Growing The Rover in a Shrinking Media Landscape

I come from a commuter town, the kind of place where it feels like every road leads to a softball field or a gas station.

We drove constantly.

Parents fought rush hour traffic every morning to get from Deux Montagnes to the machine shops in Cartierville or Dorval. Not content to merely spend 12 hours a week in their car, they drove all weekend too. Football games, birthday parties, the movies or a trip downtown to eat Chinese food on white tablecloths.

The radio kept us company on those rides.

For a certain kind of Quebec Anglo, local radio and television are an enormous part of our identity. Though we belong to the dominant linguistic group of the Americas, we’re also part of a subculture that doesn’t fit neatly into a little box. In many ways we’re more like Francophone Quebecers than our Anglo cousins in Ontario. But in many ways we’re living a completely parallel reality to the Québécois, never quite sure where we belong.

That’s not a voice you hear much in Canadian media.

But when we tune into CHOM 977, CJAD or Team 690, we hear something of ourselves echoing back at us. Our funny little accents that almost sound like Canadian English were it not for the occasional utterance of Joual: dépanneur, a case of 24 (une caisse de 24), you know there (tsé là), our use and pronunciation of autoroute (“oddo-root”).The purest Quebec Anglos don’t turn lights off, they “close” them just as the French do.

We also saw radio as something that could connect us to sister communities all over the St-Lawrence Valley, parts of the Townships and Laurentian foothills. We heard voices like ours, calling into CJAD from Lasalle to bitch about the Alouettes after a playoff loss. We sat by the radio every snowy morning, listening to Richard Dagenais (a Deux Montagnes Anglo) read off the list of schools shut down because of the storm.

These are flawed institutions.

Their coverage conveys a sort of alarmism around Quebec nationalism that can be hard to look past. They also pay their workers criminally low wages and the culture of greed at their parent corporation is — and I’m trying hard not to be dramatic here but there’s no other way to put this — fucking gross.

But the people who work there, they always felt like our people.

Support Independent Journalism.

In the spring of 2017, after parts of Deux Montagnes were destroyed by flooding, Mitch Melnick and the people at Team 990 hosted a fundraiser for our families at Hurley’s Irish Pub. They did stuff like that all the time.

To give you an idea of the connection between Quebec Anglos and their broadcast media, look at the first wave of COVID-19. The Quebec government needed the two most trusted Anglos they could find to record messages for us to “wash your hands and stay home.” They chose Canadiens Captain Shea Weber and CTV Montreal anchor Mutsumi Takahashi.

When news surfaced last week that Bell Media will lay off some 4,800 employees and shutter 45 radio stations across Canada, a sense of dread washed over me. And I imagine many of you feel the same way.

In practical terms, there will be fewer locally-produced programs on CTV Montreal, CJAD and Team 990. I don’t doubt that those who remain at the helm are going to continue pulling off miracles every day to keep the stations going. But I can’t help but feel like we’ve lost something we may never get back.

I don’t know what the future of local broadcast journalism is.

Mostly because I’m a writer and I barely know what the future of my own medium looks like. But also because the technology we use to consume media is controlled by a handful of erratic people who hate journalists. And if you think federally-funded journalism may be the answer, I would counter that the party with an overwhelming lead in every national poll is led by an erratic man who hates journalists.

What I do know is that I am hopelessly in love with local journalism and the communities we serve.

Not because I want to save democracy — although who among us hasn’t harboured a delusion or two? — and not to gain access to the halls of power. Because, outside of all the drinking and drugs, politics are incredibly dull.

I love local journalism because I love people. That’s it. I love talking shit with the shirtless guy who sunbathes outside his apartment. I love when my downstairs neighbour barges in to use our dryer and fix me a cup of coffee. I love living in a city where you can be slouched over a pint of beer when an advisor to Montreal’s mayor sneaks up and puts you in a headlock and refuses to let go until you scream uncle.

That actually happened to me.

So how can we take The Rover — which does good work but is largely just stories sent to you via email — and build community around it? Here are a few things I’ve been hoping to implement.

• Shout Outs
  If you have a small business or an event that you’d like to tell our readers about, let us know. We’ll have a chat and give you a shout-out in the newsletter. We can include some pictures and remind our 7,000 subscribers you exist and you’d appreciate their patronage. All we ask for in return is that you put up one of our posters at your business and maybe tell your customers to check out our site.
  
  
• Office Hours
  I’ll be holding office hours at the Next Door Pub (5175 rue Sherbrooke Ouest) next Thursday, Feb. 22, from noon to 2 p.m. Do you have any questions about The Rover? Special requests? Do you need help moving your couch? Are you stuck writing a term paper you hate and need some coaching? We got you. We’re going to try to make this a bi-weekly thing because if I’m going to be asking for your help and support, it’s only fair I also be available to you for the same.
  
  
• An In-Real-Life Journalism Brainstorm
  We’re in touch with some of our colleagues in independent media, student media and experts from Montreal’s journalism schools so that we can get together and trade secrets. We’re considering renting a Legion Hall or a similarly cheap location to minimize cost. But we want you there too. I would very much like for this not to be boring. So we’ll see about hiring a clown or renting a cotton candy machine. People like clowns, right?
  
  
• Project-based fundraising
  I pay freelancers out of pocket, which can cost upwards of $25,000 a year. Sometimes that’s meant carrying an absurd level of credit card debt to keep the business running, but it’s been worth it. You know, many of the stories we publish don’t quite fit into a format that The Gazette or other local media use. If we raise money, it’s primarily to elevate bold, original work from the city’s best emerging journalists. For a while, I’ve been thinking of creating a dedicated freelance fund. If we can put some real money together, I think there’s enough talent in this city to create something really original. Maybe it’s an investigative podcast series on biker gangs. It could be a documentary, a photo essay, a zine or a damn cassette tape. If you’re a journalist who’s willing to take a big swing, we want to be a part of giving you that opportunity.
  
  
• Incorporation – A Rover Advisory Committee
  We’re not incorporated, which is fine because I can’t afford all the legal fees and I’m terrified of paperwork. This presents us with a series of challenges, not the least of which is that I am personally liable should The Rover ever have a major financial setback. It doesn’t keep me up at night but it sort of keeps me up at night. The other disadvantage of not being a corporate entity is that we’re eligible for fewer subsidies and grants, and it’s harder for people to do business with us since everything goes through my personal bank account.
  
  If anyone in our community of readers has some sort of business expertise, I’d be grateful to sit down and have a chat about our options. This week, I met with former president of Métro Media, Andrew Mulé, to ask that he come on as a voluntary advisor to The Rover. But we need a few more of you, so if you think you can volunteer some of your time every so often, to offer whatever expertise you might have on business/media, please let us know.

None of this is set in stone and if I get hit by a bus or something, you should take it upon yourselves to continue this work and maybe avenge my death. But in the far more likely event that I don’t get crushed by our public transit system, I look forward to seeing you in real life.

Your friend,

Chris