The Toronto Star building is shown in Toronto, Wednesday, June 8, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima
TORONTO – The publisher of the Toronto Star is calling on Canadian companies to dedicate at least 20 per cent of their advertising budgets to local media.
Jordan Bitove says convincing local companies to dedicate their ad spending within Canada is crucial because tech giants who link to articles published by his papers and others are “basically stealing the great work that our team does.”
Bitove says tech companies make massive profits when sharing news stories, while media organizations have had to lay off staff and close papers to cope with shrinking subscriber and advertising revenues.
Torstar CEO Bitove has heard that “one of Canada’s leading institutions” spent $50 million on ads last year, but his papers saw less than one per cent of that total.
Along with money from Canadian companies, he’d like to see the federal government increase its spending on advertising in Canadian media, saying Torstar papers received 0.27 per cent of a recent $140 million budget.
Torstar owns six regional daily newspapers in Ontario, including The Hamilton Spectator and Waterloo Region Record, and 70 community newspapers in the country.
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Torstar holds an investment in The Canadian Press as part of a joint agreement with subsidiaries of the Globe and Mail and Montreal’s La Presse.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 30, 2023.
