Barely a day goes by without more doom and gloom about the media in Canada.  From The Globe and Mail cutting 10% of its staff to the Canadian Association of Journalists warning about the demise of quality journalism.

The Tyee has summed up the prospects for the industry in a post asking, Newspapers facing a death spiral? which concludes:

Millions of us will find the loss of the newspapers both painful and expensive. We’ll miss the morning ritual of reading the paper at breakfast. And spilling coffee on a laptop keyboard is a lot more costly than spilling it on the sports section.

This misses the point. The discussion should not be able which media delivery system to preserve, but rather how to ensure the financial viability of quality journalism.

Newspapers are simply a delivery mechanism. They do not define journalism.

The comments on the post largely focus on the concentrated ownership of Canada’s media and the impact this is having on journalism.

Much of the criticism is levelled at the media conglomerate Canwest. It, too, is in troubled financial waters.

Canwest’s credit rating has been downgraded by Moody’s Investor Services, based on:

Our assessment that the combination of very poor business conditions and elevated debt leverage will leave the company with no meaningful ability to reduce its debts rom internally generated cash flow for at least the next couple of years.

The new rating puts Canwest in “quite deep in junk territory.“