Journalism is worth paying for

That may seem like a strange headline in a newspaper you get for free, from a publishing house that also provides a local magazine for free. But in another potentially strange-sounding assertion, it’s never been more important for you to pay for solid journalism, in addition to enjoying your local Kawartha Lakes Weekly and The Lindsay Advocate.

Many readers will remember that not that long ago, our area

had the weekly Bobcaygeon Independent and Fenelon Falls Gazette as well as Lindsay This Week. We also had the The Post in Lindsay, which published daily or bi-weekly, depending on the era. Like their print counterparts, area radio and TV stations’ newsrooms had multiple reporters instead of today’s single-person operations. There were several journalists at municipal council and school board meetings.

It was common in many households to also subscribe to the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Peterborough Examiner or the Toronto Sun, and later, the National Post. If you didn’tsubscribe, you perhaps picked up a paper off the tall stacks at any convenience store.

Today, the idea of a paid subscription for a national or regional news publication seems to many people like a quaint artifact of the past. After all, just look at the oceans of chat groups, videos and AI summaries at your thumb tips!

What we forget is that when we seek provincial, national and international news, paid journalistic publications, whether print or digital, have value that anonymous online sources don’t. In a world of misinformation and “my-opinion-is-the-same-as-your- facts,” you can rely on a national newspaper. That’s not the same as agreeing with it, of course. These outlets have a code of ethics and journalistic standards. They confirm sources rather than relying on hearsay, and when they make mistakes, they publish corrections. To have all those checks in place, you need, well, cheques.

It also takes money to support investigative journalism, which requires a lot of time to do properly. Without online news source The Narwhal, we might never have learned the full extent of the Ford government’s appalling plans for the Green Belt. Without the Star’s dogged investigations, we wouldn’t have known about the shocking treatment of prisoners at Maplehurst correctional facility or the provincial government’s plans to buy a private jet. Without the Globe and Mail, the ArriveCan scandal and the embarrassing lack of oversight on programs intended to employ Indigenous contractors wouldn’t have come to light.

There are hundreds more examples of the value of thoroughly researched, credible reporting to our province and our country — indeed, to democracy itself. But all over Canada, high-quality publications are struggling and disappearing as people shrug off the importance of standards and the reality that journalism on a large-scale costs money.

Of course, we want you to continue reading our local publications and we appreciate those who have supported our efforts with a financial contribution. But we also hope that if you can afford it, you’ll supplement your news diet with a paid subscription to a publication you trust.