The internet continues to disrupt traditional business models, and local news coverage was predictably in line; today we learn that 35 community newspapers (print and on-line) have been closed in Ontario. See: Communities decry the closure of their newspapers. Full disclosure: I was a paper delivery girl for the Barrie Examiner 40 years ago.
On one level, the closures seem understandable, natural in the digital age. On another, there is a growing sense of alarm about how democracy, community, local values, small businesses, charities and families will prosper in an age where oligopoly corporations control all our access to information, while filtering the flow to please shareholders and big business sponsors first.
In a week where Time Inc. sells itself to Meredith corp., backed by the Koch brothers, and the US government is threatening to end net neutrality for the internet, the underlying themes here should make thinking people very uneasy. Progress is great and all, but these moves seem to be about going backwards, giving the public less access to independent assessments and non-corporate conclusions. We can’t afford to be complacent here.
Torstar Corp. (TSX:TS.B) and Postmedia Network Inc. (TSX:PNC.A, TSX:PNC.B) announced Monday the two companies exchanged a total of 41 publications and would stop publishing all but five of them, resulting in 291 job losses. Here is a direct video link.
