Read on Twitter
Oh give me a break. Having eviscerated + shuttered local newsrooms across Canada, and continuing to pay obscene exec salaries, Postmedia now wants Ottawa to intervene (!!) and "protect the future of your local news" by forcing tech giants to fork over ad $$$. #cdnmedia
Can we all please take a moment to savour the front page of the Calgary Sun calling for more government intervention in private industry
In seriousness though, this campaign from News Media Canada (which includes Postmedia + Torstar) casts the big newspaper companies as "David" vs the Goliaths of Google and Facebook. https://levellingthedigitalplayingfield.ca/
I'm all for regulating the hell out of Facebook and Google. But newspaper giants casting themselves as David vs Goliath, after they swapped & closed small-town papers, is *very* rich indeed. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/torstar-postmedia-swap-community-papers-many-to-close/article37092456/
Anyway this is all more nuanced than my Twitter thread suggests, so I'd recommend this piece by @kieranleavitt on the Australian model that Canadian newspaper companies are seeking. Would require the big tech companies to negotiate payments with news orgs. https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/02/04/what-would-life-be-like-without-googles-search-engine-australia-might-be-about-to-give-canada-a-preview.html
Also a good thread from editor of an employee-owned paper in Saskatchewan https://twitter.com/Peter_Lozinski/status/1357361143916843009?s=20
