Recently there has been a lot of public discussion regarding the December 12th issue of the Comox Valley Record. Tuesday’s paper featured, what is known in the industry as, a ‘false front’. It’s a paid advertising position that is featured on the first and last page of the paper.
“While we have sold many of these advertisement spots in the past, they have always had identifying markers, making it easily recognizable to the reader as an advertisement, and not editorially-produced journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of the December 12 3L Development advertisement, certain steps were inadvertently missed.” – Keith Currie, Publisher, Comox Valley Record
The Record has since apologized to its readers for the oversight. However, this highlights the need for local news that is independent from the overruling dollar of advertising.
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A charitable interpretation is that the Comox Valley Record just made a mistake by not making it very clear that their first page was a “false front”. A more cynical person might think that they knew full well what they were doing and just hoped it would not be noticed or remarked upon. Even if caught, there would be no penalty. Either way, most paper-based publications belonging to Black Press are often remarkably “thin” on local content. They feel more like advertising flyers heavy with ads for real estate, car dealerships and sales events by the usual chain stores. There is very little analysis and investigative reporting done locally and a lot of the content is made up of generic items generated elsewhere by Canadian Press and similar outlets. And they are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. When will we see articles produced by their local reporter(s) critical of their major advertisers? Not very often, I think.
So one would think there would be a perfect niche for Tide Change to become one of the main investigative providers of local news that impact the residents of the Comox Valley. Unfortunately, far too many readers are not too keen to pay for good quality reporting. We badly need a full time reporter systematically covering/investigating municipal politics, environmental issues, and the performance of our local MPs and MLAs.
We have some excellent writers in Tide Change, but many of them contribute content for free. That is fine, but they can’t be expected to invest the time in the kind of investigative research that would rapidly become a full time job.
Perhaps we need a Tide Change campaign to get readers to contribute monthly fees towards the salary of a full time person. This individual would become “our” journalist. One way or another, at the end of the day we will end up getting the news we deserve.
If we don’t get on board with $$ ,I fear even tidechange will not survive. The community service TC provides now to the Comox valley and the many socially active groups and people here surly needs $$ to survive. I see the publisher has given us an easy way to support this community oriented resource at the top of the page.