iPublish or perish: challenges facing the Québec press in the digital age

Major changes in the media world

Once more in their history, newspapers are facing the challenge of new technologies threatening their very existence. They have had to adapt previously to radio broadcasting and television networks. More recently, the newspaper press has been threatened by the development of the commuter free press. Now, newspapers must find a way to survive the Internet’s competition in the digital era.

The challenge is technological and economic, but there is more involved. Behind these technological innovations and along with the financial problems lie deep cultural and political transformations. Reading habits and the way people obtain information are changing. Most Twitter addicts are not prone to reading long and complex articles. This is a tendency that was initiated with the success of the daily tabloids, reinforced by radio and television newscasts and, more recently, with free newspapers distributed on mass public transportation sites like the subway. The aim of this kind of media seems to be always to find shorter and faster ways of communication.

With the Internet, people do not have to wait for the morning paper to be informed, nor even the next hour for the radio or television headlines. They can get a summary of the latest news on a lot of websites, on their smartphone, their tablet or their laptop. If they want more, they can find it through a quick search on a browser. Countless blogs and wikis have opened access to ever-increasing sources of information. Do citizens wish to participate in a debate on a given question? They can do it through the social media that have considerably enlarged the space of opinion circulation.

All these cultural changes have an impact on the news industry and on political life as well. What is the future of newspapers in the digital era? Do they have a role to play or are they going to disappear, becoming an emblem of the past, an old way to make and circulate the news in ancient times? To be sure, journalism and newspapers are changing quickly and deeply (Goyette-Côté et al., 2012).

The press ecology of Québec

The issue is not limited to small nations, as noted. But it has a particular meaning in small countries and provinces, as we shall see in the case of Québec. To understand this process, one needs to first have a broad overview of Québec’s daily newspaper market.

If we set aside Montréal and Québec, to whose cases we shall return shortly, there are six regional daily newspapers in the wider province, located in medium-sized cities. One publishes in English: The Record (Sherbrooke, population: 161,253) and five publish in French: Le Droit (Gatineau, population: 266,535; Ottawa, population: 900,000), Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières, population: 131,436), Le Quotidien (Saguenay, population: 143,769), La Tribune (Sherbrooke, population:161,253) and La Voix de l’est (Granby, population: 64,150) (according to data provided by the Institut de la Statistique du Québec, n.d.). Their main mission is reporting local news and covering local and regional events. None could qualify as a national newspaper.

Québec City (population: 521,993) and Montréal (population: 1,735,450) are the most populated cities. The first is the political capital of the province and the second its economic metropolis. They have a competitive relationship, much like Edinburgh and Glasgow do in Scotland.

Montréal is the largest market and the most important media centre in the province. There are four daily newspapers, one in English (The Gazette) and three in French (La Presse, Le Devoir and Le Journal de Montréal). To complete the picture, one should add three free commuter dailies, one in English (Hour) and two in French (Journal Métro and 24H Montréal). In Québec City, there are two daily newspapers, Le Soleil and Le Journal de Québec.

Most importantly, one must note that ownership concentration has reached a very high level in the Québec media industry. Except for Le Devoir, all French-language newspapers belong to one of the two media consortia: GESCA or Quebecor Media. Is this the price that needs to be paid in a small market without public subsidies to protect and stimulate the diversity of information?

GESCA, which belongs to the conglomerate Power Corporation of Canada, which is mainly active in the insurance business and controlled by the Desmarais family, publishes seven francophone dailies: La Presse (Montréal), Le Soleil (Québec), Le Droit (Gatineau–Ottawa), La Tribune (Sherbrooke), Le Quotidien (Saguenay), Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières) and La Voix de l’est (Granby).

For its part, Quebecor Media publishes two of the most popular newspapers in the province: Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec. Quebecor Media also controls most of the weekly and monthly magazines (more than 165 titles). Furthermore, it owns the most popular television network (TVA) and the most extensive cable network (Videotron).

The numbers can fluctuate from one year to another, but from the statistics produced regularly by two Canadian measurement companies, one can draw this rough but quite accurate picture of the francophone market: the dailies of the GESCA group take a little less than 40% of the market share, those owned by Quebecor Media around 50% and Le Devoir around 2%. The remainder goes to one of the two free commuter dailies, Metro, owned by the Transcontinental group. It means that two groups control fully 90% of the market.

This high level of ownership concentration is a recurring concern and has been the object of various public inquiries over the last five decades, the three most important ones being the Davey Senate Special Committee (1970), the Kent Royal Commission (1981) and the Comité Saint-Jean (2003). Their recommendations, to monitor the problem and to protect the diversity of information sources, have never been followed up by political action.

Three different strategies to face the new challenges

The press business model, following Renaudot’s innovation in the 19th century, is based on a combination of revenues from selling copy and from advertising. This classical pattern has been shaken up by the development of new sources of information, available for free, and new channels offering targeted publicity. In Québec, the two media groups which own most newspapers and the one editor of the independent Le Devoir have adopted different strategies to cope with these new challenges.

Le Devoir’s strategy: remaining an independent ‘newspaper of record’

The independent newspaper Le Devoir circulates only 32,000 printed copies, but is in fact the only Québec newspaper with a ‘national’ distribution. It is available all over the territory and is read by the most educated people, interested in the original content produced by its journalists, by news agencies and also by many experts who write commentaries on different subjects making the news. It is popularly identified as an intellectual newspaper. Like a few other newspapers around the world, Le Devoir relies on the uniqueness of its content.

Like the French newspaper Le Monde, Le Devoir has decided to wager on this strength and has taken the opportunities offered by the new technologies to reinforce it. The online version is a virtual copy of the paper one, with more space dedicated to readers’ letters. Textual content comes first and there are few pictures. The independence of the paper is proudly displayed and valued by its readers. Relying on its subscribers’ loyalty, Le Devoir offers its content both on paper and on the web, given the payment of subscription fees (it pursues a paywall strategy). A few articles are offered for free, mainly to attract new readers.

Until recently, it has been a winning strategy. Subscriptions have been going up for the last decade and the budget has been balanced. As Le Devoir does not intend to reach an ever-increasing audience but rather to remain a ‘newspaper of record’, its presence on the web appears to be in line with its global strategy. However, as we shall see in a minute, GESCA’s strategy could attract some readers of Le Devoir and severely hurt its budget. Rumours are already circulating about possible lay-offs and a probable deficit.

Quebecor Media’s strategy: building media convergence

Quebecor Media is an integrated group which owns Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec. It also controls the most popular television network in Québec, le Groupe TVA, and the first cable operator, Videotron. The conglomerate is active in both French and English Canada. In fact, with the acquisition of Osprey Media in 2007, Sun Media Corporation, a subsidiary of Quebecor Media, has become the largest newspaper publisher in Canada ¹ . Overall, an observer can easily come to the conclusion that Quebecor pursues a convergence strategy and a rather aggressive one.

Sun Media Corporation runs 36 paid-circulation daily newspapers and six free dailies, each one having its own dedicated website. Furthermore, Sun Media owns 200 community newspapers, shopping guides and other specialised publications. It is ‘an integrated enterprise offering e-commerce, information and communication services that operates a network of Internet portals that attracts over 10.5 million unique visitors per month in Canada, including 5.7 million in Québec’ (http://www.sunmedia.ca/SunMedia/).

Quebecor has had very long and tough conflicts with its trades unions over the last decade and has fired many journalists. It has created its own news agency, QMI, which serves all its papers, members of Sun Media Corporation and Osprey Media, as well as those published in French. A lot of content is re-purposed, and ‘seeking synergy’ is understood as a cross-media promotional practice.

The portal Canoe.ca, which provides news, entertainment and services, is the flagship of Quebecor Media activities on the web. Le Journal de Montréal, Le Journal de Québec and other Sun newspapers also have their own website with a mix of free access content and articles restricted to subscribers, following the paywall model (http://www.journaldemontreal.com/ and http://www.journaldequebec.com/).

There are some ads on the websites, but far from the amount carried in the paper edition. Clearly, Quebecor does not imagine the digital version as a substitute for the paper one. The web is part of its convergence strategy, but not a substitute for the newspapers. This is probably due to the fact that Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec are tabloids aiming to reach popular audiences either less equipped with digital devices or using them for other purposes than seeking information. NADbank data on newspaper readership show that Le Journal de Montréal has two and a half less digital subscribers to its daily edition on the web than its competitor La Presse (Fagstein, 2014).

Quebecor’s most recent financial statement (13 August 2013) illustrates the economic challenge posed by the web to the daily press: the company registered a drop in advertising revenues of C$25.6 m, representing 10% of the total revenues of the information media sector. Even the technology and interactive communication division was down by C$3.6 m (a fall of 9.1%).

La Presse’s strategy: shifting to a free digital newspaper

Until recently, the GESCA group duplicated its content in two formats: the paper one and the digital one – the latter merely offering part of the paper’s content on a rather traditional website (http://www.lapresse.ca).

Starting in April 2013, GESCA is offering, for free, a new version of La Presse for the iPad, La Presse+ (http://plus.lapresse.ca/). It is a completely new format widely celebrated by critics as a big success (it has won many competitive prizes). The editorial team remains the same as for the paper edition. The content is organised under the same sections – Arts, Business, Sports and so on – but it is presented in a dynamic way using all the user-friendly opportunities provided by the iPad. The platform is interactive and gives access to many more photos plus videos, links to Wikipedia, live blogs, chats and breaking news, as well as in-depth journalism. The ads are integrated efficiently and are said to satisfy the advertisers. After one year, La Presse+ has attracted 455,000 registered readers (Localytics, April 2014) receiving its daily edition through Apple Store:

A total of about 1.7 million people currently consult the print edition, La Presse’s website and its mobile platform. Some 600,000 of that number have iPads, while 43 per cent of the rest expect to buy one within 12 months. (Marowits, 2013: 1)

The number of subscribers to La Presse+ will probably go up as it has become available on the Android platform in April 2014 (Crevier, 2014).

For the moment, La Presse readers have the choice between the paper format, for which they must pay, and the free digital one. The CEO has announced that the aim is to give up the print edition in the near future. He has invested C$40 m in the venture. He expects to save enough money from printing and distribution costs to offset the loss of subscriptions. Future expansion is strongly related to the take-up of tablets.

GESCA’s strategy is based on the conviction that the younger generation is used to finding information for free on the web and is no longer willing to pay for news. It is too soon to know whether La Presse+ will be a lasting success, but its beginnings are quite encouraging. Its many subscribers spend an average of 44 minutes reading it on working days, 73 minutes on Saturdays and 50 minutes on Sundays (Localytics, April 2014). The biggest challenge now is to attract and keep advertising revenues. After one year, these represent 30% of La Presse’s total advertising revenues. It is a good start, taking into account that the costs of production are higher than they usually are for advertising on the web (Lecomte, 2013). But they must reach a level equal to that before the development of digital networks. If they prove to be disappointing, will La Presse move towards paid digital subscription as did the other Canadian press leaders, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the National? If La Presse goes that way, will the newspaper be able to keep all its readers? Some of them will probably be upset by the move and will withdraw. Will a significant proportion be sufficiently compelled to accept paying a subscription fee?

La Presse has taken a big risk. It could lead to a dead end. It could also open new horizons for journalism in the digital age (Aggarwal, 2013). However, only large corporations like GESCA, with deep pockets, can afford the necessary resources to undertake such a venture. If it turns out to be a success, what will be the impact of this offer on the remaining independent newspapers? Le Devoir is a small player which cannot survive without subscription revenues. Might many of its readers, attracted by a quality product like La Presse+, become reluctant to pay their subscription fee?

Final observations

From the moment of their inception as media, both radio and television were new competitors to newspaper owners. The broadcasting of radio and television newscasts offered the public new alternatives to obtain information and compelled newspaper publishers to adapt their product to a new environment. The digital networks are pushing this process somewhat further, challenging the very definition of a newspaper. They have introduced new competition, but they also offer newspaper publishers the opportunity to transform their product into a digital one, even discontinuing the paper edition, as planned by La Presse+. This product is no longer, literally speaking, a ‘newspaper’, but it still keeps many of its main characteristics: it remains a news vehicle produced following professional standards by a commercial corporation and distributed to a large public. ‘Our profound understanding is that the tablet will become its own medium, stronger than television, stronger than newspapers, stronger than magazines. Because it’s interactive, it’s mobile, it has exceptional reproduction, it has sound, video’ (Crevier, quoted by Fagstein, 2013: 1). For the editor of La Presse, Guy Crevier, as we can see from this observation, the alternative is to iPublish or perish.

As noted, the press is facing major changes in all parts of the world, but these changes have a particular meaning for small nations in at least three aspects. First, every technological innovation challenging the old media and intensifying competition leads rather quickly to more ownership concentration. The weaker players who cannot maintain profitability have no other choice than to shut down, to sell or to merge. The final outcome will be fewer players in the marketplace, the remaining ones being bigger and more powerful. This can be especially threatening for democracy in tiny markets and small nations because there are so few sources of media power.

One can counter this argument by saying that the new technologies open up new opportunities and create new sources of information and new spaces for debate. That is true. But it is also fair to ask who operates and controls these new technologies. In Québec, the answer is big conglomerates active in the media sector, namely, Quebecor and Bell Canada.

Second, it seems that the corporations that survive are the ones doing business at the international as well as at the national level. Fair enough. One should applaud these successful companies. But this situation raises a question regarding possible conflicts between public and private interests. When the latter do not coincide with the former, which prevails? Would it not be easy to confuse the private for the public, to take one for the other? In the case of a disagreement, who is going to decide in small nations without full sovereignty?

The provincial election of April 2014 once again posed the perennial question of press ownership concentration in a rather dramatic way. The media mogul Pierre Karl Péladeau, who owns the controlling shares in Quebecor, ran for the Parti Québécois and was expected to play an important economic role as a government minister in the case of victory. This did not happen as the Parti Québécois lost the election. But the question remains: could Péladeau have become a minister with economic responsibility while remaining the owner of the most powerful media conglomerate, or would he have been compelled to sell his shares in the company? Would the administration of his property by a blind trust – the solution put forward by Péladeau – be sufficiently reliable to avoid conflicts of interest? Most commentators doubt it.

Third, can a digital newspaper like La Presse+ make the transition to being a ‘national’ newspaper? Making big savings on the printing and distribution costs, it has become accessible throughout the whole territory for the same price. How many of the registered readers of La Presse+ are new subscribers, located far away from the traditional distribution area of La Presse, the metropolitan region of Montréal? What would be the consequences of such an evolution?

To attract more readers from remote regions of Québec, La Presse+ should offer more local content focused on meaningful issues. It would be easy to do, given that GESCA owns newspapers in all Québec’s regions. La Presse.ca is already offering an image of such integration, giving access on the same platform to the website of each newspaper in the group. Could La Presse+ lead to more integration of the different parts of this media empire? What would be the impact on the diversity of information in Québec? On the expression of different regionalisms? Could that give the regions a voice at the national/federal level? Could this evolution contribute to a reinforcement of nationalism? It is obviously too soon to answer such questions, but it is certainly not too early to pay attention to the issues they raise.

Of course, the linguistic differences are more obvious between the Québec and Canadian media landscapes than between the Scottish and the rest of the UK ones. Most Québec newspapers are published in French and are in some way an expression of French culture, even if the journalists’ professional references and standards are more American than European.

Regarding policy matters, however, the approach is the same. Québec, like Scotland, is not likely to adopt any form of state regulation of the press, even if ownership concentration reaches a greater level. But unlike the Scottish press, whose highest circulated titles are integrated into UK groups, the Québec French newspapers are owned by media groups different from the Canadian ones. One may think that these different corporate statuses could have an impact on the political process in case of a referendum or a constitutional change, maybe, but not necessarily, as illustrated in the case of Québec. Surprisingly enough, Quebecor, which has the largest Canadian readership with its Sun Media dailies, is controlled by a declared sovereignist (Pierre Karl Péladeau). At the opposite end, GESCA, whose dailies are mostly distributed in Québec, is owned by a family (the Desmarais) who are strongly supportive of federalism.

Finally, the technological and economic challenges are quite similar in both Québec and Scotland. To survive, professionals and firms making a business of circulating news must find ways to cope with the opportunities and risks of the digital age. Up to now, the most advanced Scottish newspapers have limited their initiative to adopting the metered paywall system. They might well be inspired to look more closely in the near future at innovative experiments such as La Presse+.