Thank you.
My comments are along the same lines, but from the perspective of anglophones.
Thank you for the invitation to speak.
I'm Melanie Scott, editor of the Low Down to Hull & Back News, a weekly community paper based in Wakefield, Quebec, just north of Gatineau. We serve a minority anglophone population. Having lived abroad, I can attest to our success as a nation in working to develop and maintain a bilingual society.
Many communities do not have the resources to provide services in both official languages and many communities, like our Municipality of La Pêche, do not have access to high-speed Internet. Local newspapers are critical to the communities they serve. We connect people. We provide critical information that no one else provides. In the case of the Low Down—one of few community newspapers to remain independent, vibrant, and vital to its readership—we are the one reliable anglophone source of news and information in our area. There is no other source people can turn to for objective, well-researched reporting.
We are not the same thing as a big daily. Dailies have lost their audiences; we have not. We know our communities better than anyone else because we live and work in them. We are read cover to cover every week.
Social media is not to be confused with the real media. User-driven content will never replace real news because users are not put out on the street interviewing people. They are not attending municipal council meetings. They are not asking the hard questions that reporters ask. We all know about fake news and its negative side effects. It's absolutely critical that real news outlets are supported to ensure that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not the go-to sources for news, no matter what language it's presented in.
Social media platforms, along with aggregate news services, are taking our work and repurposing it, sometimes changing it in the process, without considering where it came from and without paying for it. In the beginning, the discussion was about whether or not to go online. News outlets made the mistake of offering their content for free without looking ahead. I know. I was there.
The world of online news is now a chaotic mess. Despite the fact that we're constantly reminded that online is where we need to survive, online does not pay the bills. We're being forced to evolve into a medium that is more likely to bankrupt us than to ensure our survival. As a journalist, my writing has been published in dozens of major newspapers and magazines, but it's my work as an editor of a small-town newspaper in a very small town that has been more rewarding than any other work I've done, because I see evidence of our connection to our community every day.
I'm going to talk very quickly about the Canada periodical fund. It has been fundamental in keeping publications, both anglophone and francophone, alive, including ours. Despite its much needed support, it has given grants to publications that are defunct or are no longer publishing under the terms that the grants were awarded. A few cases in point, as revealed by Canadaland, which obtained this information through an access to information request, Maclean's weekly magazine received $1.5 million in 2016, then cut 75% of its print edition; Chatelaine, both English and French editions, received close to $2.5 million from the CPF and subsequently cut their print runs from 12 to six editions per year. Rogers Media, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, is a media powerhouse that received 16 grants worth close to $9 million from the Canada periodical fund in 2016-17 but summarily suspended publication or sold off or reduced publication schedules for all 16 of the publications for which it had received funding.
These examples illustrate how the CPF is not fulfilling its mandate, and I quote:
The Canada periodical fund provides financial assistance to Canadian print magazines, non-daily newspapers and digital periodicals, to enable them to overcome market disadvantages and continue to provide Canadian readers with the content they choose to read.
Rogers is not overcoming market disadvantages. Rogers is making money. Its stock closed at $58.72 on Friday.
We need a review of the CPF to ensure that anglophone and francophone publications that are vital to the communities they serve and are truly in need have a shot at surviving. The CPF needs to take a close look at what's happening out here in the real world of publishing.
We also need the federal government to respect independent publications by buying ad space for public service announcements that impart critical information to Canadians. As mentioned, many people in rural communities are unable to access information online and newspapers are their lifeblood for being informed about what our government is doing.
Believe me, no one goes into journalism for the money or the glory. The hours are ridiculous, the pay is atrocious, and the stress is constant. No, we're not brain surgeons, but if you're an editor and you fail to get the newspaper out on time, it's quite simple. In the words of Donald Trump, you're fired. We have gotten our newspaper out on time without fail every week for 45 years. That's 2,250 editions of the paper. That long history of serving our readers may come to an end because of outside forces we can't control.
I hope I've shed some light on an industry that needs help so that Canadians can get real news in the language of their choice, no matter where they live.
Thank you.