Canadian Dimension | Here’s how bad things have gotten in Canada’s troubled newspaper industry: one bankrupt chain is now being taken over by a chain that is effectively bankrupt. Believe it or not, there is a high-finance method to this madness, but as CD media columnist Marc Edge explains, it takes a vulture capitalist mindset to wrap your brain around it.

Canadian Dimension | Journalism purists argue that any government funding would taint news media, but the crisis has grown to such an extent that subsidies are now considered by most to be by far the lesser of two evils. Some countries have found ways of subsidizing news media that leave little question about their independence from government.

Canadian Dimension | The Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism is little more than a symbolic gesture of protest, but considering its source it no doubt sets the subsidies up for cancellation should the Conservatives form the next government as expected. That would precipitate a worse crisis, leaving cities from coast to coast without a major source of news.

Media co-ops and employee-owned media have been growing around the world in recent years. Majority shareholders of the leading French daily Le Monde announced last year that they would donate it to a foundation controlled by its journalists and other employees. As news media in Canada continue to crumble, going the co-op route makes increasing sense for their displaced workers.

Canadian Dimension | Big Media in Canada, which are ruthlessly squeezing every last loonie out of our once-profitable news media, used their remaining political influence to shake down the digital giants with the Online News Act in hopes of cashing in big on the runaway success of the platforms. In the process, they have put Canada’s emerging online media and niche publications in the emergency ward.

Months after the arrests of two journalists, the firm’s security doesn’t seem to understand injunction terms and press freedoms.

Three members of the news media are among the dozens arrested on Wet’suwet’en territory. Two journalists remain in custody.