In 2017, the foundation will fall out from under Canada’s so-called legacy media organizations. Postmedia will go belly up, leaving more than 150 newspapers, including 44 dailies of Canada’s remaining 100, to be bought for cheap by local interests. That’s the best chance we have that local newspapers will truly serve their communities, rather than generate cash flow for American hedge funds engaged in liquidating Canada’s media patrimony. It won’t be pretty, but it’s long overdue.
The situation is so dire in 2016 that the federal government took notice, commissioning an inquiry into the state of public-interest journalism. In 2017, the government faces a choice — prop up the big institutions and prolong the death throes of legacy media with public subsidy, or produce policies and funding to help create a self-sustaining and diverse media ecosystem. The result will shock sceptics when, overcoming institutional bias, the government puts in place innovative policy to incentivize innovation.
The Liberal government will modernize Canada’s tax code to allow money from charitable foundations to flow to journalism, a practice formerly forbidden on the grounds that journalism is political activity. Philanthropic contributions, if tax reforms really do happen, won’t come close to replacing the $700 million in annual revenue lost to Craigslist and Kijiji, but maybe a bit of juice will be squeezed from what should be low-hanging fruit when it comes to policy change.
A federal innovation fund will spark the blooming of a thousand digital media startups. Well, okay, maybe 20 or so. Each will attempt to bring a unique viewpoint and funding model, transforming Canada’s media market into an entrepreneurial laboratory for the future of media.
Canada’s media revolution will be our next best thing since global peacekeeping. While Canada contributed precious little to the last technological revolution in journalism, this time will be different with such a significant disruption occurring during a relatively stable consolidation period when it comes to the Internet. Our leadership moment will be in fashioning a new form of journalistic practice that elevates democratic discourse and ushers in a new world order of public-interest, solutions-based, citizen-centric journalism. The populists will perish under the weight of their lies and truly representative governments will abolish war and embrace compromise and diplomacy. Why not?
Or maybe only some of that will happen. But at least Peter Mansbridge will retire from the CBC…sort of.
Erin Millar is editor-in-chief and CEO of Discourse Media.
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
David Weigel A test for online speech
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times