[LINK] "The problem with Postmedia"

[rfmcdonald]

David Olive's Toronto Star opinion piece on the 30th makes good points.

There is a cancer on Canadian journalism.

The malignancy is Postmedia Network Canada Corp., a foreign-controlled, debt-burdened contrivance flirting with insolvency that nonetheless is relied upon by about 21 million Canadian readers. Postmedia’s 200-plus media outlets, mostly newspapers, including some of the biggest dailies in the country, represent a far greater concentration of news media ownership than exists in any other major economy. And a degree of foreign ownership of the free press that would not be tolerated in the U.S., France, Japan or Germany.

The good news is that the Postmedia abomination, which has never turned a profit, is in such wretched condition that it’s not long for this world. The bad news is that as long as the biggest newspaper publisher in the country clings to life, it is a blight on all the communities it underserves.

Postmedia is controlled by quick-buck hedge funds in the U.S. Leading this group is New York-based GoldenTree Asset Management, which alone controls 35 per cent of Postmedia. Indeed, it was GoldenTree that created Postmedia, just five years ago, by salvaging proud, venerable newspapers like the Vancouver Sun, The Calgary Herald, the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette from the ruins of the Asper family’s bankrupt Canwest empire.

For generations, Canadian law has forbidden foreign ownership or control of Canadian cultural assets. But after permitting the sale to non-Canadians of practically the entire Canadian-owned steel and mining industries, then PM Stephen Harper’s government signed off on Postmedia’s creation as well. The Americans put a Canadian face on the deal by selecting Paul Godfrey, 77, as Postmedia’s CEO. Not by coincidence, Harper and Godfrey, a diehard Tory, are kindred spirits.