Journalism in Canada is very dominant by Postmedia, especially Ontario-West. The chain, owned by U.S. hedge funds, own both major newspapers in several major cities: Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. Postmedia also owns the National Post.
New Brunswick has had its own English-language virtual monopoly, not by Postmedia but by Irving.
Now meet New Brunswick's new monopoly owner: Postmedia.
Postmedia will buy 3 dailies and six weeklies from Brunswick News (Irving). The dailies are in the 3 largest cities in the province: Fredericton (capital), Moncton, and Saint John: Telegraph-Journal (Saint John), the Fredericton Daily Gleaner and the Moncton Times & Transcript.
The 6 weeklies are Miramichi Leader, Woodstock Bugle-Observer, Bathurst Northern Light, Kings County Record, Campbellton Tribune, and Victoria Star (Grand Falls).
As bad as the news situation is in English in New Brunswick, there are fears that Postmedia will make them worse.
"Postmedia would be wise to maintain at least the façade of local news for those three operations," Michael Camp told CBC News, noting as well that "there's nothing to be gained from changing them all to one name." Camp is a professor of journalism at St. Thomas University who once worked for the Irving papers.
What is interesting about this observation is Postmedia maintains the appearance of separate journalism in Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. The company owns both newspapers in those markets even though they control both papers.
Irving was the devil New Brunswickers knew. Postmedia may (likely) make things worse. Running poor papers from New Brunswick versus running New Brunswick papers from Toronto.
There is a track record of Postmedia buying up local weeklies and then closing them. Is is better to have a poor newspaper or not one at all.
CanadianCrossing.com New Brunswick coverage
Before the acquisition, Brunswick News announced in January that they would stop publishing a Monday edition for its 3 dailies: Telegraph-Journal, the Fredericton Daily Gleaner and the Moncton Times & Transcript. The announcement noted a Monday "replica" edition Telegraph-Journal online.
L'Acadie Nouvelle, the French-language New Brunswick daily, will stop printing on Mondays beginning this summer.
Postmedia's National Post hasn't had a Monday paper since the summer of 2017.
The story of Tilbury, ON getting its newspaper back
CBC News needs to bring back local news in wake of the COVID-19 coronavirus
Even though New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are neighbouring provinces, the gap in literacy is about as wide as the Bay of Fundy with Nova Scotia scoring so much better.
New Brunswick does have independent French language newspapers. While the province is officially bilingual, this shuts out anglophones from independent news.
The CBC and Radio-Canada do operate in the province as an alternative. As good as these outlets are, they can't crawl into local communities in a mostly rural province to provide small town news.
CanadianCrossing.com journalism coverage
Jesse Brown of Canadaland thought of one advantage to the Postmedia acquisition. The Irving newspapers were notoriously known for making things difficult for non-subscribers to read stories in those newspapers.
The Globe and Mail is getting so bad that you need to be a subscriber, even for Canadian Press stories, to read most stories. Toronto Star is getting rather bad as well in limiting access.
Postmedia lets anyone read their stories. Anyone. Most of them are crap (they are). You never have an issue using a link for a tweet on Twitter or posting on Facebook.
Critics of this blog might wonder why we post mostly CBC News links. Unless The Tyee and other similar Canadian journalism has a relevant link, very difficult to find reasonably neutral journalism links in Canada.
Right-wing news tends to open its doors for people to read. Centrist publications tend to hide their content. Ultimately, the right-wing content gets to more people. While this is bad in the United States, this is way worse in Canada. Worse in Canada but even worse in New Brunswick.
photo credit: Telegraph-Journal
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