Thread by @JesseBrown

1. If you want proof that a government bailout will skew journalism, just look at how slanted the coverage has been of the bailout itself.
nationalpost.com/news/politics/…
theglobeandmail.com/business/artic…

2. It was obvious from the start that the fix was in. You don't appoint a former Globe and Mail editor in chief to "research" the possibility of a government newspaper bailout unless you are a) ready for him to recommend one & b) ready to dole one out.

3. The public was sold the idea that we were having a legitimate national debate and the people would have a say. But there was no popular discussion. The press hammered us with propaganda that most just ignored, as they ignored the "consultation" itself. thestar.com/opinion/editor…

4. Maybe newspaper publishers and editorial boards can be expected to use their newspapers to lobby for this cash. But it's turned individual reporters into politicized lobbyists too. Let's think about that for a moment....

5. ...Journalists are supposed to ennoble us as citizens, operating on the idea that people have a right to know what's going on and are interested in exercising that right. But how does a bailout-boosting journalist regard the public?

6. ...as freeloaders, at best. As people who don't know what's good for them and who certainly won't pay for it.

7. It's really something, to simultaneously think that a) you provide a service that is of critical & essential value for a functioning democracy AND b) nobody will pay you for this service. It's a cynical and paternalistic way to regard your reader. Now it's baked into the job.

8. I was there, at the boardroom table, when Canada's top news bosses got together to figure out how best to beg government for a bailout. It was a meeting of dinosaurs pretending they wanted to evolve into mammals. (I was one of two token tiny shrews invited.)

9. What struck me was just how poorly they understood digital. They were pathetically ignorant abt the force that was ripping them to shreds. They got basic stuff wrong on ©, aggregation, etc. One didn't seem to know her org had the power to turn social scraping off at any point.

10. What they were certain of was that they needed lots of government money immediately and forever. Canada's newspapers had tried nothing and now they were all out of ideas.

11. That was 2.5 years ago, and still, not one major news brand in this country has bothered to implement a serious & plausible plan to shift to digital.

12. Such a plan would invariably mean sacrificing dwindling print revenue, and nobody has dared. (I'm tempted to list La Presse as the exception to the rule....but nah, there was copious research already showing tablets were not gonna be a saviour). So: who HAS tried?

13. The @nytimes has tried, and they're succeeding. They're even succeeding In Canada. I think they have sold more digital news subscriptions to Canadians than any CDN newspaper. They accomplished this by creating a good product and then requesting money for it. Shocking, I know.

14. @guardian has tried, and I think they're succeeding too. You know what their strategy is for convincing CDNs to pay them for news, even though we get their news for free? They cover us. I don't know their #s, but I know they keep covering us more & more. Perhaps it's working.

15. CANADALAND has tried, on a teeny tiny scale. We're succeeding. We have over 5000 people paying for CDN news. Will it scale to newspaper size? Nope, and we don't want to be 50x bigger. I'd rather see 50 micro-news orgs do what we do for diff audiences. I think that's possible.

16. Or, it was possible, before this newspaper bailout. There is no question that keeping our awful newspapers on life-support will have an immediate impact on new players. Simply put, it creates a permanent disincentive for news startups.

17. And, as I've mentioned, it hits "freeze" on the CDN news media at a historic low-point, locking-in mediocrity indefinitely. So this bailout is a big deal and a bad deal. But it was always going to happen. The fix was in from the get-go.

18. I'll be called a sore loser on this since I've been against the plan and my argument lost. But the truth is, CANADALAND is stronger for this. Now that every newspaper in Canada will be paid for by taxpayers, the need for an independent media watchdog is so much greater. -30-