Media research in Canada leaves much to be desired
Newspaper and periodical reading room, Library of Congress, 1901. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. The recent revelation that data offered up by a Toronto Metropolitan University research centre ha...
Media , Canadian Business,
New report shows ‘news deprivation’ rampant across Canada
According to a new report by the CCPA, almost 2.5 million Canadians live in a postal code with one or no local news outlet, twice the proportion in 2008. Photo…
Think tank pushes more bad ideas to help ‘fix’ Canada’s news media
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hosts the Public Policy Forum’s testimonial dinner in Toronto, April 20, 2017. Photo By Adam Scotti/PMO. Any report published by a so-called “think tank” should be…
Here’s one easy trick to combat foreign political interference in our media
Photo by Can Pac Swire/Flickr The recent national panic over alleged foreign influence on our elected officials has seen politicians and journalists alike issue calls to name the suspected “trai...
The media world waits breathlessly for Google’s promised $100 million
Unlike the deathly silence that has fallen over Canadian news media in advance of Google making the first of its promised five $100 million annual payments to subsidize news publishers…
‘Goliath versus Goliath’ media battle being fought between Big Telecom and Big Tech
A new form of convergence is roiling Canada’s media, according to Carleton University’s annual report on the state of media industries here. Our media were ravaged at the millennium by…
The Hub trades increasingly in sponsored content
Peter Menzies minces few words in voicing his disdain for Ottawa’s recent wealth redistribution efforts on behalf of Canada’s news media. If he’s not railing against the Online News Act,…
Canada’s news media must be refashioned for the future
Photo by Serge Tanet/Flickr Writing about all of the problems with the ownership of Canada’s news media, as I have done for the past quarter century, has become frustrating. From…
Postmedia’s cuts to newspapers in Atlantic Canada begin to hurt
Cartoon by Michael de Adder Postmedia Network’s takeover of the SaltWire Network newspapers in Atlantic Canada this summer has brought the inevitable cutbacks to editions, journalists an...
What doesn’t qualify as journalism in Canada seems a bit arbitrary
Newsroom of the New York Times, 1942. Photo by Marjory Collins/Wikimedia Commons. One of these things, as they sang on Sesame Street, is not like the other ones. Rebel News…
Saltwire takeover would give Postmedia a coast-to-coast monopoly
Postmedia emerged this week as the surprise buyer of troubled Saltwire, which publishes more than 20 papers in Atlantic Canada, including the Halifax Chronicle Herald. Photo by Tony Webster/Flickr. ...
Independent media group chosen by Google to distribute news funding
Photo by Anthony Quintano/Wikimedia Commons There’s nothing we at Canadian Dimension like more than a good collective. After all, Canada’s original socialist magazine has been produced since 1975 by a…
Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism wants to put subsidy genie back in bottle
Photo by greenzowie/Flickr In a classic case of “better late than never,” an Ottawa think tank has issued what it calls the Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism urging news media…
Could co-op news help save Canada’s media?
Alt-weeklies have fallen on hard times recently with the flight of advertising to social media, but Prairie Dog and its Saskatoon sister newspaper Planet S have endured through ingenuity and…
Why non-profit news might not be such a great idea
“The Fin de Siècle Newspaper Proprietor” by Frederick Burr Opper, Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1894. Image courtesy the Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons. Having been down a couple of rabbit holes recently…
Corporate ownership of media has failed Canadians
For-profit media ownership has decimated journalism in Canada and continues to gouge us with some of the highest prices in the world for telecommunications services such as cellular phones, cable…
Is journalism really dying? No, it’s just evolving
A recent spate of bad news for the news business has triggered yet another round of lamentation that journalism is dying, which is kind of funny when you think about…
Black Press sale would increase American ownership of Canada’s news media
Yet another Canadian community newspaper chain is going to court under our bankruptcy laws, but again it has nothing to do with it going out of business. This time it…
The National Post should be the last to lecture anyone about media bias
There is something profoundly ironic about the National Post lecturing anyone about media bias, as it did on Saturday in a package complete with a distorted front-page picture of Conservative…
Progressive journalism outlets come together to form Unrigged
In response to the Online News Act, 20 local, regional and national media outlets, including Canadian Dimension, banded together to launch their own news aggregator, Unrigged. Image courtesy NB Media…