(Photo by Wallace Chuck)
10 min read
Where is Canadian journalism headed?
On an overcast November morning, a line of trucks drive along Front Street in New Westminster, sweeping underneath an overpass connecting Columbia Street to Pier Park. Sidewalks feel particularly abandoned, silent beyond the dull hum of passing cars. Specks of movement are dispersed in the 4-block stretch between 4th and McKenzie, a mix of old, empty storefronts and businesses that wait until midday to open. A man, bundled up underneath a green tarp, lays by the doorway of a closed army surplus store. Locals walk casually alongside colourful wooden fences enclosing a construction project, heading uphill towards the more modern buildings of the downtown core.
In a small, brightly-lit café, two women sit at a table near the entrance, their conversation weaving in between the relaxed guitar riffs and drum fills of indie pop playing in the background. Across the almost-empty space, near the front counter, another woman sits alone, in front of her an open laptop parked on a circular glass table. She’s talking on her phone, her voice familiar and commanding over the syncopated rhythm of steam machines and clanking utensils. Her shoulder-length brown hair drapes over the white pattern on her black cardigan, and behind her large, cat-eye glasses is a focus cutting through the cacophony of her surroundings. This has been her office for the morning. She hangs up the phone before closing her laptop and putting it to the side.
Ria Renouf spent the last decade of her life working primarily in TV and radio news. In March 2022, she left her position at CityNews to launch the New West Anchor, covering local stories around the city of New Westminster. In its first 18 months, the newsletter attracted 5700 readers, approximately eight per cent of New Westminster’s news market share. In August 2023, she announced her involvement with the Burnaby Beacon, a sister news site, as their new Managing Editor.
Today, at 33 years of age, she neither calls herself a journalist, nor does she call New Westminster home.
—
Canadian journalism has been struggling for years. According to the Canadian Press, over 470 news businesses have shut down between 2008 and 2023 due to financial instability. On December 4, the CBC announced layoffs of approximately 600 employees to deal with a projected $125 million budget shortfall. In an effort to support the economic challenges faced by the industry, the federal government passed Bill C-18, the Online News Act, in June 2023. The idea was for tech giants to negotiate with Canadian news organizations and pay to publish content on their platforms.
In reality, the bill caused disruption and confusion for the industry. Initially, Google and Meta opposed the legislation, finding solution by proposing a ban of news content on their platforms. In August, Meta actually began to block news content in Canada. In late November, Google agreed to pay Canadian publishers $100 million per year. At this time, there’s no telling what the long-term effects of the bill will be – when Australia introduced similar legislation in 2021, Meta’s block only lasted a few days before they were able to re-negotiate terms with the government. When Google News pulled out of Spain in 2014, it took 8 years for them to restore their services.
The bigger impact of C-18, however, had more to do with how news coverage of its rollout revealed the gaps in an industry needing repair. Like the emptying storefronts of Front Street, the journalism industry saw an exodus from suffering bottom lines. For some journalists, this meant layoffs.
“We used to joke, very sickly that, if you made it through November, you were very lucky,” said Renouf. She recalled sitting through four layoffs, and how they became a normalized experience between her and her colleagues. She recounts highly skilled news personalities having been part of layoffs, including Dave Sheldon and Terry Bell in 2015, Jeremy Lye, Tim Dickert and Jon Hall in 2018, and Jim Bennie and Bruce Claggett in 2020. “But you just keep telling yourself, ‘it’s the nature of this, it’ll probably happen to me at one point.’”
Despite her tenure in news and having won multiple awards, Renouf still had worries around financial and career stability. “One thing that terrified me about this industry was, there was a point where I woke up, and I was like, ‘do I get to keep my job today? Am I gonna get called into a meeting?’” Achieving life goals seemed more distant, even when she was running the show at the New West Anchor and the Burnaby Beacon. “I haven’t had a chance to start having kids. I am working 16-hour days running my own publication. I’m also running a second publication, and I’m like, something’s gotta give.”
In her younger years, Renouf was drawn to news through the radio and TV personalities she grew up with. She recalls watching Global B.C.’s Tony Parsons and Deb Hope, and listening to Terry Schintz, who she eventually worked under. Though journalism was not what she initially sought out as a career, she enrolled in BCIT’s Broadcasting and Online Journalism program in 2013. She worked in radio at CKNW before moving to CityNews, where she worked briefly as an anchor before moving into video journalism. Renouf admits to having had a romanticized notion of the work at the beginning of her journey. Reality, she later found, was far from what she envisioned.
As Renouf’s career progressed, the work began to take a toll on her mental health. Renouf recalls 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the loneliest times she’d experienced as a journalist. “Your job was literally to digest a press release about how many people died, how many people were infected, how many people were vaccinated. Every single day.”
Renouf stated that other journalists began to leave as they faced similar mental health challenges, and to seek out greener pastures. “They just said ‘I deserve better. I’ve poured my heart and soul and tears and did the best I could, and everything outside of me is just pushing me out.’” For Renouf, greener pastures had her move across the Fraser River to the city of Surrey, leaving behind her home of eight years, and a career she spent 10 years of her life on.
“I had given so much of myself to the industry, and I was like, it’s time to do something for myself.”
—
As communication technologies evolve, so does journalism. Organizations have had to adapt new business strategies as technologies became obsolete. A lot of organizations rely on traditional advertising revenue to operate. Some organizations have shareholders. Some are funded by monthly or yearly subscribers. Most have some mix of two or more of these.
Technology-based funding has also been adapted within the journalism space. Substack, for example, is an online publishing platform that allows creators to build a community and monetize their content. Similar to Patreon, Substack offers users a direct channel to subscribe to the creator(s) they want to support. This is something that The Walrus has been experimenting with recently, as they seek to expand their online presence.
“I think there’s a couple of publications on there like Harper’s [Bazaar] and Narratively,” said Monika Warzecha, Digital Editor of The Walrus, regarding publications testing out the platform. As a magazine that describes itself as “invested in the idea that a healthy society relies on informed citizens,” The Walrus operates under a charity model. The Walrus runs on advertising revenue, donations, sponsorships, government grants, magazine sales and subscription fees. Currently on their 20th year, the independent publication has illustrated success in pursuing less traditional funding streams, like their annual fundraising galas.
Warzecha commented on how their business model allows them to work on stories that other publications wouldn’t have the capacity to do, especially when trying to maintain reporting standards free from commercial interest. “We’re kind of a strange beast, we do things differently,” she said. “We’ve had stories that take two years to write, like the international student story, and that’s an important story. Not everyone can do that.”
“I love the idea of [a non-profit model], but it’s really hard,” said Renouf. One of the biggest challenges with the model has to do with justifying cost to external parties in order to keep up with paying journalists a living wage. In 2022 the median wage for a B.C. journalist was $29.10 per hour. According to a November 2023 Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives report, living wage in Metro Vancouver is currently at $25.68 per hour, with two adults earning full time wages each to support a family of four. “You’re gonna have to eventually keep coming back at people asking them for money, which, at what point will they say ‘no, I’ve already given you $149 a year, I’m done. That’s as much as I can give.’”
“Should this be treated like a standard business, or should this be treated like a public right, as something that helps protect democracy?” Warzecha, raising the question of who should pay for journalism, raises a larger question regarding its value in society. Maintaining integrity in unbiased reporting remains one of the biggest complicating factors when it comes to funding journalism. Some people conflate state-funded media as propaganda, while for-profit organizations are at the mercy of the opinions of their stakeholders and advertisers. In reality, a significant number of publications rely on government funding to operate. In 2020-2021, the Canada Periodical Fund dispersed almost $45 million to support 790 periodicals across the country.
Warzecha notes that the industry has reached a point of trepidation over what’s to come next. “I think there are just a lot of hard conversations going on and a lot of interest in seeing what alternative models can be found to keep people writing and having quality information.”
Renouf emphasized the importance of journalists getting paid fairly for their work. “People seem to think that [journalists] do this from the goodness of our hearts,” she said. “It’s a job that we all love doing and that we’re good at, and you know, just like everybody else, we expect to be fairly compensated for that.”
—
Clouds continue to hover over the city of New Westminster as its streets begin to slowly wake. Patrons flow into the café, hugging themselves as they warm up from the crisp late-autumn chill. A worker, resting, gets pulled from her seat by her co-worker to attend to the new visitors. Renouf remains unreactive to the disarray of her surroundings.
Nowadays, Renouf identifies as a communications professional, utilizing skills from her journalism career to help local organizations connect with their communities. She points out that her clients are within a few blocks from the café she’s currently in. Talking of her new venture, Renouf bounces in a jolly manner — a stark contrast from the seriousness in her tone when discussing her journey as a journalist. She explains that she stumbled onto social media marketing while managing the New West Anchor, as local businesses sought her help in getting their brands known.
Renouf revealed that taking gig work helped her financially, and from that, she was able to build a business. Her list of clients includes the New West Chamber of Commerce, SWAN Vancouver, Piva Modern Italian and Origins Chocolate Bar. With a feeling of airiness, Renouf explains the fun she’s having in her new work. “I get to go to a restaurant, for example, and eat lunch, and then shoot video of it, or just don’t.”
Renouf can now move more freely, no longer anchored to an industry struggling to keep afloat. Whatever new chaos builds, she’s a spectator now, rather than right in the action herself. In any case, home is just across the river, a safe enough distance away.
(This piece was originally written in December 2023).