From Friday, Canadians will be told that newspapers are worth it, in a CAD $10 million awareness and marketing campaign.
The Canadian Newspaper Association is behind the three-month campaign to remind the public of the role of newspapers as champions of the public interest. The ads are intended to counteract the impression that the Internet and electronic media are pushing print out of fashion.
The Canadian newspaper industry argues that print is holding its own in an increasingly fragmented media environment in Canada. It cites recently released NADbank readership data showing that 50% of Canadian adults read a daily newspaper on an average weekday.
The problem is that running an ad campaign is not going to help newspapers change and adapt to a digital age. Saying newspapers are great is unlikely to persuade a web generation to go out and pay for a print edition.
The $10m could have gone instead into a fund to promote innovation at newspapers, along the lines of the Knight News Challenge in the US. The Canadian media and Canadians themselves would benefit from such an initiative that could produce real results.
The Canadian Newspaper Association should be focusing on things like the Newspaper Next seminar it is holding in Vancouver on October 5.
PDF