People who live in Canada, as in other locales, have seen a sharp paradigm shift in the past 20 years in how their news is delivered.
Many Canadians used to pick up the daily newspaper or turn on the television to watch investigative reporting legends like Eric Malling deliver hard-hitting reports on CBC’s The Fifth Estate, and, later, on CTV’s W5 with Eric Malling.
Peter Jennings is another Canadian who was revered for his reporting skills, later commanding the anchor chair at ABC-TV News in New York. Professionals like Malling and Jennings paved the way for many of today’s anchors and reporting, including fellow Canadians Catherine Herridge and Ashley Banfield.
Today, Malling’s name is often mentioned as the man who virtually defined investigative broadcast journalism in English Canada. He covered news, politics, business, sports, and other topics. He was tenacious, knew the information he needed to tell the story (as well as how to get it) and earned his place as a household name in Canada due to his successful approach and the stories he told.
Occasionally, he made his own headlines as well by asking point blank questions that many others wouldn’t have dared — and by getting his subjects to reveal the information that needed to be broadcast.
Times have changed. Journalism still exists in Canada today, but the landscape is far different than it was back at the end of the 20th century.
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The Internet and broadband access changed everything, causing many traditional newsrooms to pare staff, newspapers to fold and many TV news broadcasts to be available to watch on a device you can hold in your pocket.
Of course, many people, especially younger ones, now prefer to get their news and updates online, whether through apps, social media alerts or the numerous news websites that have largely replaced traditional outlets. Such sites as The Huffington Post and Breitbart News, depending on your political ideology, even custom-tailor their reporting to attract and retain their audiences.
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Many of today’s media outlets are leaner and meaner than their predecessors were. “As traditional newsrooms face cutbacks, buyouts, and layoffs, more and more small news startups are popping up across Canada, vying for the attention of niche audiences and valuable subscriber dollars,” writes Toronto journalist Audrey Carleton.
According to Carleton, sixty news startups have launched in Canada in the last two decades, “two-thirds of which were started after 2010—with 2018 seeing the launch of ten individual media startups, the greatest number of launches of any single year in the last 20––according to new research out of the University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.”
It’s a brave new world for many. When you wanted to watch Malling on television, for example, his reports were what’s now called ‘appointment TV.’ Families gathered around the television in the living room, tuned it in and watched and listened live. Now, news can be accessed around the clock from a variety of reporting sources.
“Traditional media habits such as television and print have fallen significantly over the last five years while online and social media use has remained broadly flat,” writes Colette Brin, journalist and professor at Université Laval, adding that “Smartphone use continues to grow, reaching over half of our national sample.”
So how much growth has occurred in the digital news space? UBC professors Alfred Hemida and Mary-Lynn Young have been collaborating with a number of universities and newsrooms to track the growth of digital media startups across the country.
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They want to learn how digital journalism can impact civic engagement and policy uptake.
“In their research, which is ongoing, the pair have identified patterns and trends among startups, which have the power to determine an outlet’s success in Canada today,” writes Carleton.
No one knows to what extent Eric Malling might have embraced the new media, but one suspects he might have enjoyed the opportunity to provide continual updates as his stories developed, rather than waiting until tomorrow to provide the next installment. Then again, Canadian media has changed before. CBC, for example, didn’t even exist prior to its 1936 establishment by Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s government. In those days, radio and television were still new, while some national film (prior to video) could sometimes be viewed in neighborhood movie houses prior to a feature film or some funny shorts.
Time will tell how people will get their news and investigative journalism in the years ahead. Whether through the written word, moving images, microblogging, or another form of media, stories will still need to be told.