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    This past week, the Manitoba Legislature Committee Sup­porting Local Journalism met in Brandon. Several media people and journalists made presentations at Brandon and I was privileged to be one of the presenters.

    I opened my remarks by saying, “Governments are starting to real­ize something that rural people and especially newspaper publishers knew a long time ago. Many areas in rural Manitoba are shrinking in population. Some are holding their own and a few communities are growing.

    Many towns that had local news­papers don’t have one any more. There are only about 13 community news­papers left in southwestern Manitoba, less than 10 years ago, there were 20.

    News desert is a relatively new term but it is becoming a reality in south­western Manitoba.”

    There are two basic reasons news­papers have disappeared or are strug­gling

    First, the kinds of corporate owner­ship that came in about 15 years ago turned out very badly for local com­munity newspapers. The Corporations have admitted to me that they went about it all wrong but it’s too late for the papers that they killed off. Of the nine South-western Manitoba papers that were corporately owned, only two survived and that’s in part because we bought them both. That is The Nee­pawa Press, which started in1896, and the Virden Empire Advance, which started in 1885.

    Second, about 10 years ago, large advertisers such as car companies along with provincial and federal governments decided to take a lot of their print advertising dollars and send them to California through outlets like Facebook instead of local media.

      Those two moves, the corporate takeovers and the out of country ad buying, changed the viability of Mani­toba community newspapers more than anything else in my opinion.

    There have been some efforts by gov­ernment to help the newspaper industry such as Canadian Heritage grants and the Local Journalism Initiative. These have been welcome but there is a better solution that governments can imple­ment. It’s called BUY ADS!

    Grants and subsidies are okay but independent newspaper people don’t want grants and subsidies, they want ads. A newspaper needs about 40 per cent ad content to survive. Less ads means less news, less news means a weaker newspaper.

     Governments should want to buy ads too. They have endless numbers of press releases but without ads, there’s no way newspapers can afford the ink, the paper, labour and transportation to get the papers out every week and to the readers that can carry the releases. I have been very blunt with government and organizations, I don’t want your press releases and rarely use them. If our papers are worth having press releases, and if they think our readers will read them, why isn’t it important to have their ads in the paper?

    Governments have a special obliga­tion to buy ads. They are obliged to let the taxpayers know what on earth they are doing. Governments have a long history of being talkers and bureaucrats but think about it, how are we supposed to know what you are doing without the voters being told, and preferably in writing. The voters deserve to know what our governments are doing and government should be proud to tell us about it.

    But why local newspapers? It’s because we are reliable and account­able. You can send your ad dollars to Facebook and the internet but where is the accountability and reliability of those outlets?

    Local newspapers are accountable and reliable and there’s two reasons why we are.

    One, we love our communities and would never do anything to harm them.

    Two, if we put something in our papers that isn’t truthful, we will hear about it by coffee time the next morning, if not sooner.

    Because we are local, because we are reliable and accountable, we have earned our place in our province and communities, so just buy ads locally. Both levels of government are promot­ing a Buy Canadian, buy local theme and we in the newspaper industry totally agree.

    Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the newspaper staff.