October 7, 2008 Opinions

You can’t outsource local news

by Justin Giovannetti

People need to be informed, a healthy democracy requires that its citizens be well versed in the issues and pulse of their communities.

Canada’s newspapers are increasingly incapable of filling that role.

Local city reporters strive to cover their beats from newsrooms that exist more as metaphors than actual centers of information. After years of under-investment, the strain is beginning to show.

As newsrooms turn gray, reporters are not being hired as frequently as they used to be. Those journalists who are bought out are not leaving to allow place for creativity in stagnant papers, but to cut costs. For those who remain, less time is being spent on beats as management expects more work in fewer hours.

As a result of these cuts, the paper that arrives daily on doorsteps is not the best that its reporters can make it; quality has suffered.

Newspapers are losing readers to the Internet, that’s a fact. Conglomerates like CanWest have charged that the loss of interest is due to changing habits in information consumption, they aren’t wrong. But those media companies don’t understand why.

The Internet offers readers access to the world’s entire news sphere, it is only natural that they migrate towards the best-written and most relevant content. Bland information that is produced on a minimal budget to meet a corporate goal rarely invigorates the spirit, informs the citizenry and leaves one thinking.

In an attempt to squeeze maximum profitability out of minimal content, newspapers have set the stage for their own demise. It’s a vicious cycle: readers head to the Internet for quality content, leaving newspapers to respond by cutting more of theirs.

After decades of sitting on top of the advertising market, newspapers have had trouble adjusting as the Internet has overtaken it. As the ad market has become crowded the Internet has taken a chunk of the ad pie; that doesn’t mean they should have all of it all.

There is still a place for newspapers. People don’t want to curl up on the couch with their computer or Blackberry. When men and women wake up across Canada, they want to sit down in the morning with the strong smell of coffee and the feeling of newsprint between their fingers.

Newspapers need to give readers a reason to read the paper. Readers are not stupid, they know wire copy and they know quality. Give readers smart content and they will stay.