Broken news: a new book rethinks the business of journalism for the digital age
Posted February 16, 2025 12:08 pm.
Marc Edge says he’s getting a little bit tired of writing books about all the problems with Canada’s news media because no one in Ottawa seems to be paying attention.
The last time we heard from the B.C.-based journalist, author, and academic, he was promoting The Postmedia Effect: How Vulture Capitalism Is Wrecking Our News. Now, in Tomorrow’s News: How to Fix Canada’s Media, his eighth and latest book, Edge is picking up right where he left off.
“This book is for all Canadians who deserve better,” he said. “They need to be better informed about the alternatives that are possible for their news media, rather than the corporate, for-profit alternative that we have now. There are other alternatives that could work better in the future.”
“My research into the news media for the past quarter century has shown the fact that they once made so much money is probably the biggest problem we have because they’ve been taken over by owners such as hedge funds, and they expect those types of returns now,” he said. “So, I think we have to come up with a better system. I think we should grow the non-profit side of journalism for a change.”
Indeed, he explores several business models — from non-profit and employee-owned outlets to various government subsidies and the problems with each.
Edge points out that Canada lags behind the Americans when it comes to non-profit news media.
“In the U.S., they have a much more extensive system of non-profit news media because they’re allowed to accept charitable donations under section 501 (c)(3), of their income tax act. We haven’t had this in Canada until the past few years, but the requirements are so rigorous that only about a dozen media outlets have gained charitable status.”
When it comes to the employee-owned model, Edge says the most famous example is Victoria’s CHEK-TV, which continues to thrive 15 years after going independent when it faced closure by then-owner Canwest Global Communications.
“The community rallied around them and bought advertising, and they were able to dig themselves out of a deep hole, and as you say, they’re thriving now. So, this provides a model for other news media across the country,” he said.
“The Prince Albert Daily Herald in Saskatchewan also went the co-op model, and numerous newspapers in Quebec have [too], so I think that’s a viable option for rescuing endangered publications and broadcasting stations, and that’s something that the government could also encourage with regulations. They recently brought in a new type of co-op ownership, which might be a good model for news media.”
Edge says if there is one drawback to the employee-owned model, it’s when they are a little too successful.
“There have been a number of employee-owned publications in the U.S. The biggest problem is that they have been so successful and so profitable that the employee-owners have to sell out,” he said. “But I don’t know if that would be such a big problem these days.”
Edge’s writing can be heavy on numbers and policy. The book is at its best when it tells the stories of individual news outlets like CHEK.
But his big idea in Tomorrow’s News is to divert some of the new Digital Services Tax paid by the tech giants and telecoms under Ottawa’s Online Streaming Act to individual media outlets. He argues that instead of being a victim of the digital age, journalism can benefit from it.
“A lot of people are making a lot of money off of internet access in Canada,” he said. “The big telecoms are making profit margins up to 50 per cent at last count, they were raking in about $16 billion a year in revenues to hook us up to the internet, and five per cent of that, like the streamers are paying, and like the cable companies pay on their television revenues, would go a long way to funding news.”
Edge expects such a scheme could generate a billion dollars a year, with the only resistance coming from the big telcos themselves. He says the money could be used in a voucher system that would be administered by a new Crown corporation.
“I talk about giving Canadians several hundred dollars every year to spend on subscriptions to the news media of their choice, and we could soon have a thriving news media in Canada and bring what I’m calling a new golden age of journalism.”
Edge says by deemphasizing profits, the news business could help Canadians avoid, what he calls, a social and political cataclysm. As he puts it in the book, we should consider it an investment, not an expense.
“There’s not much money left in news media now, as you may know, so I think it’s time we started looking at it as a public service rather than a money-making venture.”
Tomorrow’s News: How to Fix Canada’s Media is published by New Star Books.
