The latest from PostMedia spurs readership away from traditional papers to excellent Local (Steps from the Canal), National (Canadaland) and International (The Intercept) blogs.
So if you are keeping track, much like the music-store industry chose to self-immolate rather than innovate when Napster came on board with online music services now too the newspaper industry is choosing to burn itself to the ground in the interest of one-quarter profits for shareholders and owners.
Alongside the demise of the free and wildly popular Metro the Ottawa area is losing a total of EIGHT community newspapers.
Ottawa is not the only community affected as the two news giants, PostMedia and TorStar, traded a total of 41 newspapers and then shutdown almost all of them.
This is disturbing not only as it mutes voices speaking out about concerns and events in local communities but moreover as it demonstrates just how precarious employment is across our nation. That so many have lost jobs and spending power in the blink of a hedge-fund manager’s eye should be of the greatest concern to all Canadians.
As for the voices of the local community. Well are only temporarily muted, not silenced. If anything PostMedia’s move to keep their ship from sinking by cutting off readership will do nothing but generate short term profits for a few whilst sinking their ship to yet greater depths of irrelevance by – to point it out again – cutting off readership.
For those that have not moved away from traditional papers to sourcing their news via a combination of the many excellent local (Steps from the Canal), national (Canadaland) and International (The Intercept) blogs this latest PostMedia move should do nothing but spur you in this direction.
I’m absolutely gutted for those that have lost their jobs. The latest does nothing but demonstrate the growing irrelevance of this format and the tone-deaf giants that are steering these ships where short-term profit clearly outweighs newsworthy content.
Forget Goliath I’m betting on David.
Sandy Hill Seen 