The media landscape is changing. In BC, the Black Press Company recently acquired almost a dozen community papers, five of which have since been shut down for lack of revenue. According to a Black Press media release, the combined losses for two of the acquisitions — the Nelson Daily News and Prince Rupert Daily News — were about $1,000,000 in 2009 alone.

The high-profile bankruptcy of the CanWest media empire serves as another recent example, as CanWest’s print division — including the Victoria Times Colonist, Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun and National Post, among others — was purchased by a group of creditors.

While much of this instability can be attributed to the economic downturn, it also reflects the market’s concern that the shape of media is changing; the expectation is that this change will come in the form of enterprising writers, bloggers and journalists trying to make their mark in the burgeoning world of the online press. And while many see the Internet as the future of media, most online publications can’t seem to pay the bills, and they may be falling into the same traps of bias and partisanship that have ensnared countless of their dead-tree brethren.

“I think the marketplace of ideas is just that — a marketplace,” says Peter W. Klein, Emmy Award-winning journalist and Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of journalism. “Like any marketplace, if there’s a demand, then a supply pops up to meet it. Newspaper may be dying, but there’s still a large demand for good journalism, and faux-web journalists are not meeting that demand, either because of partisan bias (often hidden) or lack of reporting skill or lack of writing ability, and often some combination.”

As Klein is quick to point out, if New Media is to fill the emerging void there are still many challenges to overcome.

The Money

In a recent phone interview, Marshall Jones, editor of Kelowna.com, explained his desire for an online alternative. “My goal [...] from a newsroom perspective was to be a daily newspaper online,” he said. “We knew the daily newspaper in town wasn’t going to do that.”

The now-defunct news site was launched by Ogopogo Media Inc. as an online alternative to the local Kelowna print press, but despite these laudable goals, and a formidable newsroom staff, the project was active for only 10 months before Ogopogo shut it down. Kelowna.com is still online and operating as a kind of automated wire service for CBC content, but for all intents and purposes the project is dead in the water.

The sudden closure wasn’t Jones’ idea. “We were all told ‘two years’,” he says. So why the rapid demise? He scoffs at the suggestion that the collapse was due to difficulty finding advertisers, and claims instead that the “trouble was getting readers.” Indeed, as far as Jones is concerned, there were only two major problems for Kelowna.com:

One: “Nobody knew we were there.”

Two: He’s “just not sure that people cared.”

It’s not as if Kelowna.com wasn’t delivering good content. “What we produced for journalism, the information we uncovered, was hands down the best in town.” Kelowna.com was easily a viable alternative to the local print press, but, says Jones, “I think we over-estimated the value of solid journalism.”

Not all have had such bad luck. He points towards the success of another Kelowna-based local news site, Castanet.net, which evolved from a community forum into a full-fledged local news source. According to Jones, they get an incredible amount of traffic every week, but this online success comes at a price. “I just don’t know that the general public cares enough about integrity in news,” Jones says. And that’s bad news for journalists, because it just might mean that a community-forum oriented news site will take precedent over professional coverage.

In an emailed interview, Sean Holman, the Jack Webster Award-winning journalist behind Public Eye Online, weighs in. Originally launched as a weekly .pdf magazine in 2003, Public Eye Online was disbanded on account of an overwhelming workload. When Holman began investigating the Doug Walls affair (the scandal that earned him the Jack Webster Award), the weekly schedule “became increasingly difficult to keep up,” and publication ceased in November of 2003 as the Doug Walls investigation continued to take up more and more of Holman’s time.

Public Eye was later relaunched as an independent news site suited to Holman’s investigative work. As he explains, “I’ve always been a big believer in the purpose of journalism — holding power and the institutions of society to account. I think it’s difficult, sometimes, for the media to do that when so much of their resources are focused on covering the story of the day. And that’s why I launched Public Eye — because I felt there was a need for more of that kind of accountability.”

For Holman, the Internet has opened doors, but it’s not yet clear where they will lead.

“[The Internet's] made it possible. But it hasn’t made it profitable,” Holman writes. “The very existence of Public Eye and The Tyee, I think, points to a demand for more independent journalism. And, certainly, I hear a lot about that demand from the blogosphere. But, for myself, I continue to try to figure out how to make the model work from a financial perspective.”

He notes the differences between the United States, where “we’ve seen a proliferation of independent news websites that receive philanthropic financing,” and Canada, where such funding doesn’t seem to exist. “I think it’s because the free press — as a value — is more widely held in the States. It’s enshrined in their constitution for heaven’s sake. While, in Canada, I think foundations and charitable givers are much more likely to finance an environmental or social cause than investigative journalism.”

Jones disagrees. “You take a look at Castanet for example,” he says. “They’re a daily, an hourly, publication,” and “they’re making lots of money.” In fact, from his perspective the problem lies with journalists’ own inability to sell their content. “I think journalists generally have to do a much better job of marketing themselves.” There’s not enough of a distinction, or education, in the market these days. And why exactly should a reader care if what they read was brought to them by a reputable news provider? “It’s an important distinction if we’re going to save ourselves.”

The Bias

While the Internet is held by many as a way to counter bias and partisanship, it falls prey to those same faults, claims Alex G. Tsakumis, a former columnist for 24 Hours Vancouver who also worked as a political blogger for CTV Vancouver.

Following his CTV and 24 Hours experiences, Tsakumis established a blog that features breaking news and commentary. Receiving regular attention for its obstinate tone as well as its controversial reporting style, the site saw over 141,100 visitors this August — Tsakumis’ “biggest month ever.” He has also launched a video podcast, Front & Centre, which is “one of [the site’s] most popular features.”

Asked whether the Internet has provided a way to counter bias and partisanship in the more centralized print media forums, the picture Tsakumis paints isn’t pretty. “There are just too many blogs out there that are designed to bolster one party over another, or [to] spread gossip,” he writes. “Political parties have caught on that the Internet is a primary source of news for the younger generation [that wants] to be more engaged, so they pay for their media whores to get into the blogosphere and spin their stories. It’s shameful, but it’s done all the time.”

He would know. Just last month Tsakumis, a former Non-Partisan Association executive board member, broke a story about Vancouver political blogger Jonathan Ross’s financial connection to the Vision Vancouver party, an organization that Tsakumis regularly trashes on his blog.

Still, Tsakumis believes the issue of bias in new media can be overcome: “I think the public are better than this and get the problem.”

The Future

For Holman, the future of online journalism is still uncertain. “I think I’ve proven over the past seven years that it’s possible to do investigative journalism in the context of a daily news environment — filling the news hole that editors always worry about. But whether the media as a whole moves in that direction remains to be seen.”

“We are definitely suffering from not enough investigative journalism. No question. Particularly where the government in Victoria are concerned,” writes Tsakumis. “[T]he MSM [Mainstream Media] are not prepared to support complicated stories. They’d rather go with the dead-baby lead at six.”

Over email, Edward Henczel, an editor for The Province and faculty member of Langara College’s Department of Journalism, arrived at roughly the same conclusion: “I do believe there is a direct correlation between the number of reporters and the variety of coverage news consumers can access,” he writes. “Simply put, fewer reporters mean more wire service pap on Mel Gibson and the ilk.”

However, he feels the idea that newspapers are dying is premature. “When people talk about the death of papers, they tend to focus on the big dailies. Few realize more than half of British Columbians get news from one of the 100+ community newspapers in the province. While cutbacks at the larger papers is probably leading to more homogeneous coverage, I feel the decline of coverage in communities served by weeklies is negligible, at least in the short term.”

And as far as the Internet’s role in all this? As Jones notes, online journalism should be the domain of institutions like the Vancouver Sun. “That should be their ground.” Although he thinks the larger newspapers are eventually going to make the transition, they haven’t for now; and as far as local news coverage is concerned, “there are a lot of markets in BC for the local news perspective [...] that should have a Kelowna.com in their town.”

According to Ross Howard, faculty member for Langara College’s Department of Journalism, “newspapers in some places in the West are struggling and a few have been killed off by owners’ failed profit expectations, but newspapers will be around for a fairly long time to come, albeit many of them smaller, more specialized and targeted. Yes, there are various biases and failures but the need for someone or something — a reliable news media — to aggregate and mediate (to weigh and assess) the veritable tsunami of information that is available to most of us today thanks to new technologies is never greater.”

And what future does Howard feel the Internet holds? “Newspapers will increasingly migrate to online, but online is just another form of presenting the same info quicker, more accessibly and with greater feedback and diversity of sources.” He continues, “Unfortunately, the Web by itself provides no answer or relief from this ignorance driven by corporate imperatives and near-drowning in the info-tsunami we’re facing, because blogs and Facebook and Twitter etc. provide extraordinary diversity and interactivity but absolutely no reliability. What distinguishes journalism is its commitment to verifying the information it provides — this thing I call reliability.”