Local journalism in Atlantic Canada in trouble: Company known for its slash-and-burn practices buys dozens of newspapers

Anyone who wants to understand the problems of the local news landscape only has to look to the Atlantic provinces of Canada. There, the region's largest newspaper publisher was able to stay afloat through a corporate takeover, but local journalism is still in a precarious situation.

Toronto-based newspaper publisher Postmedia, which owns the National Post and the Montreal Gazette, has acquired the financially insolvent SaltWire Network, the Halifax-based newspaper publisher of daily and weekly newspapers across Atlantic Canada.

The $1 million deal, completed on Monday, may have saved SaltWire's newsrooms in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

“Change is difficult, but at Postmedia we believe deeply in a positive, sustainable and vibrant future for news media in the Atlantic provinces and across Canada,” said Postmedia CEO Andrew McLeod in a editorial Published Monday.

However, the acquisition will impact the former SaltWire newspapers, resulting in layoffs, the sale of offices and printing facilities, and a reduction in the print editions of at least one long-running community newspaper.

And Postmedia, which has been majority owned by U.S. hedge fund Chatham Asset Management since 2016, is not exactly known for investing in the future of its local newspapers, say people familiar with the company's history of dealing with those newspapers.

“The approach was to cut down and burn as much as possible to make money from the property,” said April Lindgren, a professor at the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) School of Journalism.

“I don’t see a future that requires huge investments in content.”

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Stop the printing presses

The 145-year-old Telegram in St. John's published its last daily edition on Friday.

Under Postmedia, there will be an online edition and a weekly edition printed outside the province.

In addition, Telegram will have 30 percent fewer reporters after four of the 13 journalists in the newsroom were laid off.

“It was a pretty grim scene,” Keith Gosse, the local president of the union that represents the newspaper's employees, told CBC NL. On the way last week, around the same day they learned of the end of the daily print edition.

Today, St. John's is one of two provincial capitals, along with Fredericton, without a daily newspaper. The Daily Gleaner is only delivered there three days a week – and is therefore much thinner than it used to be.

In 2022, Postmedia bought The Gleaner's parent company, Brunswick News, formerly owned by the wealthy Irving family of New Brunswick, took over their nine English-language newspapers.

By that time, journalist Don MacPherson had already worked as a court reporter for the Gleaner for nearly 20 years and received a severance package that same year.

He told CBC News he initially wanted to stay but knew the cuts would mean overwork – he would have been one of two remaining reporters in the newsroom – and he likely wouldn't have been able to focus exclusively on his court reporting.

He said that in addition to reducing staff and the number of publication days, the priorities of a company headquartered in a major city like Toronto are not the same as those in smaller cities and towns.

“There was clearly a lack of awareness of what was important to this community.”

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Local newsrooms are just a shadow of their former selves

After the SaltWire deal was completed, Postmedia praised itself for being well positioned to “produce critical, innovative journalism even in turbulent times.”

But Lindgren, the principal investigator of the Local News Research Project at TMU, is skeptical. She believes shrinking newsrooms will limit their ability to adequately cover local news.

Postmedia-controlled newsrooms — more than 100 in six provinces and two national newspapers – are “only a pale shadow of what they once were,” she said.

Since 2008, the company has closed 57 smaller local newspapers.

Lindgren said there had already been uncertainty about the future of news in Atlantic Canada, as there had been cuts in some newsrooms this year.

Both World News And CTV News Journalists in the region were laid off. CTV's parent company Bell Media also cut the Atlantic bureau's weekend news and closed five Local radio stations in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

“We are rapidly reaching a point where the consequences of inadequate local coverage are becoming apparent,” said Lindgren.

“It will be like Joni Mitchell said: 'You don't know what you have until it's gone.'”

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An independent future for local journalism

Independent media have emerged in the region to try to fill some of these gaps.

MacPherson, for example, used money from his severance package and his own nest egg to launch the Fredericton Independent in early 2023.

It is a one-person outlet hosted on the digital platform Substack.

He tries to cover as much of the events in the capital region as possible, but court reporting, his daily bread, is his priority.

He said he could go to the provincial court and walk out with four stories to write, but he couldn't then attend a three-hour city council meeting that evening.

The other challenge is to make it financially viable.

MacPherson initially offered free access but has since moved to paid subscriptions, charging $9 a month or $90 a year for access to all of its content. Some stories remain free to read.

“People are hungry for news and are learning that they have to pay for it,” he said, explaining that most people subscribe to multiple entertainment streaming services but remain hesitant to pay for news.

Since MacPherson launched the newsletter in early 2023, his subscriber base has grown to over 4,000, and between 11 and 15 percent are now paying subscribers.

The demand for his work is growing: even people from other cities ask him for reporting.

However, he said that it was not necessary for him to be the only one doing it.

“If I were at SaltWire,” he said, “I would look at something like that, too.”

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