The Titanic being sadly once more in the headlines, may I be forgiven just once for invoking at a sensitive time the cliche of rearranging its deckchairs as a metaphor for somebody not getting the big picture..So two thoughts about who represents what for News Media Canada, whose spokesman Paul Deegan has been talking to the Globe and Mail..First, let it be said that Mr. Deegan has an impressive resume. A little too friendly with the US Democratic Party for our tastes perhaps — who puts on their resume that they interned for Senator Ted Kennedy? — but no doubt he does what he must to swim in a Laurentian lake..Anyway, the Glob has him saying, "Dominant search and social media platforms are valuable partners in the news media ecosystem, and we encourage all stakeholders to act in good faith as we work through the regulatory process.".Hmmm. In the interests of truth and accuracy, let me reword that: "Search and social media platforms are dominant partners in the news media ecosystem." .That works better because according to insider website Echobox, "Facebook remains key to generating traffic from social media to online publishers and news websites." (For more on Echobox, see here from my friend and colleague Shaun Polczer.).How key? "Last year, over 13% of news publishers’ traffic came from Facebook, an improvement from 2019’s 11%. For the summer, this figure rose to an average of around 13.7% of all traffic to news websites, meaning that nearly one in seven page views accrued by news publishers came from a single source. Remarkably, Facebook’s traffic share was 10 times higher than Twitter’s and accounted for around 90% of all social media traffic.".Facebook is everybody's paper boy, then. And while News Media Canada is free to call them a valuable partner, they're really the dominant partner..Aren't they?.Then, the Grope and Flail says News Media Canada 'represents the news industry.' Again they're free to believe it, never mind just say it. However, that's a bit tendentious for two reasons..First, it's like listening to an old married couple in a trailer where she concedes he's the boss and, sure enough, he makes all the decisions involving more than $2 million. So to begin with, let's not confuse tail and dog. No doubt News Media Canada gets its calls returned by Heritage Canada. But do know the CEOs of the larger Canadian publishing and broadcasting entities will have Minister Rodrigues on speed dial. Also know that News Media Canada was cobbled together about 10 years ago from legacy press associations and such scattered and willing remains of the old system of provincial press councils that had survived that long. These press councils were themselves set up in the 1980s by newspaper publishers motivated by no scruple more elevated than the urgency of creating a self-regulating body to avoid government regulation. (Another Trudeau as prime minister, take note.) And once formed, publishers paid the costs grudgingly. I know. I served on two of these councils. (BC and Alberta.) You'd think we were asking them to spend their own money. Just ask my friend and colleague Peter Menzies, one time publisher of the Calgary Herald... who now brings his vast experience to The Western Standard as a member of our editorial board..So News Media Canada exists because it is convenient at times, such as when a government committee needs to be told that Canada's newspapers "need government" to help them out. (Reported by Blacklocks.) No newspaper publisher wants his name attached to that sort of comment, right? So... let the industry rep say it, right? .Second, it doesn't exactly represent new media. Online news sites such as ours do not belong. (Neither do our friends at Blacklocks, who break new information daily that the old media either miss or cover a month later when everybody's forgotten Blacklocks and their Western Standard clients had it first.) We will ask the Glob for a correction..By the way... 'a news media ecosystem?' Bit pretentious? Stuart Keate, the noted publisher of the Vancouver Sun, once lamented after all his investment in people and machinery, the delivery of his newspaper was in the hands of a small boy with a frog in his pocket. Maybe that was an ecosystem, sort of. But really, we're not that biological. .Wrong word. But also, wrong idea. Tells you something, doesn't it?
