Signs of improvement that have appeared in recent months could give hope for an imminent exit from the crisis for the media. However, the road will still be long, because technological, financial and political obstacles remain. For a new balance to be created, governments will have to maintain their support for local media and regulate the giants of the Web.
The media crisis is by no means a passing phenomenon. It took shape with the creation of the Web at the turn of the 1990s, without us really taking the measure of the changes to come.
At that time, the media world was worried about the concentration of the press. Conrad Black owned half the daily newspapers in Canada.
In 2000, The sun, The right and The Daily pass into the hands of Power Corporation, which already owns The Press and three regional dailies. Quebecor bought at the same time Videotron, in the keychain of which was TVA.
Many feared the standardization of information sources and the loss of diversity of viewpoints. Governments refused to intervene.
Since the Center for Media Studies (CEM) he created in 1992, Florian Sauvageau nuanced. He saw that the Web could contribute to the diversity of sources of information by giving us access to the best sources of information on the planet.
State of play
That was true, but the local media still had to find their place on the Web. The duty was one of the first, if not the first, to have a website. The newspapers that did so thought they could increase their audience and their revenue. It didn’t last.
At the beginning of 2000, the real rise of social networks began. The competition they deliver to so-called traditional media on the advertising market unbalances the media ecosystem.
The CEM has followed the evolution of the crisis through studies on news consumption habits and trust in the media. Its “Inventory of fixtures”, updated annually by researcher Daniel Giroux, makes it possible to measure the damage.
In 2003, the advertising revenues collected by the “non-media” digital platforms, ie Google, Facebook and the others, were marginal.
Their growth was rapid. In 2020, they received $1,473 million in advertising revenue in Quebec. During the same period, Quebec media revenues fell from $1,640 million to $1,038 million.
When advertising is the only source of revenue, as for free newspapers, radio, television, or the main source, as in daily newspapers and magazines, the “fundamentals” of these businesses have just changed. Financial losses, expenditure cuts and staff reductions followed.
There were casualties. The number of weeklies fell from 200 to 113, magazines closed, regional dailies ceased their print publications on weekdays.
The number of journalists in Quebec fell by 10% between 2006 and 2016, or 420 fewer positions, according to Statistics Canada, which has not yet published this data for 2021. The phenomenon has continued, as Daniel Giroux observes in the inventory published this year by the CEM. He notes there for the period 2016-2021 reductions in the payroll of the news media ranging from 12% at Radio-Canada to 47% in newspapers.
A public good
However, this crisis is not the end of the story. The degree of resilience and fighting spirit shown by the media here is remarkable. A mutation has taken place.
We continue to talk about traditional media, but the qualifier no longer holds. The duty, The Pressthe regional dailies of the CN2i group have become digital media.
The ways of producing information have evolved. News consumption patterns have changed, and the rise of social media has fostered misinformation. Reaching young audiences is a challenge. New forms of work are beginning to enter the daily lives of journalists with big data and artificial intelligence.
This transformation of the media ecosystem and its evolution towards digital are at the heart of CEM’s research. A symposium will bring together researchers and information practitioners on May 11 and 12.
The crisis has made everyone realize the fragility of this ecosystem and its impact on the functioning of democratic institutions, at both local and national level.
The Quebec and Canadian governments have reacted by implementing support measures aimed at maintaining and creating jobs for journalists and accelerating the transition to digital.
These measures contained the bleeding and allowed some successes. Media like The duty made hires. It has doubled the size of its newsroom. The Press has just declared a net profit of 20 million dollars with which it has created a reserve fund for the future. Bell Media has set up a real newsroom for its Noovo channel.
This news is comforting. We can believe that a new balance is emerging. However, the battle is not won. The advertising exodus to digital continues, which favors the growth of the power of the Web giants.
Government support programs come to an end over the next two years. In one form or another, they must continue, just like the efforts to regulate large digital platforms that Ottawa has just begun with Bill C-18.
Information is a public good, just as much as education, health and culture. It is an essential service to democracy. It must be able to rely on strong media policies.