The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Some Podcast News

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

Some thoughts about the state of local newspapers and why we should all be concerned about losing them.And and important advisory about The Bridge Daily!

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily where thursday of week 17 edging closer towards the end of the week. And I got a little announcement about the end of the week later in this podcast. So stay tuned for that. But first of all, let me ask you a question. How many of you actually pick up a newspaper not every day but let's say once a week how many of actually pick up a newspaper physically pick one up and read your newspaper in the day let me ask the same question a different way. How many of you would do that if you could do that? Pick up a newspaper and read it.

As opposed to reading the newspaper online. Okay? Actually pick it up. Read it. Here's why I ask that question. It's easy in big cities. There are still papers that you can get. You can get the Globe and Mail in many places.

You can get the Toronto Star in many places. You can get the National Post in many places. But if you live in a smaller community, it's getting harder and harder to find local newspapers. Just so many have closed down because of the state of the newspaper business. And the issue is, what are we missing because of that?

Now, I know this is not a new topic. We've tossed it around before on this podcast, and it's been around, obviously, for the last at least 10 years. As a concern about journalism, as a concern about local journalism, and if there's anything we've learned through this whole COVID-19 story, it's the importance of local media. Trying to understand the stories that relates to you in your town, in your community, in your part of the province, in your part of the country.

Sometimes it's the local news that gives you what you need to know. Not about the big picture, but about the picture about your area. Your town. your street, how things are playing out for you and your neighbors. Now, you can get that on radio, you can get it on local radio, you can get it on local television, but it used to be that local newspapers, that was the way you found out what was going on in your town, in your neighborhood. And we're missing that.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because there was a terrific piece last weekend, I just got around to reading it today, in the Washington Post magazine, about the importance of local newspapers and the experience that we're witnessing with the decline of the hometown newspaper. You know, when we've witnessed it, you know, we we've witnessed it, you know,

we see what happens. Funding dries up. Local reporters with institutional knowledge, in other words, they understand their town. They have that knowledge and expertise, and they get laid off. And readers stop reading even the little local news they can still get. Because it no longer provides the kind of insight that they want.

Now, it's interesting because this trend is being exacerbated by the pandemic and the financial crisis associated with it, just at the moment when readers need local news more than ever. So anyway, Margaret Sullivan, who is a really good writer, great journalist, has been around for a while, spends a lot of time looking at the media in all of its various platforms. So she writes this piece in the Washington Post magazine, and it's a lengthy piece, and if you can figure out a way to get it online, please do. Because it's important.

Now, Margaret writes for the Washington Post now, but she started, she spent a long time working for the Buffalo News. You know, in upstate New York. And a lot of her article is about that experience and the importance of it for her town, for her as a journalist, and watching the troubles that it went through as things started to go into the difficult position that so many local newspapers find themselves in now. So let me just read a couple of, well, a couple of, I don't know, paragraphs. Because I think it's really important.

And really interesting. And there's so many people, I think, that will identify with this. So here we go. Worthy local reporting requires time and expertise, talent, and institutional knowledge. We had less of those every month at the Buffalo News, and the readers knew it. Perhaps paradoxically, I was immensely proud of the work we did and the overall quality of the paper. I felt that way until my last day on the job, which was in August

of 2012, so eight years ago, and I remain proud to be associated with the paper, which has continued to do vital work. The day I left the Buffalo News, I sat on the bare desk in my cleared-out office, and staff photographer Harry Skull came in to shoot a final portrait before we walked over to my farewell party on the fantail of the USS Little Rock docked in Buffalo Harbor. It was 32 years after I'd walked through the door as an ambitious summer intern, and everything, everything had changed. The same has happened across the larger landscape of local news, and the situation is quickly and constantly deteriorating. Huge media chains are merging. More newspapers are going out of business. Digital sites are being abruptly axed. Journalists continue to be laid

off. When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, the immediate economic impact on news organizations could be felt worldwide. Advertising has almost disappeared. In the United States and elsewhere, new rounds of layoffs or pay cuts have devastated the very local newsrooms that are making themselves more vital than ever to their readers by covering the public health emergency. It's happening all across North America, right? Not just in the U.S., Canada too. But even before this disaster happened, the harsh consequences have been playing out in communities. Meetings of public officials are taking place without coverage.

You talk to any mayor of a small town across this country. Do it right here in Stratford. Talk to the mayor. Say, be honest. What's the impact of the laying off of reporters, the reduction in the amount of space in the local newspaper for coverage of events? What's the actual impact in town?

Now, some politicians will say it's great. You know, we're able to do our thing without reporters hovering around. But not responsible local politicians. They're saying the whole quality of the debate in our town has gone downhill as a result of no coverage. And that's bad. That's bad for the town.

It's bad for democracy. Agency budgets and municipal contracts, and going back to the article here, are going forward without scrutiny. Apparently only a small percentage of the public sees the need to open its wallets for local newspapers or other local news sources. And as newspapers decline

in staff and quality, they see even less reason to do so. Overcoming this vicious cycle is a steep climb, and we have very little time to crest the hill. All right, that's just a segment from what's a really good piece by Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post just this past weekend. You can access it online. Anyway, it's depressing. And, you know, it's a difficult situation. And the irony is it's all happening right at the time that it's so important that you have access to local news.

A couple of other points to pick up on here. And, well, let me start it this way. I was talking to somebody who's very connected to the used car business just the other day, and I was saying, well, how are things? Well, things are tough. I said, what are you doing with your inventory? And the answer was, we're trying to get it down to as little as possible. We're trying to move out as much as we can and keep the lot empty. And I said, well, what good is that? And he said, because there's a lot of stuff coming. I said, okay, explain to me this. And the answer was basically, you know where a lot of used cars come from.

They come from the car rental agencies who will constantly update their cars, right? Every year they have new cars at whatever agency you use, like Davis or Hertz, or Hertz is in trouble. Anyway, there's lots of them, Enterprise, or whatever. And they all get new cars every year, and their orders are already in for the new cars. Here's the problem. The cars they've had for the past year, not even a year since they got the new ones for the latest new cars, for the last four or five months, there's basically been no car rentals.

People aren't renting cars. They don't need to rent cars because they're not traveling anywhere, and there are no business people traveling who rent cars. So they've just been sitting there on the lot, not picking up mileage. And used car dealers are going, this is great. We're going to get really low mileage cars. And we'll put them on our lots, and people are starting to buy again.

So that's a little, you know, I don't know how reflective that is of the overall used car market, but I found that an interesting little anecdote. Here's the bigger, wider story. Financial Times this week has a piece on the ceo of uh daimler ola kalanius he's falling he's feeling cautiously optimistic about a recovery a major recovery in the global auto market he revealed at the annual meeting of Daimler, or Daimler, you pick the way you want to say it. He revealed at the annual meeting that the truck division dropped 38% in the first six months of 2020.

They've also had their best ever second quarter in China as they come out of the crisis in that market. So I think he's thinking ahead, assuming that what's happened in China is going to happen in North America as well, as they start to ease their way out, although I wonder how much of that's happening. He also reasserted, and this is interesting, their intention to meet the European Union's mandated CO2 targets through their move to electronic vehicles. And speaking of EVs, as they call them, this chart, which you can't see but I can, by Statista,

shows the global stock of electric cars per region over the last 10 years. And you see just how rapidly they're growing. In 2019, last year, the last year, obviously, that they've got the numbers, over 7 million electronic vehicles sold. You know, they didn't even get to a million until 2015, and it's just been a steady climb since.

And guess where most of them are selling? China. That's where most of the electronic vehicles are selling, in China. As you watch a lot of different companies, while Tesla is having huge success, and you just have to look at their stock prices, which has gone up, like, I don't know, a lot in the last four months. But other companies are moving rapidly into the electronic field.

Daimler's one of them. All the big luxury car makers are saying they're going to have real competitors to Tesla. They've already started in some cases, but they are rapidly moving in that direction. So China, almost 3.5 million electric cars sold last year. Europe, just under 2 million. United States, 1 $2 million. United States, $1.5 million. Rest of the world,

not much more than $1.5 million. But China, isn't that interesting? China is the big electronic vehicle mover right now. Okay, here's my little airline bit for today. New York Times is reporting that United Airlines is warning it could furlough nearly 40% of its global workforce if travel remains weak and workers didn't accept reductions in hours or early retirement packages. You see that's happening in a lot of different industries, but the airline industry obviously has had a huge crash in the need for it over the last four months,

and as a result, lots of people have lost their jobs. And clearly, some of those losses are going to be permanent. Workers are going to find out at United Airlines if they're being furloughed in August, and most will be eligible to return to work when and if travel demands increase. Some indication they're starting to make moves. I mean, Air Canada put out a whole bunch of sales stuff today

for inside Canada and to Europe, starting to make moves. I mean, Air Canada put out a whole bunch of sales stuff today for inside Canada and to Europe as the EU has welcomed Canadians to come across now on their holidays this summer. So Air Canada is trying to make fares

attractive for Canadians who may want to do that. I think most Canadians are saying, you know what, not this summer. This summer, if we're going to travel, we're going to travel in Canada. And good for Canadians in saying that. We got a big country. There's lots to see, and if you can pull it off safely, all the better.

This is a time to take advantage of travel within Canada. All right, I said I've got an announcement to make. Well, two, actually. Tomorrow's Friday, end of the week, the Super Weekend Special. Number 17. I've actually got a fair number of letters from you already and will encourage anybody

who wants to write to write in with more thoughts tonight or early tomorrow. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. You can write about anything

that you've heard on this podcast or that you think is important for you to say. Get it in now, and you might get on the podcast tomorrow as I look at some of your questions and comments and thoughts. On the situation we all find ourselves in, in this week 17 since we went daily after COVID-19 struck. All right, here's the announcement I'm going to make. It's not too big an announcement, but I wanted to share it with you. Yesterday, as many of you know, if you listened to yesterday's podcast, I basically took the day off and played golf with my friend Ron McLean

and a couple of other guys, and we had a great time. But I also decided, you know what, I'm going to take a week off. And that week is going to be next week. Going to do a little fishing. going up to our log cabin. And because it's, I mean, there is kind of Internet service there, but it's dicey, and I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out how to make the podcast work from there. I'll certainly do that if something huge happens and needs to be talked about, at least I think it might need to be talked about.

I'll take my little portable podcast unit along with me. But the plan is nothing next week. Taken week 18 off. We'll enjoy it. You can be sure. A little fishing, maybe a little a lot of

swimming. And just some relaxing. It's been a run for all of us. And it'll be a nice break. So that's the plan for next week. I will give the final confirmation on that at the end of the podcast tomorrow. But the plan then would be obviously to be

back the following Monday. Whatever that date is. We would be at that point approaching the end of July. So that's my plan. That's my big announcement. Bit of a break coming.

Hope you're getting a break. Hope you're able to get away somewhere. Take some time. We can't pretend there's nothing happening out there. Because there is. But whatever we do, wherever we go, the basic rules still apply. Physical distancing. Wash your hands.

Wear a mask. Right? We can all do that. That's not too much to ask. And it's for everyone's good that we do it. All right. That's it for today. That's it for the Thursday Bridge Daily. But you know,

while I thank you for listening, I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'll be back again this time tomorrow.