National Dreams and Neoliberal Nightmares: The Dismantling of Canadian Periodicals Assistance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background The rapid and near-total dismantling of federal assistance to magazines and newspapers has taken place in recent years. This has occurred behind the screen of a series of new program announcements, ostensibly designed to replace more than a century of support via Canada Post discounts to publishers.Analysis A review of funding recipient lists reveals a 97 percent reduction in project grants since 2001, following on the heels of a 90 percent drop in the number of titles receiving distribution support since 1990. How and why did this dramatic change occur?Conclusion and implications A close study of program history reveals that aid to Canadian periodicals presented a soft target for the globalizing trade instruments of international capital—a target poorly defended by successive national governments that had absorbed neoliberalism’s transformation of “culture” into “cultural industries.” The election of a Conservative government in 2006 merely served to accelerate a process already in motion, leaving Canadian publishers to stand alone against U.S. market domination. At the same time, new inducements to align editorial content with government objectives were introduced, accompanied by stronger direct political control over funding recommendations, as revealed by the researcher’s Access to Information requests. These trends disproportionately affected smaller non-profit magazines, many of them vocal critics of the same economic model that sought an end to substantive media development assistance in Canada.Keywords Publishing/Print policy; Magazines; Cultural industries policyContexte Au cours des dernières années, un démantèlement rapide et presque total de l’assistance fédérale accordée aux magazines et journaux a eu lieu. Celui-ci s’est passé sous couvert d’une série de nouveaux programmes, vraisemblablement conçus pour supplanter plus d’un siècle d’appuis aux éditeurs de magazines et de journaux au moyen d’une subvention gouvernementale des frais postaux.Analyse L’examen de listes de publications subventionnées indique une baisse de 97 pour cent depuis 2001 dans le financement de projets, à la suite d’une baisse de 90 pour cent depuis 1990 dans le nombre de titres recevant de l’aide pour la distribution. Comment et pourquoi ces baisses dramatiques ont-elles eu lieu?Conclusion et implications Une étude attentive de l’histoire du programme révèle que l’aide aux périodiques représentait une cible facile pour le capital international—cible mal défendue par des gouvernements nationaux successifs ayant accepté la transformation néolibérale de la « culture » en « industries culturelles ». L’élection d’un gouvernement conservateur en 2006 a accéléré un processus déjà entamé, laissant les éditeurs canadiens seuls devant le vaste marché états-unien. En même temps, le gouvernement a offert de nouvelles incitations aux éditeurs pour qu’ils alignent leurs contenus avec ses objectifs, et il a imposé un plus grand contrôle politique des recommandations pour subventions, tel que le révèlent des documents obtenus par les auteurs grâce à des demandes d’accès à l’information. Ces tendances ont eu un effet disproportionné sur les plus petits magazines à but non lucratif, dont plusieurs avaient vivement critiqué ce modèle économique consistant à mettre fin à l’aide aux périodiques canadiens.Mots clés Édition/Politiques sur l’édition; Magazines; Politiques sur les industries culturelles
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".