BarrieToday received the following letter to the editor in response to our editor-in-chief's opinion piece EDITORIAL: Your local news will soon vanish from Facebook and Google, but BarrieToday is here to stay.
Michael Friscolanti only talks about half of the story - that local digital media depends on social media platforms for distribution.
I definitely see and understand that.
However, neither Twitter (Google) nor Facebook (Meta) have any reporters in the field. Without the traditional print and broadcast media, there would be no news for them to distribute!
This dispute goes to the heart of democracy. Without BarrieToday's reporter, how would we know what our town council was up to? Without reporters from the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, CBC and others, who would keep a watchful eye on our provincial and federal politicians?
International media track Sudan's civil war, Nigerian corruption, climate change, Google and Meta's efforts to "take over the world", etc.
Without all this news gathering, we would be blind and deaf, and our democracy would wither.
Peter Bursztyn
Barrie, Ont.
