Toronto Star owner calls on Canadian companies to spend 20% of ad budget on local media

The publisher of the Toronto Star is calling on Canadian companies to dedicate at least 20 per cent of their advertising budgets to local media.

Jordan Bitove made the request Thursday at a Canadian Club luncheon in Toronto, where he said convincing local companies to dedicate their ad spending within Canada is crucial because tech giants who link to articles published by his papers and others are “basically stealing the great work that our team does.”

“The advertising revenue that once funded newsrooms has been moved ironically to companies that use our content for their own benefit … and those companies don’t want to pay us for it,” he said.

“The result is we are seeing local news disappear at an alarming rate.”