Lisa Hrabluk

Corb Lund and Joel Plaskett are not journalists.

I think we need to get that out on the table because sometimes it feels like our national media companies think they can make up for their lack of news coverage beyond the Montreal-Windsor corridor by featuring alt-country musicians in their programs.

Try as they might, I don’t think putting “I Wanna Be in the Calvary” in regular rotation will enhance our understanding of contemporary Prairie culture or politics.

Its the same old story set to a slightly different tune. Those big companies – CBC, CTV, Global and its print arm CanWest – have all recently argued that they have to scale back their operations because of economic pressures. In other words, centralize. Slough off all those expensive-to-operate regional stations, staff ‘em with a minimal number of journalists and direct the news out of Toronto and to a lesser extent, Ottawa.

They say they’ve made these tough choices – the Orwellian term for massive staff layoffs – because they are losing ad revenue because (a) major advertisers, such as car companies, have got their own cash-flow problems and (b) advertisers with money are following audiences online.

The clearest evidence of this switch can be found in corporate job postings. There’s a bunch of new job titles out there – content developer, content strategist, social media marketer – that suggests the money isn’t coming back to traditional media companies until they change the way they produce and deliver content.

Content, that’s a fancy word for news.

People want more content, or more specifically they want a wider selection of content that they can tailor to their own interests.

The response of Canadian media companies? Scale back and employ journalists in small packs in big cities and then send them all out to cover the same story with a bunch of different bylines.

The media equivalent of spraypainting the side of a rock with “I was here.”

I quite literally see it every day.

I use Twitter as my newsfeed and this week the Globe, the National Post and CBC have all posted updates on the Oliphant inquiry and Brian Mulroney’s testimony within minutes of each other.

Its even more pathetic when it comes to entertainment news because the blogs beat large media organizations every time – and usually by hours, not minutes.

I get that media organizations aren’t making as much money as they used to and so naturally they have to reduce operations.

I know traditional newsroom are going to get smaller, in fact I think some of them do need to shrink.

But in the rush to reduce costs, media organizations have forgotten one of the oldest guidelines of our craft: Show don’t tell.

The best stories are told by those who were there to witness it. Telephone (or email) journalism will never equal in quality or influence the stories told by those on the ground.

At the end of this month CBC brass will begin to lay off journalists across the country. Here in Saint John, NB, the number of journalists is being cut in half, taking the station down to less than 10 people. Its the same story in Moncton, Sydney, Sudbury and a bunch of other medium and small markets.

Meanwhile, CBC has announced plans to expand its online presence and CBC.ca was spared in the layoffs.

That’s a smart move – I get all of my CBC content online now.

What I don’t understand is why CBC brass aren’t tapping into the knowledge and skill set of its existing journalists to make that conversion.

The websites for the CBC national shows are great – I love Radio 2 and 3 in particular and the Radio 1 podcasts. The same can’t be said for the regional stations, which are little more than news aggregate sites that list the latest headlines.

Its pathetic that in 2010 I can’t get a podcast of any of the shows produced in New Brunswick.

CBC’s regional cuts will limit the amount of news being produced locally. The journalists who will remain won’t have the time to explore leads and develop interesting stories. Local news is going to become even more boring.

News organizations shouldn’t be centralizing their staff; they should be dispersing staff, employing small, well-run groups across this country and telling them to go out and find original stories that no one is telling.

CBC, CTV and Global have all made cuts to local coverage, actions that show us what stories they think are worth telling.

It’ll be up to you to decide if you still want to listen.