Income Tax Act<\/em> and subject it to the same tax benefits as political donations given that both are, in our view, fundamental to the functioning of our democracy. The appeal of such a decentralized, consumer-driven approach is that any public subsidies would follow individual preferences rather than the government\u2019s top-down choices and treat large incumbents and smaller players equally. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nA lot has happened in the five years between the announcement of large-scale subsidies for Canada\u2019s news media sector and next week\u2019s Fall Economic Statement. Most of the commentary about the developments in the industry over this period has been overwhelmingly negative. We understand that to an extent. Persistent announcements of layoffs and service cuts don\u2019t just have adverse consequences for the journalists affected. But they also can take a psychological toll on how people think about the state of journalism in the country. It can create a negativity bias that manifests itself in loss aversion and zero-sum thinking. We can become seized by the market\u2019s destructive effects and miss the creation that\u2019s emerging in its wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After more than two-and-a-half years at The Hub<\/em>, we don\u2019t share that pessimism. We\u2019re optimistic that the short-term challenges facing journalism are ones that entrepreneurs and innovators are actively working to solve. Their solutions may not look the same as the news media sector that we\u2019ve grown accustomed to over the past several decades, but that shouldn\u2019t be the measure of success. That would be a recipe for stasis. The proper test is whether this dynamic process will ultimately produce a mix of models that together deliver the news and information that our democracy and society need to properly function.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo this end, there may be a targeted role for public policy to smooth out the transition and support particular communities or parts of the country that are being underserved. But it ought to be more narrowly conceived than what a lot of industry voices are calling for, designed to support market trends rather than aim to shape them, and neutral between legacy news media models and online start-ups like The Hub<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nNot everyone will necessarily agree with this perspective and that\u2019s fine. It\u2019s precisely the sort of debate that we\u2019ll explore in our Future of News series over the coming months\u2014all aiming to push our collective thinking forward to consider new, innovative, and market-conscious ways to ensure that Canada has the news and journalism that our democracy needs to thrive. Welcome to The Future of News at The Hub<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Future of News series is supported by <\/em>The Hub\u2019s foundation donors and Meta.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After more than two-and-a-half years at The Hub, we\u2019re optimistic that the short-term challenges facing journalism are ones that entrepreneurs and innovators are actively working to solve. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":62922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2023-11-17T17:13:07Z","apple_news_api_id":"393745d7-18f2-4c30-9f48-459b6af4eea5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-02-14T13:33:21Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AOTdF1xjyTDCfSEWbavTupQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","_custom_css":"","_custom_scss":""},"categories":[64,8,93],"tags":[],"hub_format":[245,2],"thefutureofnews":[254],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72631,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62828\/revisions\/72631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62828"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hub_format?post=62828"},{"taxonomy":"thefutureofnews","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehub.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thefutureofnews?post=62828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}