Right in the centre - Governments could learn from newspapers
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- Published on Thursday, July 16, 2015
By Ken Waddell
The Neepawa Banner
The news out this past week that Manitoba’s credit rating has slipped should be an additional warning to our government that spending is out of control. PC Manitoba leader Brian Pallister has been saying for months, if not years, that the Manitoba NDP don’t have an income problem, they have a spending problem.
The cold hard facts are that governments seem to think they have to spend every dollar they see. In order to appear to be doing everything for everybody, they make “spending burst” announcements. All levels of government do it because we have become so accustomed to it and if a government doesn’t do it, they don’t get any attention. If they don’t get any attention, they think they won’t get elected.
Good newspapers have a lot to teach government. Newspapers, especially the weekly newspaper business is tedious, routine and can even be monotonous. We do the same thing over and over again, week in, week out, month in, month out for year, after year, after year. If a person took a negative view of it all, we could get very bored. However, the positive side of things is that newspapers, while they may seem to be plodding, they are very steady. Because they go slow and steady, they have the capacity to respond to issues or even to a crisis.
Here’s the lesson. A newspaper may be flashy once in a while, having a brilliant story or a exceptional picture, they may do a good job every week with the occasional less than spectacular edition What governments could learn is that the costs and the income are closely matched so that the newspaper survives and is there every day, doing what it is supposed to do. It enables the public to get the news, the ads and the information a community needs to survive and hopefully thrive. A good newspaper is dependability personified, which is a lot more than you can say for most governments.
On the other hand, governments don’t pay much attention to income. They concentrate on spending as they have almost unlimited capacity to increase taxes and increase borrowing. While there are limits to how much money a newspaper can garner from the market area, there’s no limit as to how much money a government can extract through taxation and borrowing. It has been said that slow and steady wins the race. Government may be slow but they certainly aren’t steady. Sustainability is not part of their mindset.
What specifically could a government learn from a newspaper? First, they need to know their mandate. A newspaper, if it is to be successful, must know its market area, its core influence with readers and advertisers. Governments tend to fly off in all directions instead of doing what they should be doing and doing it well.
Governments could learn a lot about budgeting from newspapers. There is a weekly, monthly and yearly income and to spend beyond that invites a debt load disaster. That Manitoba has as large a debt as it does is not a good thing. It’s not sustainable.
Governments should learn to deliver core services effectively and consistently. Newspapers are successful when they are predictable and consistent. Governments can rarely be accused of either attribute.
There are only two ways to balance the books, either cut expenses or increase income .
Health care takes up 40 per cent of the provincial budget yet many of the things we do in health care are non-essential or of little value. For example, if people haven’t figured out that smoking and over-eating are harmful, no amount of government spending on those programs is going to change it. Then we have the food police to protect people from dying by eating food at a community fall supper. We spend needless amounts of money on problems that don’t exist, except in the minds of bureaucrats.
The second lesson is increasing income. If a newspaper is short of money, they look for expanded ways to get some more. For one simple but very important example, governments need to embrace private capital for expansion and replacement of capital in health facilities, schools and even for roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
Governments could learn a lot from the slow and steady world of newspapers but unfortunately, governments, and especially our Manitoba NDP government, aren’t prone to learn anything from anybody.
