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I didn’t go looking to upset Taylor Swift’s fans when I started penning my annual New Year’s Eve message to readers.
But I fear I might incur the wrath of the Swifties by not following the lead of Time magazine, which named the singer-songwriter as its choice for Person of the Year.
There’s no question the woman redefining the musical era with her Eras Tour had one heck of a year. However, if I’m to use Time’s yardstick of who most shaped our headlines over the past 12 months, my choice goes to faithful readers of the Free Press.
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Without our subscribers, the Free Press would be in danger of being, to use the title of one of Swift’s biggest hits, a blank space. And if you think I’m exaggerating, consider what has happened to journalism just in the past year.
Tracking from April Lindgren, the principal investigator for the Local News Research Project at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism, shows between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 36 local news outlets closed in Canada. Twenty-nine were community newspapers and seven were privately owned radio stations.
Since 2008, 516 local radio, TV, print and online news operations have closed in 345 communities across Canada.
Things aren’t any better south of the border, where the decline has led to the rise of “ghost newspapers” that still technically exist but really don’t cover the communities they purport to serve.
As if things weren’t bad enough, this was also the year that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta blocked Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram while artificial intelligence began infecting the reputation of trusted legacy titles such as Sports Illustrated.
Fortunately, the Free Press has readers like you willing to help pay the bills for a newsroom delivering the information you need and can trust.
As per Time’s criteria, its Person of the Year springs from the Great Man Theory of history, “a belief that individuals have the power to transform society.”
In our post-truth age, one in which news avoidance is on the rise, those willing to invest their dime and time to ensure their community is informed are a transformative force. You are part of a bulwark against the dystopian alternative Kevin D. Williams described so eloquently in a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal: “With the old media gatekeepers gone, right-wing content creators rushed in and filled the world with QAnon kookery on Facebook, conspiracy theories powerful enough to vault the cretinous likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene into Congress, fake news sponsored by Moscow and Beijing and fake-ish news subsidized by Viktor Orban and his happy junta, and whatever kind of poison butterfly Tucker Carlson is going to be when he emerges from the chrysalis of filth he’s built around himself. The prim consensus of 200 Northeastern newspaper editors has been replaced by the sardonic certitude of 100 million underemployed rage-monkeys and ignoramuses on Twitter.”
That’s not a future I want for our city and province, and thanks to you, the Free Press can be a place to find refuge from the underemployed rage monkeys and ignoramuses on Twitter.
As this year drew to a close, the World Health Organization warned of the growing threat of a global epidemic of loneliness. The WHO’s solution was to launch a new Commission on Social Connection.
While reading the Free Press is usually a solitary activity, it’s also one rooted in community. It allows you to draw connections, to better understand what is happening around you, how information can strengthen and empower you.
We don’t normally think of newspapers as part of our social infrastructure, but it’s not too late to start.
In a world of more isolation, more automatization, we need more connective tissue, more newspapers like the Free Press.
As I raise a toast to the new year, I will give thanks to Free Press readers like you who were our newsmakers in 2023. And I know I can count on you to help us build a stronger and more connected Manitoba in 2024.
Happy New Year!
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