No News Is Bad News
Canada's Media Collapse - and What Comes Next
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Canada’s media companies are melting faster than the polar ice caps, and in No News Is Bad News, Ian Gill chronicles their decline in a biting, in-depth analysis. He travels to an international journalism festival in Italy, visits the Guardian in London, and speaks to editors, reporters, entrepreneurs, investors, non-profit leaders, and news consumers from around the world to find out what’s gone wrong. Along the way he discovers that corporate concentration and clumsy adaptations to the digital age have left Canadians with a gaping hole in our public square. And yet, from the smoking ruins of Canada’s news industry, Gill sees glimmers of hope, and brings them to life with sharp prose and trenchant insights.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Longtime journalist Gill (All That We Say Is Ours) takes an unflinching look at the state of traditional Canadian news sources, finding them struggling as a result of self-inflicted wounds and narrow-minded worldviews: corporate concentration and cost-cutting, smugness at the CBC, a decline in overall quality and in public-interest stories, and an inability to comprehend digital platforms that have thrived outside of traditional media hands. Traveling abroad to assess how other countries are handling the decline of legacy media, he finds examples of good synergies at companies such as the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper and Manhattan's ProPublica investigative journalism outlet. His hopes for Canada are somewhat dimmed by the lack of outcry over increasing losses in an industry that, when functioning properly, is a key component for healthy democracies. Potential solutions include a greater role for philanthropic institutions (which often fund alternative U.S. news outlets but would run afoul of Canada's charitable advocacy laws). Gill posits that the discussion is much larger than a technical debate between print and digital. He invites readers to consider new national narratives and innovative means of telling stories as part of the new blood needed to infuse a dying industry.
