Monopolies Killed My Hometown

Today's episode is all about local newspapers. I've had a long history with them, every Saturday my Dad would buy 4 different papers and we'd all sit around and read them. When I was 9, inspired by adding to my hockey card collection, I called and got myself a paper route delivering the Chronicle Herald. Little did I know, I was going to be running my own little business.
More importantly, I want to talk about some of the common stories about why local news died, and I want to add a couple of my own to this list. In my mind, the biggest culprit was companies buying up and consolidating all the local newspapers, in Amherst's case this was Transcontenintal Media Group.

This episode was inspired by my Grandmother and the scrapbooks she kept full of all newspaper articles mentioning anyone in our family. I found a scrapbook from 1943-1945 that was full of articles about my Grandfather from when he was a labour leader at the Canada Car and Foundry plant in Amherst. This plant manufactured airplane parts during WWII.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and I wish you all a Happy Holidays and a succesful 2023.

Show Notes

Today's episode is all about local newspapers. I've had a long history with them, every Saturday my Dad would buy 4 different papers and we'd all sit around and read them. When I was 9, inspired by adding to my hockey card collection, I called and got myself a paper route delivering the Chronicle Herald. Little did I know, I was going to be running my own little business. 
 More importantly, I want to talk about some of the common stories about why local news died, and I want to add a couple of my own to this list. In my mind, the biggest culprit was companies buying up and consolidating all the local newspapers, in Amherst's case this was Transcontenintal Media Group. 


This episode was inspired by my Grandmother and the scrapbooks she kept full of all newspaper articles mentioning anyone in our family. I found a scrapbook from 1943-1945 that was full of articles about my Grandfather from when he was a labour leader at the Canada Car and Foundry plant in Amherst. This plant manufactured airplane parts during WWII.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and I wish you all a Happy Holidays and a successful 2023.

Links from today's episode:
 One note: It turns out I mis-remembered one of the stories. My grandfather didn't go to the Newspaper office because he had the chicken pox, there was another story about him having his appendix removed. 

What is Monopolies Killed My Hometown?

Do you wonder why small towns, small businesses and people seem to be falling behind and you don’t know why? Feeling helpless about whether any of us can do anything to halt the decline of the places we love? Well, we know a secret. Our society fought the same battles about 100 years ago, and small towns won.

Join Andrew Cameron, the founder of the Center for Small Town Success and small business owner, every other week as he rediscovers our Canadian Anti-Monopoly tradition. The goal is to learn how we successfully fought back against Monopolies in the 1900s so we can restore power to small towns, small businesses and individuals today.

Listen to this podcast if you want to learn more about Canadian Competition Policy and to join the Anti-Monopoly movement. #freeboswell #cdnpoli