A generation ago, I was one of a number of newspaper editors and publishers having a drink at Pearson Airport, waiting for our flights home while pondering a fresh set of corporate orders.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” said one, trying to look on the bright side. “Remember when we all thought putting ads on the front page was going to be the end of the world?”
Most of us nodded and then another said, “Yes but what if it was and we didn’t notice.”
Some memories, we can agree, are best left suppressed, but ever since February 4, 2021, that one keeps creeping back.
Because that was the day the National Post, 16 other Postmedia dailies, the Toronto Star, and 70 of its satellite publications posted front pages that were entirely blank but for a banner asking readers to “Imagine if the news wasn’t there.”
The campaign for what became the Online News Act (Bill C-18) was bold, brash, and breathtaking. It also triggered a reminder that the world as most of us had known it—the one in which for all their faults news organizations would never use sacred editorial space to propagandize their self-interest—was dead.
