Canada's ethnic media to request gov't cash
boost
Andy Blatchford,
The Canadian Press
Date: Sunday Feb.
12, 2012 9:26 AM ET
MONTREAL —
Canada's increasingly influential ethnic-press industry will seek a
financial boost from the upper levels of government to better its business
and journalistic know-how.
While
minority-language publications remain anonymous to most Canadians, their
combined readership is in the millions -- more than the country's largest
daily newspapers.
The ethnic press
also wields clout inside the Prime Minister's Office, where, more than
ever, the industry is viewed as a coveted conduit to the multicultural
vote.
Canada's ethnic
newspapers and magazines -- often one-person operations typed up in the
homes of recent immigrants -- are now hoping to raise their game even
higher.
The man who
represents 540 of the publications says many of these editors scrape by on
tiny budgets and still have a lot to learn about Canada.
But Thomas Saras
has a plan to improve the situation.
His goal is to
ensure publishers learn their journalistic rights and boost their
profitability, and he's banking on help from the PMO as well as the
premiers of Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.
Saras, the
president of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, will
ask for up to $300,000 to help fund a three-day seminar that would hire
university professors to train the people behind the minority-language
press.
He will be armed
with what he calls the sector's first-ever socio-economic report, a
soon-to-be-released document that recommends members receive instruction
in subjects like business and marketing. Another key goal of the training
is to help them avoid legal trouble, such as getting sued for libel.
"This is a
matter of a healthy democracy," said Saras, leader of the
ethnic-press council for 15 years and editor-in-chief of the
Greek-language newspaper Patrides for over four decades.
"We have to
persuade these members of the press to be loyal to the country, to know
what exactly the system is in the country. They are in a profession, in
fact, they don't know."
He's confident
politicians will come through -- particularly the federal Conservatives,
who he says have paid more attention to his sector than past governments.
While reporters in
Ottawa note that Stephen Harper's Parliament Hill news conferences are
exceedingly rare, the prime minister makes himself available for
roundtable interviews with the ethnic media.
The government
understands that ethnic media offer a captive audience because newcomers
who arrive in Canada rely heavily on them if they don't speak English or
French.
Saras argues that
his industry, which he says boasts more than five million readers, needs
more support. He adds that Canadian associations representing journalists
and community newspapers also receive public funding.
"The face of
this country has changed," said Saras, whose council has grown from
125 members in 1985. "You have to hear the concerns and the problems
of the people, and the ethnic press is the one who is in touch daily with
the reality."
He plans to push
for improvements that reach beyond business strategy, after several
publishers ran into trouble because they didn't understand their
journalistic rights, or Canadian law.
In one example, he
recalled how a Bangladeshi-community newspaper in Vancouver declared
bankruptcy a few years ago when it had lost around $100,000 in a lawsuit.
Some 25 association
members also shuttered their doors over the last four years for reasons
Saras says might have been avoided.
"Over the
years, many of them have found themselves in front of a judge for running
an article against someone from the community," he said.
"I know that
some of them proved to be very costly."
While the sector
faces challenges, finding Harper's ear isn't one of them.
Saras says his
members have enjoyed unprecedented access to the prime minister and his
cabinet ministers, particularly over the last year.
They receive
regular government updates, interviews with senior officials and
roundtable meetings with Harper -- exclusively for the ethnic media.
Saras also credits
the Tories for making government subsidies more accessible to
minority-language publications through Canadian Heritage's two-year-old
Canada Periodical Fund.
The Conservative
outreach, he says, is paying off.
"It gives the
impression that even a publication in another language, other than English
or French, has equal status with the rest of them," he said.
"The publisher
and the people around him, they feel much easier, much (like) being home
than being a foreign publication on a foreign land."
The Tories'
ethnic-media courtship started back in 2002 and was led by senior party
staffers like Dimitri Soudas.
The party's goal
was not to pigeonhole ethnic media by constantly discussing immigration
issues. Instead, there would be exchanges on broader subjects, like the
economy and crime.
In the process, the
Tories discovered that many of the consumers of these publications were
small-C conservatives.
"There was a
clear, untapped potential in multicultural media," said a
Conservative source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Very few
people pay attention to them because they don't realize the strength and,
quite frankly, how big the megaphone that they have is."
At first,
Conservatives thought the tactic was a waste of energy, but now they have
bought in, said the source.
The source said
another skeptic of the early Tory solicitations was Angelo Persichilli,
then the editor of the Italian-language newspaper, Corriere Canadese. He
didn't think the outreach would last.
But it lasted long
enough. Several years later, Persichilli was hired to replace Soudas as
the prime minister's director of communications, further strengthening the
PMO's link to multicultural media.
Saras said
Persichilli, a former member of his organization who joined the PMO last
summer, has very good relationships with members of the ethnic press.
But he insists the
connection, and added attention, won't stop minority-language newspapers
from holding the Conservative government accountable.
Saras says the
Tories are already well aware of it, too.
"They know
you're going to criticize them and they try to avoid you, exactly the same
way they do with your guys (in the mainstream media)."
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20120212/canada-ethnic
-media-financial-boost-120212/#ixzz1mBvoMLCN
