Councillors Want to Give The Citizen $100K to post public notices.

Me? I'll do it for half.

Hello, hello.

Summer is here… kind of!? 40% of 70% of the days so far in May, it’s here…

Like most everyone in BC, I find myself muttering “it’ll be good for the fires though” any time I find myself about to complain about these weird half rainy, half sunny days that have defined most of May so far.

I would also say that these days are kind of a hallmark of early summer in PG. I always get a little chuckle at my iPhone’s attempt to assign a weather icon to illustrate these days in its Weather app - a little cloud, a little rain drop, a sun peaking out, with a lightning bolt in the background. An everything bagel of weather iconography, as I’ve come to know it.

I’m getting ahead of myself - I’m sure I’ll be writing my weather and wildfire anxiety newsletters in a couple months so let’s press pause on that button and turn our focus to my other favourite topic: City Councillors proposing silly things.

Buckle up. It’s a long one.

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Payment for Service or Government Subsidy

Last week, Councillors Klassen and Skakun penned a motion to return a retired practice which saw the City paying local newspaper The Citizen $100K/year to post public notices in said newspaper.

The motion as written by Klassen and Skakun.

Context: This funding had been in place for a very long time before being removed in 2022.

To the credit of Klassen and Skakun, they are not trying to obscure their intent with this motion as much as you’d expect. You could easily imagine a world where this is entirely pitched as an accessibility play - “not everyone in PG is reachable via digital so let’s make sure we reach them via the ol’ newspaper!” and just leave it at that.

As virtuous a motion as any, in that framework.

But the whole public notice visibility thing feels like an afterthought in their writing of the motion with much more of an emphasis being on accountability, transparency, and archival that the Citizen provides, framing this money less as a “we need to make sure EVERYONE sees public notices” and more of a “we need to ensure the Citizen can do its very important work.”

In light of that, I think we should call this what it is: a proposed government subsidy directly from the taxpayers to The Citizen.

And if I’m being honest, I can make their argument for that pretty easily:

I assume, if you’re reading this newsletter, you probably agree with the sentiment that journalism is one of the few public counter weights to government overreach and is a good layer of accountability.

Generally speaking, eyes on power is a good thing.

I think The Citizen’s Managing Editor Kennedy Gordon frames that relationship correctly in his writeup here on the RDFFG’s recent budget deliberations and the presence of media in the room.

Even as an oft critic of the Citizen, I can’t deny that it has filled much of that role for our community for decades - budget overruns (*cough* parkade *cough*), council scandals, conflicts of interest, etc.

So depending on how much good faith you assign to the City here, it’s a tricky situation from their perspective - should the City be obligated to subsidize its privately owned, somewhat adversarial watchdog to the tune of $100K/yr?

American stat but NAA’s graph showing the decline of revenue for newspapers.

$100K is a lot of money for a local newspaper in 2025. I was unable to find more up-to-date numbers showing an expansion of this graph but if I’m a betting man, I don’t think it suddenly spiked up as social media and the internet continue to proliferate in the 2010-2020 era.

Zooming out, the removal of that money in 2022 could certainly be read as an attempt to obscure transparency on the part of the City. Underfunded local journalism certainly creates wider gaps for the City to attempt any shenanigans that might otherwise by caught.

So that’s a generous analysis of why this motion has layers.

The problem(s) with this motion

Let’s begin with the biggest question: why just The Citizen?

This great city is home to many “outlets” ranging from CKPG to My PG Now to PG Daily News and the CBC’s Northern BC show Daybreak North. We have independent Substack writers like Andrew Kurjata and Ayesha Pamela Rogers and this other very cool and super handsome and funny guy named Darrin Rigo (no relation).

Despite Meta kicking our news outlets off their platform, Social Media is not a dead distribution network in Canada. PG also has many local influencers with large, local followings. We have massive citizen-organized Facebook groups.

I should be clear when I say that I’m not suggesting we pay local influencer, and friend of the newsletter, Mackenzie Kerr to post 11 monthly zoning notices on her Instagram story but I’m saying that the attention economy is very different than it was when The Citizen was dropped on your doorstep every afternoon.

Beyond that, whether we see this as government subsidy for all the public good written in the motion or if we’re winking and nodding along that this is for public notice visibility - I’d argue CKPG is just as much a public record of the ongoings of Prince George than any other outlet both in their news broadcasts AND every time PG’s boyfriend Caden Fanshaw goes out to visit a business or invite a public figure on.

I just wanted to make sure I had a picture of Caden in this newsletter, that’s all.

I could probably write a whole other section on this specific aspect but let me just say that technically, $100K is over the threshold for "sole sourcing” a government service and let’s not forget how angry and hyperfixated I can become about how the local government fairly procures services - if every other service provider or contractor has to put together a thoughtful summary into a competitive bid process, why is a bulletin board for public notices any different…?

Worth mentioning: Gordon did just publish a lengthy critique of The Chamber of Commerce not following a fair procurement process for their print publication. Not to be the *gotcha* guy too hard here but I am curious if they would advocate for a similarly fair procurement process in this instance as well.

Along those lines of process, a somewhat more esoteric question is should there be statutes that allow the City to pull the funding?

The Citizen is a privately owned outlet that has historically, under its old leadership, produced some pretty controversial and, in my opinion, ugly and hateful opinion/editorial columns. I will say for posterity that they have their rights to publish those under Canadian protections of speech so I’m not here to litigate their platforming but I am here to ask if our tax dollars should be a part of that amplification.

This is an excerpt from an August 2024 piece printed in the Citizen pondering if we should return to vigilante justice:

A masterclass in free speech.

I don’t want to come across as that annoying woke lib snowflake trying cancel the brave freedom of speech here but if my tax dollars were paying for this, I’d probably be sending more angry emails.

Anyways, I guess the simplest version of what I’m trying to say is that this gets messy quickly and far more complicated than simply directing $100K of public dollars into a privately owned media outlet with no due process and no accountability.

Putting it all together

This has been a winding road so if you’re confused, let me stake my position.

I support local journalism. All of it.

I have tried my best to call attention to the good work of Colin Slark in my past few newsletters because I see immense value in his work.

Let me pause here and post an article Colin JUST released about three new property developments because this is EXACTLY why we need him and I’m so grateful for him.

Beyond that, I’m also grateful for Stolz’s stated new direction for the Citizen to be less rage-baity and more positive, more community focused. For the most part, I believe the new Citizen is delivering on that promise.

The last 24 hours of Citizen articles demonstrates what I think Stolz’s vision is.

With that pre-amble aside, putting $100K/yr of taxpayer dollars into The Citizen under the false pretence of making sure our public notices get seen by some small % that won’t otherwise be able to see them, without due process feels wrong to me.

I’ll restate my thesis here to say that I don’t think this was never about the visibility of public notices.

To me, the two councillors made their feelings about the City clear during the whole plainclothes RCMP debacle a couple months ago - they have assumed a very “us vs them” stance toward the administration of the City and THAT is what this is about - using public money to bolster an ally in their fight against what they see as bad-faith actors in the governance of the city.

So to go all the way back to the tippy top of this newsletter, Klassen/Skakun and I do agree on the importance of well-funded journalism in PG, we disagree on where those funds should come from and how those funds should be allocated.

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Okay. That’s it from me this week.

I want to use this little footer section to acknowledge a whole section I wrote and then deleted because of how long this got.

The CBC is funded by government dollars and yes, I do support the CBC but it is a public institution with a public mandate and accountability layers to parliament and to the public not a privately owned paper with no process, no accountability, and an owner with past ties to City Hall. I can flesh that out in the comments if needed but I just want to like preempt anyone who is reading this and thinking I missed that.

As always, shoot me a direct email or comments are welcome if I’m not seeing this correctly.