While big marches and sit-ins during the struggle for black rights and an end to the Vietnam War were effective tools for promoting change, such tactics in North America now appear to be losing steam as effective tactics.

In reflecting on the disastrous last decade we might ask: what would the world be like today if the United Sates, Britain, Canada and the other countries using their military might to kill fanatical young people had instead used that money to buy school books, drill wells, educate people, and promote religious tolerance throughout the Middle East—and at home?

Today – with the mainstream media failing to adequately serve the public in many parts of the country, and with multitudes of people fed up with how corporate media manipulate the news – is an opportune time for independent media projects to be established or refocused. The question is, as always: how to get financial backing for the work?

The cost of producing a Globe and Mail or any other traditional paper is quite staggering. Media corporations and other businesses, mainly in the United States, are spending millions of dollars trying to come up with a new business model that will allow them to have both money-making newspapers and Internet-based news operation. For my part, for several weeks now I have been trying to come up with an idea that would make the cost of publishing some sort of newspaper more manageable.

Imagine Canada having national and city newspapers and TV news programs and news websites that report fairly on all groups in society, protect the rights of consumers, and cover business in a way that assesses the benefits for all people, not just business owners and investors. The result would be a journalism that contributes to the creation of a more equitable and just society.

Staff reporters at the country’s most prominent business news publication, The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, are at it again – distorting an important issue: the possible sale of Ontario Crown corporations by neglecting to include vital information that could have balanced their reports.

The long-anticipated collapse of the Asper family’s Canwest Global media empire – which included 11 daily newspapers, the Global TV network of 11 stations, 13 specialty TV channels and more than 80 websites – in October 2009 was the latest development in the shameful history of corporate-owned media in Canada.