to jeopardize hundreds of years of tradition that have made for robust press which we believe is essential to the good functioning of democratic societies, into that broadcast sphere.
We have not felt that kind of chill in any way, not at all. That issue has not been on our radar screen since the tucking of The Globe and Mail into Bell Globemedia. Philosophically I believe it is a freedom worth preserving and guarding, but it is one that we do not feel is imperilled.
Ms. Stead: If I might clarify on another point, the Ryerson study that I spoke of is a study of newsrooms. Ryerson has taken a survey to see how many women and visible minorities are in management, et cetera. Senator Johnson is aware of the study.
Journalists find convergence useful because it is helpful when big stories come up. Mr. Greenspon mentioned a number of stories in his speech like the shooting of the RCMP constables in Mayerthorpe.
We have a single journalist in Edmonton, Katherine Harding, who is one reporter on her own. It is very hard for her to cover the whole northern part of the province by herself. The fact that she has colleagues who will tell her that there is a major story breaking so that she is not having to monitor everything all the time is of great use to us. In that way, convergence is helpful.
In Vancouver, convergence assisted in breaking the Quatsino fire story when all those children were horribly killed. Again, our colleagues at CTV gave us a very quick heads-up.
That is really the most useful aspect of convergence, which is gathering known story information, tips that are out there for everyone, and having the ability to compete against very large organizations.
We do cooperate also on other things but it tends to be only a few people. The health reporters are very good and they have found that this has worked very well together.
We have jointly paid for some studies, for example, on fat content in food. We have jointly investigated studies on fitness across the country and additives in food. It is a way of putting our two organizations together and then we can each do our own separate stories on it and provide the information to people in different ways.
It might not be something that we would have done as major a project had we not also had the help for paying for the studies and other things with CTV, as we would have done. In that way it is useful to us.
However, the truth is it pops up here and there, and there will be many days where our reporters really do not have a lot of contact with each other, they are doing their own stories.
[Translation]
I now give the floor to Senator Chaput. I will then follow up myself with a few questions, after which we will move on to the second round.
[English]
Senator Chaput: In your presentation, you said that policies could be different according to the location of the newspaper. Did I hear that correctly?
Mr. Greenspon: The shared location in some instances, yes.
Senator Chaput: My question has to do with contracts. Several witnesses criticized contracts that some newspapers demand from freelance writers. As an example, it could be the retention of the rights for any use, that type of thing.
What is The Globe and Mail's policy with respect to freelance contracts?
Mr. Martin: Freelance writers sign a freelance contributor's contract to the op-ed section of the paper. They will respect that we require first publication rights of their work on an exclusive basis, and that we will are entitled to non- exclusive electronic rights within the data bank of The Globe and Mail. Their articles become part of our resource section.
Ms. Stead may know about freelance journalists, but those who contribute opinion and other related pieces such as that sign a contract to that effect.
Senator Chaput: Is that a similar contract to the other papers?
Mr. Martin: I cannot speak to that question. I only know of the contracts that we have. Every freelance contributor signs a contract. That is to protect us so that when we store those articles on our electronic data bank they have clearly given us permission to do so.
Senator Chaput: If I understand correctly, you retain the copyright.
Mr. Martin: No, we do not. They retain the copyright. What we acquire is first publication rights, that is we can publish it one time, one time only, which is the right we acquire, andnon-exclusive electronic rites. They are free to take that same material and go elsewhere after it has appeared in The Globe and Mail, by mutual agreement usually 24 hours after its first publication. If they wish, they can take it to CBC, to Global, to another newspaper.
Senator Chaput: Can they be paid again?
Mr. Martin: They hold the copyright.
The Chairman: It is interesting, Mr. Greenspon, that you hired 20 journalists or news-gathering staff for the Internet.
Mr. Greenspon: Yes we did, when we launched the Internet site in 2000.
The Chairman: How many staff members do you employ for the Internet now?
Mr. Greenspon: We have approximately the same number.
The Chairman: How does it work? Do these additional journalists work in conjunction with the print journalists? Do they re-manipulate print stories for the Internet?
Mr. Greenspon: I wish I could give you a clean answer to this but I will walk you through how it works. It is neither totally separate nor totally integrated. When we started globeandmail.com, we thought that it needed dedicated journalists of its own to serve the interests of the Web, especially given the size of the newspaper at that time relative to the Web. We thought that the interests of the Web might not be served unless it had dedicated journalists. We also thought that to gain the advantages of the knowledge that resides at The Globe and Mail among journalists, that we wanted the print journalists to contribute as well to the Web. The newspaper comes out once per day on a 24-hour schedule, but the Web is continuous. If a journalist discovers something fascinating at 3 p.m., we want that put on the Web to make it available to readers at 3 p.m. The only exception is if it is a fabulous scoop, then we would like to print it in the newspaper first.
As you know, many things come to journalists that they alone may know for one or two hours. We may as well get the item out so that people know it as soon as possible. Our print journalists understand that they are working for the newspaper and for the Web. However, our journalists working for the website, report exclusively for the website. However, our business columnist for the website, Mr. Matthew Ingram, writes primarily for our website, not exclusively, because some of his web-writing is so good that we use it in the newspaper the next day. It is not a neat relationship but rather it is an evolving relationship that is meant to serve both interests as much as possible.
Mr. Martin: If I may, there are other examples from the other direction. The member from globeandmail.com who is responsible for the online book club attends our weekly books meeting so that she has a good sense of what we will be covering. We have a mutual discussion of which book would be most appropriately excerpted in our ``Chapter One'' feature or which book would be best suited for the ``Book Club.'' We provide a certain give and take.
``Chapter One'' provides the first chapter of a major book online each week. If someone wishes to, they can call in a new book that has just been reviewed that week. The first chapter then might be put on our ``Book Club'' website. Publishers are happily co-operating with that feature, although at first some were reluctant to give anything away free. The fact is, once you are hooked on a book, you are likely to want to buy it to read the rest. We do this each week and there is a certain give and take in that area.
The Chairman: As you described it, reporters who cover the news of the day for The Globe and Mail, not the investigative reporters who might work on a story for a month, are on a24-hour cycle similar to a radio all-news program.
What does that do to their ability to do the fact checking and extra digging and phone calls for stories?
Mr. Greenspon: We were conscious that we did not want to impair their ability to take the time necessary to do original reporting. We have a variety of models, so if they learn that something is happening, they can call a ``rewrite desk,'' which is an old-fashioned concept from the newspaper industry that we have revived in the Web industry. They can tell the rewrite editor what is happening at that moment and he or she will debrief; it might take three to five minutes.
They all know that the primary mission for the newspaper reporter is to serve the newspaper, and the secondary mission is to serve the Web. This happens at political conventions on a Saturday. The website is our continuous newspaper so when a leader is chosen at a leadership convention on a Saturday, the reporters file the story immediately to globeandmail.com. Then, like all reporters, they have to figure out a fresh angle for Monday.
We do not see the Web competing with The Globe and Mail but with all-news television and radio, and with other websites, in a world in which people want their news when they want their news. I like to say that it is always ``top of the clock on globeandmail.com'' because you do not have to wait until 5 p.m. for the news. The news is available when the reader wants it available.
Ms. Stead: The 20 journalists working for globeandmail.com that Mr. Greenspon talked about are reporters and editors. I was not watching the Web today but when our journalists are up on the Hill to watch various votes, for example, we will also have a journalist from globeandmail.com watching the television who will put up the instant news. Their aim is to beat the wire at getting the story out on that vote. They are doing that separately from our reporters in the field who are in the scrums to get that other news. Part of the function of those 20 journalists is to get the instant, breaking news as quickly as they can.
Senator Milne: When you say ``watching television,'' do you mean watching CPAC?
Ms. Stead: They watch CPAC so they can write the story immediately.
The Chairman: How much do people have to pay for access for the extra layer of access to your Internet sites?
Mr. Greenspon: Is that for the websites?
The Chairman: Yes.
Mr. Greenspon: A non-subscriber to the newspaper, I believe, pays $14.95 per month, although it might be $13.95 per month.
The Chairman: We will take it as $14.95.
Mr. Greenspon: For a newspaper subscriber, the price is deeply discounted price to, I believe, $6 per a month.
Ms. Stead: That is only for the 10 per cent of the site. For the ``Breaking News'' and everything else, it is free.
The Chairman: Obviously, like everyone else we are trying to grapple with the models that seem likely to survive and continue to enable the maintenance of news-gathering establishments in the quantity that we need.
Mr. Greenspon: That is an important point, because good journalism takes investment in news-gathering, which does not come free. People are willing to pay if they think they are getting value in return on the Web as well as anywhere else.
As you grappling, we are experimenting with different models to see what works and what does not work. That is how a business operates, it tries things out and it sees if its consumers — in our case, our readers — like it or do not like it or see value in it.
The Chairman: What does not work?
Mr. Greenspon: I do not know of anything that does not work on the Web; I am not sure that anything does work on the Web. We have seen tremendous growth, as I have illustrated to you, in the people who are using globeandmail.com. Broadband is getting more sophisticated, better and less expensive to operate. The ability to webcast grants access to people to much more highly specialized audiences.
These are early days in a new medium. When we look back on this 10 years or 20 years from now, people will have had several eureka moments that we have not yet imagined.
The Chairman: The Senate has sound webcasting. That is as far as we have ventured down the road, but the other is coming.
How many people do you employ in you newsroom?
Mr. Greenspon: In total, about 350 journalists work full time for The Globe and Mail, and there are freelance journalists who have regular contracts with the paper.
The Chairman: I was not clear; does that number include the Internet?
Mr. Greenspon: That includes the Internet.
The Chairman: Does that include the whole operation?
Mr. Greenspon: That includes the magazine, Internet, newspaper, including the national bureaus and the foreign bureaus.
The Chairman: That leads me to my next question; you have seven foreign bureaus.
Mr. Greenspon: Yes, we have seven foreign bureaus that employ about 12 people.
The Chairman: You are one of the last news organizations in Canada that seems to put high priority on having foreign bureaus. Why is that?
Mr. Greenspon: I can only guess at why others do not. I do not really know. We do because foreign news, like business, is an important pillar that is growing in importance. I will ask Mr. Martin, as a former foreign editor, to take a stab at explaining what we do and why we see it as important.
However, in any of the research that we have ever done with our readers, foreign news is one of their principal interests in The Globe and Mail. This is particularly true for our readership, which if you look for a single demographic characteristic that would separate our readers from other media, it would be education level. Our readers are interested in what is going on in the world. I dare say, they are even more interested in globalization,
I believe, although this would be more anecdotal than analytical, that in the post-September 11 world, they areeven more interested. I have heard it said that beforeSeptember 11, nobody had ever heard of the Taliban; and after September 11, people could describe Iraq as a country made up of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
There is a greater sophistication level because people understand that what happens out there in the world is very important to them, both in terms of their interest and, as we have seen in our coverage of Africa, in terms of their values.
Mr. Martin: I know from my time based in the Middle East and as foreign editor, there is a tremendous reader response to many of the stories we print.
We tend to base our correspondents in areas of primary interest: China, Moscow, the Middle East and Africa, which we have been in and out of over the years because, sadly, they are areas that have not engendered the kind of public response we might have hoped. That seems to be changing now.
We would like to take some credit because people like Stephanie Nolen have worked hard in areas like Darfur to bring it to people's attention.
However, the reader response that I saw during those times, and that I see now in the letters to the editor, is tremendous. As we try to serve our readers and the broader public as well, this reflects their great interest in the subject.
I know from my own experiences dealing with this foreign affairs show I participate in sometime on TV Ontario, there is a huge response to that program. Today in Ottawa, people from Peterborough said, ``You are the guy on TVO.''
There is a huge appetite for foreign news. The security issue is part of it; Globalization is a big part of it; and increasing travel by Canadians is a big part of it. This is an area where many other news organizations have missed the boat. It is expensive and that is probably why they do not have foreign bureaus.
The Chairman: What is the cost to maintain a foreign bureau?
Mr. Martin: The cost to maintain a foreign bureau is roughly $250,000 a year.
The Chairman: What is the difference between having your own bureau in these various spots and what you would get from all kinds of expert news services around the world — The New York Times, The Guardian,— or just sending people in when you think there is a story that needs coverage?
Mr. Martin: We are not just covering the world through the eyes of our correspondents, although that is a huge part of our business. We know that the foreign correspondents cannot cover all of the stories. We have the luxury of having all of those services you have just described and the opportunity to send in our own people into trouble spots. I went to Iraq for a month last June and July because it seemed the right thing to do to have somebody go in at that time. It was a great story.
Nothing beats the experienced eye of an individual foreign correspondent that brings a Canadian background and perspective to the questions at hand. That is vitally important to how we report the news in those regions to our audience.
Mr. Greenspon: Senator, during the Iraq war we had four correspondents, of which although Stephanie Nolen was one. She was in Iraq in the Kurdish areas throughout the whole war. The stories they produced were very different from the kinds of stories that you would see in the British press or in the American press.
They were different because they did not all go through the prism of the strategic interest of those countries. They were different because they blended the human-interest story, with the strategic overarching story. In many ways, I think they were uniquely Canadian.
In other places, you will see stories that focus on what Canadians are doing out in the world. Many of our stories from Africa have been like that.
Last year, we sent 10 people to China in a very ambitious project to try to help our readers understand the two great forces in the world today, and that these forces will affect their lives. One is the question the surround radical Islamic beliefs, and the other is the economic, cultural, and strategic military change that is coming from China. We wanted to bring that information home to our readers.
The response was tremendous. We sold out The Globe and Mail throughout the country on that Saturday. It was a bit of a risk to take an entire issue of a newspaper and to take lettering on the newspaper in a language other than that of our readers. We felt it was an important story and we wanted to bring home and prepare our readers for the future, as it is unfolding.
The response is always remarkable. You make the investment and you get the payback. Your readers understand you are there for them and they buy the paper and then subscribe to the paper because of your efforts.
Senator Milne: Are you planning to do similar articles about India?
Senator Ruth: On page 9 of your brief, you discuss the press's conflict with institutions like governments, the judiciary, and so on.
You use what I consider strong language like ``misapplication of access to information laws,'' ``the overzealousness of privacy laws,'' and ``disturbed by the trend of some elements of the judiciary.''
In this general thirst for news, if these things were eased up and you had more access to information and the judges did not do what they do, how would that help you in competition?
Mr. Greenspon: I do not raise that subject as a competitive issue. It is an issue shared by all media; it is an open society issue; it is an issue about being able to report the stories. It is not an issue of The Globe and Mail versus any other media. In fact, in many instances we join other media in trying to have a publication ban lifted, or trying to have secret proceedings made public.
We are supporting the National Post on a case involving Andrew MacIntosh and the attempts of the RCMP to gain access to a leaked document. We are acting in what we perceive to be an overall interest.
We do see what we consider misapplication of information laws. The so-called ``freedom of information laws,'' often blocks the release of information that, in our view, should be in the public domain. That happened very early to our reporters trying to gain access to sponsorship information. They were blocked access to information that they should have been able to get, in our view.
To give an example of what I find to be an extremely silly use of privacy laws, on Remembrance Day 2000 we did a piece on veterans of the First World War. We wanted to write about and honour all of the living Canadian veterans of the First World War. There are only about 15 of them, I believe. Although the Veterans Affairs Canada wanted to give us information and work with us, they felt they that could not release this information because of the Privacy Act. They could not even contact these people on our behalf to see if they wanted to be spoken to by The Globe and Mail.
We had great trouble finding a compilation of the Canadian victims of the World Trade Center. That frustrates us. In many immigration cases, where we believe there is a public interest at stake in terms of the determination of certain cases, we believe that government officials hide behind privacy laws that were not necessarily intended to be that stringent.
We respect the privacy of individuals. We have, in our code of conduct, certain strictures on when we will not identify people. There are legal prohibitions on it that we respect, such as the Young Offenders Act, of which we understand the intent and purpose. I am not speaking here as an absolutist; I am speaking in terms of the relative application, or what we would think of as the misapplication, of some of these laws.
Ms. Stead: We have certainly taken an activist role on a number of things in trying to open up the courts, and we have not been alone in a number of cases. In particular, the CBC and The Toronto Star have been involved, too. I have a list that includes the Bernardo case and Gomery inquiry. There was a famous case called Dagenais that did open up more information to the media. We were very active in getting the release of documents on the Air India trial.
It is costly to gain this information and it is not necessarily of benefit to us. The information if often opened up to all media at the same time, but we believe strongly in the public's right to know. We do take an activist role in that regard. We have two members on the CNA legal affairs committee. We work also on a trial-by-trial basis.
As Mr. Greenspon said, we backed the National Post in a trial involving attempts by the government to get a possible leaked document. We have also been involved in the Julie O'Neill case, adding our support to that of other media. We do feel very strongly about our role in advancing that cause.
Senator Ruth: I am forever tinged by the Supreme Court of Canada Canadian Newspapers Co. case wherein The Globe and Mail wished to print the names of the rape victims. I have never forgotten that case.
The Chairman: Even some of us journalists did not think that was a great idea.
Senator Tkachuk: The Canadian taxpayer funds CBC, which competes with your sister company, CTV.
Why is it not appropriate for the government to fund a national newspaper, as suggested by Patrick Watson?
Mr. Greenspon: I have spoken to Mr. Watson about the suggestion of a ``CBC of print,'' which is the phrase he uses. I have said that, with all the values he set out, we have the CBC of print without the government having to own it. The Globe and Mail is very much the CBC of print. It is dedicated to quality journalism. It invests in its journalism, it fulfils public service functions, and the government does not own it.
It seems to me a necessary step, a step that has been taken in other jurisdictions, and it ends up being state organs that do not report fairly or accurately. They have the interests of the state at heart. It seems to me a kind of redundancy and not the best use of government funds and not a great precedent to set.
Senator Tkachuk: That has not happened to the CBC.
Mr. Greenspon: No, it has not happened to the CBC. There are some famous cases where people do claim it happened, but not many of them, fortunately, have occurred in recent years. You are right. The BBC and the CBC are obviously very good public broadcast companies.
Senator Tkachuk: Is it possible that the CBC will develop a newspaper on the Web? I think they will and I want to know whether you think they will. They do not need paper. They could have a newspaper that would be very different from the CBC but would be a government-owned Internet newspaper.
Mr. Greenspon: The two major players in breaking news on the Web are globeandmail.ca and cbc.ca, and they both do a good job.
I know there is a debate at times on whether that is the proper use of resources within the CBC. That is convergence. Perhaps it will be an electronic version of a newspaper, but an electronic version of a newspaper is not really a newspaper. As I said, the Internet has unique qualities. A newspaper has unique qualities. You can feel it and you can smell it and you can hold it up and rub it against your face. It is portable. It has a certain vibrancy, particularly with the colour and design revolution that is happening in newspapers. They might move in that direction. I would say that they are now the main competitor of globeandmail.com on the Web for breaking news, and we are happy to compete with them as well.
Senator Milne: I am addicted to newspapers, and I read them voraciously. I believe very strongly in the freedom of the press, and I believe in your right to protect your sources.
I find it a rather interesting juxtaposition to say that governments should not overuse privacy laws, but you are completely free to protect your sources.
Mr. Greenspon: I am not exactly sure what you mean.
Senator Milne: I am saying that you are practising a double standard.
Mr. Greenspon: You might interpret it that way, but I do not think that we are practising a double standard. I would not. We protect sources in order to provide information to the public. We are not keeping the information from the public. The whole purpose of protecting a whistle blower is to give the public access to the information, not to keep the information out of the public realm. Governments have public information, and governments are servants of their citizens.
Senator Milne: Tell me about it. I have been trying to pry the historic census loose for eight years.
Mr. Greenspon: I applaud and support your efforts. I think we are allies, senator.
We should not misconstrue the nature of protecting sources. Sometimes people want to come forward with information but fear reprisals. I want to be clear on this point.
Senator Milne: Are you saying that government should have whistle blowing legislation to protect sources within government as well?
Mr. Greenspon: I will not get into the legislation part of it, but as part of several hundred years of tradition of press freedom, the protection of sources is necessary, but to the end of getting the information out to the public.
Senator Johnson: Do you get many complaints from your readers about your coverage? What kind of complaints do you get, and how many would you get on a regular basis?
Mr. Martin: Including mail now sent directly to our Internet site, we receive well over 300 letters to the editor, every day. Of those that we consider for publication, 200 to 300 every day come in. Are most of them critical? Yes. The majority of them are not praising what we have done, although they are usually taking exception with points of view that have been expressed either in editorials, commentaries or statements made by news figures that we have reported on. The letters take exception with the issues that are out there. Many of those people that they disagree with are our own staff columnists. Those are the ones that probably generate the most mail, and most of that mail we get will be critical. They will disagree with a position they have taken. They tend to send letters to the editor with those points of view that are critical and to the writers themselves those things are the praising. We only go through the ones that are sent to the editor. Again, it is criticism on substance of content, not on the performance of the paper per se.
Senator Johnson: The New York Times has a public editor who investigates complaints, but yours are not really complaints?
Mr. Martin: Some are, and we consider publishing them. When they point out errors, we publish corrections.
Senator Johnson: What do you think about what they have at The New York Times?
Mr. Greenspon: The New York Times appointed their public editor in the context of the crisis that The New York Times was going through, a crisis of credibility. It is something that we talk about from time-to-time.
My inclination is that the editors of the paper, and ultimately me as the editor-in- chief, have to be responsible for the content of the newspaper. I have to answer for that content. I do receive emails and letters and calls from readers or from people who have been depicted in stories who will complain that their depiction in a story was not fair. Every editor receives these types of letters.
I will receive points where the fever is hot on an issue — many interventions from people whether it is the same-sex marriage issue or whether it is the coverage of the Iraq war. Certainly, during an election campaign I hear from partisans of all stripes, that this was unfair or that was unfair. What you get is often extremely contradictory. We are also the target of organized campaigns. We had an organized campaign against us recently that generated hundreds and hundreds of emails on the same-sex marriage issue. This is part of life.
The editor-in-chief is responsible for the content of the newspaper. Other people are experimenting with other models, and I will not be dismissive of those models. I just have not yet been convinced of them.
Mr. Martin: We frequently provide space on the op-ed page for side voices to be critical of newspaper performances, including our own. Some of our own contracted columnists frequently veer into this area and let us know how they feel about it.
The Chairman: There was something very interesting in the National Post today. I do not mean this is the only time. In this connection, in one of their comment pages, they had a piece from their editorials editor giving a long list of people he said owed apologies to Judy Sgro, and his own page was part of his list. It is very rare that you will see a newspaper actually admit that they need to apologize for something in the paper. I found the comment interesting and the placement of it also very interesting. It is because it is so rare that it is so interesting.
Senator Tkachuk: Maybe they apologized too soon.
The Chairman: I do not think so.
You belong to the Ontario Press Council. Does its writ run to your website, or is it purely the print product over which the council has jurisdiction?
Ms. Stead: I do not know the answer to that question. I have just taken over responsibility for the press council.
The Chairman: We heard from the press council, and I confess that I did not ask them that question.
Ms. Stead: There has not been a complaint about anything that has been on the website.
Mr. Greenspon: Anything that runs in the newspaper appears on the website as well. In addition to the ``Breaking News'' site, the entire content of the newspaper is available on the website.
The Chairman: If somebody brings a complaint o the press council, would you fight that and say, ``You do not have the mandate to do that?''
Ms. Stead: I do not know. We would have to look to see what the charter says. I honestly do not know.
The Chairman: As you pointed out to us, Mr. Greenspon, you have a wide array of competitors. The obvious competitor is the National Post. It is famously losing money. Is The Globe and Mail making any money?
Mr. Greenspon: I am not sure that I should be getting into the financial position of The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail is not broken out in its public statements.
You can look at those public statements and see that the media group is doing very well, but I do not think it is incumbent upon me to discuss this information. This information is not reported through to me. I am the editor of the paper, not the chief financial officer.
The Chairman: You are not a member of the management committee?
Mr. Greenspon: I am a member of the management committee. I will say that the paper is healthy.
The Chairman: That is helpful. The reason for the question is not prurient interest, although one of course is always interested. The reason for my question is going back to the earlier question about the ability of large newsgathering organizations to survive on a commercial basis.
Mr. Greenspon: That is a good question in that context. Clearly, we need news organizations that can agglomerate enough resources to invest in their journalism. We all understand the fragmented nature of media. It is not completely useful to have 200 journalists, working for 200 different organizations, and all reporting the exact same story.
It is more useful to have large organizations that can agglomerate journalistic resources and invest in finding out things and sending people to China and in supporting people in the sponsorship scandal investigation and having a correspondent in Africa in whatever those instances might be. We are very fortunate to be in that position. You can see the proof every day and our readers can see that as well. We take this responsibility very seriously.
The Chairman: We talked about the impact of the Internet on the mother paper.
Is there an impact of the growing number of free dailies on the traditional paid newspaper model?
Mr. Greenspon: The free dailies are a good example of what you are getting in a sense. What they do is they repurpose other people's news. You will not see the free sheets breaking many stories.
The early evidence of the impact comes in the latest readership statistics in Toronto, where the free sheets have been in Canada the longest. Metro and 24 Hours now have a third free sheet in their group. In that period, The Globe and Mail grew by 3 per cent in Toronto. They are in a very different marketplace. That information was very encouraging to us.
The Chairman: True, but they are attracting some readers. Did you take defensive measures of any kind?
Mr. Greenspon: No, we have not. We have invested in the journalism. In that period, we raised our cover price and still we had the growth.
Other papers seem to be struggling more. I do not know if that is a direct result of the other free sheet. The readership numbers for The Toronto Star seem to be the same or have grown a little. The National Post's and the Toronto Sun's numbers are down drastically. It is hard to ascertain causality, and we are pleased with our upward trend.
Indeed, we are investing much more heavily in Vancouver. We have made some recent hires in Vancouver. We have expanded our staff and our space in British Columbia. Our growth in the shrinking newspaper market of Vancouver, particularly in our Saturday edition, has been gaining very smartly and that is in a free sheet environment. There has been an aggressive expansion of the free papers into that market. We like to think, we hope that we will be competing for a different kind of a reader, a reader who is willing to pay for quality.
The Chairman: What is your circulation in Vancouver or in B.C.?
Mr. Greenspon: Our daily readership is between 125,000 and 150,000 readers.
The Chairman: Is that two and one-half readers per copy?
Mr. Greenspon: Yes, the figure is something like that.
The Chairman: Are you in favour of shield laws that protect journalists from having to reveal their sources?
You can respond as working journalists if The Globe and Mail does not have an official position on it.
Mr. Greenspon: What we have seen is the courts have been good, particularly with the interpretation of the Charter guarantees on press freedom and in light of Dagenais. There is a case going on in Hamilton which is a case that people are watching very carefully.
In honesty, I have to say that I do not think we have had a lot of discussion whether shield laws are a necessary response. We are favour of journalists being able to protect their sources because that is a very important part of how they function. We believe that the direction given to the courts through Dagenais talks very much about the need to balance out press freedom against fair trial rights, and not be casual about impinging on those freedoms in any way.
On the question of shield laws per se, I am afraid I have to pass. I will give it more thought.
The Chairman: If you have further thoughts, do send them to us. It is a two-edged sword because in order to have a law protecting a journalist, you must define ``journalist.''
If I could come back to the relationship with CTV, when the merger occurred, the CRTC imposed conditions. The CRTC can only impose conditions on CTV. However, those conditions included separate newsroom management.
I think you have made it plain that in your view there is separate newsroom management.
It also included a monitoring committee to receive complaints and investigate any of the principles involved in the conditions established by the CRTC.
Have you ever seen any indication of such a monitoring committee?
Mr. Greenspon: Having perused some of the other testimony, I have seen this committee asked by the committee. We are not involved with any monitoring committee. It would be inappropriate for us to be monitored, as we are self- monitored and try to be very transparent.
The Chairman: It was not a CRTC committee but a CTV committee that was established.
Mr. Greenspon: That is not my bailiwick.
The Chairman: I take that as an indication that you have not had any encounters with them.
Mr. Greenspon: That is correct.
The Chairman: You talked quite interestingly about the way, on a day-to-day basis, reporters may or may not co- operate, or decide on joint story assignments if it seems appropriate. You also said to us that it is your decision and that nobody tells you to do this. I am pretty sure that is the message you were conveying to us.
Is your code of conduct on the Web?
Mr. Greenspon: Yes, it is on our website.
The Chairman: It is great that all of your journalists receive the code of conduct as part of the stylebook; that is fascinating.
Was there ever any kind of a strategic statement from BCE or anybody else, about the way in which, from the point of view of the journalistic operations, this relationship was to be handled?
Indeed, has there ever been such a statement about your relationship with BCE in terms of journalism?
Mr. Greenspon: In my three years as editor, there has never been a discussion of that kind.
The Chairman: What I am driving at is more if anybody ever offered you this extra layer of protection for journalistic independence?
Mr. Greenspon: They handed me the keys to the office and said, ``Go along and do your job.'' So far, I am inferring they are content, but I am only inferring it because they do not talk to me.
The Chairman: You still have the keys to the office.
Mr. Greenspon: I still have the keys to the office, yes.
The Chairman: I asked this kind of question because we have heard from various journalists and professors about self-censorship. People who are actually covering stories or first-line editors who are assigning or editing stories are suggesting that the self-censorship sometimes can go beyond what the proprietor would actually have desired, even a very interventionist proprietor.
Have you ever thought anything like that would be a danger in a situation such as the one you are in now?
Mr. Greenspon: No. As I said, I think that our proprietors understand that good journalism is good business, particularly for a newspaper like the The Globe and Mail with a very sophisticated readership that can smell a rat many kilometres away. They understand that our currency is our authority, our credibility, our integrity and our reputation.
In the first paragraph of our code of conduct, we say:
The newspaper's greatest assets are its integrity and credibility. The first aim of this document is to ensure that The Globe and Mail and its editorial staff conduct themselves honourably in all circumstances and are seen to do so. The second is to interfere in staffers' lives no more than is clearly necessary for the purpose.
A senior committee of editors and writers worked out this code. It is not a purely management code. It has been worked out and rearticulated over a number of years. We do not have an added layer of protection, nor do we seek an added layer of protection.
The Chairman: Would it do any harm?
Mr. Greenspon: We have the freedom to do the job as we see fit. That is our freedom to hopefully use properly. We are all very professional about our journalistic freedom. Three hundred and fifty of the highest calibre journalists you can find understand that freedom.
The Chairman: Would it do any harm to have such a statement?
Mr. Greenspon: Could you explain such a statement?
The Chairman: I am thinking of a statement that says that you are to operate independently of CTV and to treat BCE in exactly the same way you treat all other corporations that you cover.
Mr. Greenspon: I shy away from the codification of anything that may potentially get interpreted backwards in some way. I do not see it as necessary.
The Chairman: Thank you, all three of you, very much. This has been an extremely interesting session. We are grateful to you. If your $14.95 turns out to be the wrong number, will you let us know?
Mr. Greenspon: Thank you very much for the opportunity to present.
The committee adjourned.