Advice to Canadian Papers p.

By: Alan Harman

Advice to Canadian Papers p.
Editor says dailies must stop treating minorities
as foreigners or risk losing their business
DAILY NEWSPAPERS HAVE to stop treating natives, blacks, South Asians and other people of color as foreigners, or risk losing business, Canadian newspaper executives were told.
Toronto Star editorial page editor Haroon Siddiqui told a seminar at the annual meeting of the Canadian Daily Newspaper Association that 30 years of immigration has "left the Great White North not so white anymore," and means that visible minorities are the only growing source of readers and advertisers.
The seminar was one event in a busy schedule as more than 100 newspaper publishers, editors and managers gathered in Toronto for the annual meetings of the association and the Canadian Press, the national news agency.
Siddiqui said the minorities are not foreigners. "They're full-fledged Canadians who are paying their taxes and helping pay your fat salaries. They're not the traditional illiterate, obedient immigrants of the past. They're educated, assertive Canadians. It's time to treat them as such in day-to-day journalism."
A study conducted for the Canadian Advertising Association indicated that by 2001 about 18% of Canadians will be from minority communities, up from about 9.6% in 1991.
CAA president John Coleman said the numbers are far more dramatic in big cities.
He said that Toronto is expected to have a visible minority population of 44.6% by 2001, up from 25% in 1991. Vancouver's minority population was expected to reach 39%, up from 15% in 1991.
"Contrary to some perceptions, visible minorities tend to be better educated than the . . . rest of Canadians," Coleman said. "They have a per-capita gross domestic product that is 9% higher than other Canadians and they will control about 20% of the total national GDP by 2001."
Coleman said that a CAA survey showed 70% of all Canadians believe advertising is still too geared to white consumers. Among visible minorities, 80% believe they are virtually excluded from advertising. "What applies to advertising must surely have a corollary to the interests of those engaged in daily newspapers. The medium is still the vehicle of choice for the largest annual investment by advertisers."
He said both advertising and newspaper editorial management have the same basic objective ? to reflect and appeal to every Canadian.
Consultant Joy Rawlins of Employment Equity Consulting Services said newspapers can reflect change by making a commitment to visible minorities through editorial content and a more culturally representative staff. "Employment equity is not just a good thing to do. It makes good business sense."
The industry-funded Newspaper Marketing Bureau reported that the drop-off in Canadian newspaper advertising has slowed dramatically. Advertising fell 0.9% in 1992, but that was much less than the 1991 drop of 7.6%. Newspapers accounted for about 19% of ad spending in Canada last year, the largest share of any medium.
John Finnernan, president of the bureau, said that in the face of ever-increasing competition, the newspaper industry must stress to advertisers and the television generation that it still works.
He said preliminary results of a study to be released shortly show that readers still think newspaper ads are believable, attractive and informative, and influenced them in buying products. "We have to preach to the unconverted and tell them we are the answer."
Kerry Lambie, executive vice-president of Thomson Newspapers Corp., was elected chairman of the Canadian Daily Newspaper Association. Kevin Peterson, publisher of the Calgary Herald, was elected chairman-elect, and Hunter Grant, co-publisher, president and general manager of the Brockville (Ont.) Recorder and Times, was elected vice chairman and treasurer.
John Foy continues as president of the association and Roger Landry, president and publisher of La Presse in Montreal, is the past chairman.
Meantime, the president of Canada's national news service said a study of its operations showed that only fine-tuning was needed to keep it running smoothly. Keith Kincaid said cost-cutting pressures from the 100 daily newspapers in the news-gathering cooperative had prompted the examination.
Kincaid said that there had been suggestions CP might stop reporting the news and instead distribute stories generated by its members.
However, the study by a committee of 11 publishers and editors found the diverse needs of the dailies would make it impractical to eliminate spot news coverage by CP staff.
Papers had different ideas on the coverage they wanted from CP, Kincaid said. Some wanted only hard news while others wanted to continue getting a full range of news and feature stories.
He said this led to a change for 1993 that allowed papers to cut a small portion of their CP fees by not subscribing to features and regular columns written by CP staff.
CP, which has an annual budget of about $49 million (Canadian), has kept costs down by reducing staff to
its lowest level since 1975 through attrition, buyouts and layoffs. The fees have been frozen for the past two years.