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Edward Greenspon
Canadian newspaper industry advances on Ottawa, hands out, awash in red ink and democratic platitudes
By
David J. Climenhaga
| January 27, 2017

What's black and white and red all over? The Canadian newspaper industry's balance sheets.

But as has been said here many times before, no industry had more warning of the extent and nature of the coming digital revolution than the Canadian newspaper industry, and it has turned the wrong direction at every step along the way to its current disastrous destination.

But that doesn't mean these newspapers' well-heeled owners won't demand tax-supported subsidies to support their badly run businesses if they're given any encouragement -- which is exactly what the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to have been doing.

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Tom Kent
The Postmedia-Quebecor deal: Welcome to newspaper hell
By
David J. Climenhaga
| October 7, 2014

If you want proof the Canadian newspaper business is on its last legs, look no further than yesterday's announcement Postmedia Network Canada Corp. is about to take over Quebecor Media Inc.'s 175 English-language newspapers and a few other assets, including the five wretched Sun dailies, for a paltry $316 million.

Yes, $316 million would be quite enough for most of us working sluggos to enjoy a spectacular retirement, thank you very much, but it nevertheless is a piddling sum in terms of what newspaper "properties" fetched not so long ago.

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Explaining Tom Flanagan's spectacular fall: Professorial Mentality Syndrome
By
David J. Climenhaga
| March 24, 2013

TORONTO

Prof. Tom Flanagan (ret.) may have been thrown over the side of the Good Ship Tory by Capt. Preston Manning and the Motor Vessel Wildrose by First Mate Danielle Smith, but he still inspires warm feelings of solidarity at the Fraser Institute.

Leastways, Flanagan remains on the list published by the loony-right Vancouver-based "think tank" of its favourite "senior and visiting fellows" -- fellows, indeed, who to a man, and woman, have never seen an opportunity for privatization of public assets they couldn't love.

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Columnists

Tom Kent refused to believe Canadians had turned to the right

Tom Kent.

Tom Kent thought a lot about how Canadians should live. As policy adviser to Liberal prime minister Lester B. Pearson he contributed his ideas to the construction of the Canadian welfare state. After leaving government, he worked on policy issues for the rest of his life, chairing a Royal Commission on Newspapers, editing Policy Options, and writing about social policy for the Caledon Institute.

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Lester B. Pearson Tom Kent broadbent institute

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Tom Kent
If we'd heeded Tom Kent in 1981, our democracy would be healthier today
By
David J. Climenhaga
| November 18, 2011

Today we mark the passage of Tom Kent, the man who got it right about the state of Canada's news media and was ignored to the country's great disservice.

Kent -- who had a distinguished career as a journalist, code-breaker, senior civil servant, Liberal Party activist, adviser to prime ministers, businessman and academic -- was asked in 1980 by the government of prime minister Pierre Trudeau to lead an inquiry into what was then so clearly going wrong with the Canadian newspaper industry, and by extension the rest of the media.

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Safety warning: Globe editorial may cause choking, hysterical laughter
By
David J. Climenhaga
| September 12, 2010

All over Canada yesterday morning you could hear the sound of old journos choking on their Wheaties, dropping tableware and spitting coffee all over their copies of the Globe and Mail.

A few more may suffer similar symptoms today, if they happened to leave the weekend paper until Sunday. So if you have an aged parent who used to work at "Canada's National Newspaper" or you work in a dementia ward that's now home to some of the last remaining English-speaking copy editors on the planet, you might want to confiscate any copies of the Globe you see lying around, or at least check in on your charges to ensure everyone is breathing normally.

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