Media co-ops and employee-owned media have been growing around the world in recent years. Majority shareholders of the leading French daily Le Monde announced last year that they would donate it to a foundation controlled by its journalists and other employees. As news media in Canada continue to crumble, going the co-op route makes increasing sense for their displaced workers.
Yet another Canadian community newspaper chain is going to court under our bankruptcy laws, but again it has nothing to do with it going out of business. As Marc Edge details, this time, it is more a legal power play to force its sale to largely American interests over the objections of its minority owner.
There is something ironic about the National Post lecturing anyone about media bias, as it did recently with a front-page story titled “A more damaging media bias.” As Marc Edge shows, the opposite is true: the extreme level of ownership concentration in Canada has since resulted in a correspondingly extreme conservative media bias.