30 April 2025

FIPP Congress speaker Sarah Thompson: “Journalism isn’t charity – it’s an economic driver”

At this year’s FIPP World Media Congress, Canadian media strategist Sarah Thompson will share insights into the economic contribution made by local media ecosystems. Here, she explains how governments and the industry alike can rethink journalism as a natural resource – essential not just for social good, but also for economic resilience.

“If you don’t understand how money flows, you don’t understand how to fix it.”

A seasoned media strategist with roots in PR and a strong background in media agencies, The Mantis Group’sSarah Thompson has spent several years examining the fractured relationship between journalism, advertising, and public policy. Now, she’s asking that we reframe journalism – not as a struggling public good, but as a vital economic engine.

“The benefits are well known of what quality journalism presents – more engaged voters, holding public officials to account, telling stories so that we have less ‘otherness’,” she says. “But we’ve never seriously evaluated its economic value to a country’s GDP.”

A new economic lens on media

Sarah’s concern is grounded in an unmistakeable reality. “There are fewer and fewer quality places for clients to advertise,” she says. “There’s so much fraud in digital advertising – ads wrapped around AI-generated slop scraped from legitimate journalists.” Sarah points out that the effect is a severe reduction in viable, ethical, human-centric ad inventory.

The problem is compounded, she says, by the decline of local news outlets. “We don’t have media publications in every community anymore. That means fewer trusted environments for advertisers – and fewer opportunities for local businesses to grow.”.

Sarah’s research has found that up to 60 cents of every advertising dollar gets siphoned off by intermediaries in the digital ecosystem – platforms and ad tech layers that often contribute little or nothing to content creation or quality audience engagement.

“Advertisers are buying more tech to target audiences; publishers are buying more tech to optimise ads. In reality, there are a lot of middlemen taking a lot of money, and they are taking it away from journalism.”

Global context, local consequences

In response to this broken system, Sarah is leading the first comprehensive study to evaluate the economic contribution of local media across all platforms to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“We treat oil, steel, aluminium as resources – why not journalism?” she says. “Canada sits on natural resources that we assign measurable value to. But we don’t talk about the value of TV, radio, newspapers or magazines in that same economic way.”

Her work seeks to measure both direct impacts (jobs, newsroom operations) and indirect ones (economic uplift for local businesses, advertising opportunities, and cultural cohesion). “If there’s no local publication in Canmore, Alberta, how does the business owner advertise? How do they grow? What’s the cost to the local economy if they can’t?”

Sarah draws comparisons from around the world. France, for instance, implemented a €100 million incentive programme to support small business advertising in local media – but it is underutilised. “Governments design these programmes without understanding how advertising works or the economic value media contributes,” she says.

Canada and Australia have responded with taxes on platforms – Canada’s Digital Services Tax and Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code. Both aim to redirect platform wealth back into national media ecosystems. But Sarah remains wary of thinking that tax alone will fix things.

“We banned scraping in Canada, but even that just means platforms have to negotiate directly with publishers. It’s not a complete solution,” she says. “Meanwhile, platforms like Meta pulled news, and everyone blamed the government – but Zuckerberg never wanted to be in the news business. He got what he needed. He built an audience on quality journalism and then abandoned it.”

Avoiding past mistakes

Sarah points to a forgotten moment in digital history to illustrate how the news-advertising relationship broke down. “People don’t seem to remember that when 9/11 happened, Google wasn’t indexing real-time. They started scraping news so people could get information quickly. That’s when the intermediary layer started between the media owner and the audience,” she says.

That move opened the door for aggregation without compensation, which was soon exploited by other platforms. “Meta reported that 65% of Canadians got their news from Meta. Then came TikTok. Now people can’t even tell what’s true or not,” she says.

The consequences of this disconnect are profound. “We’re in a new paradigm,” Thompson says. “More ad dollars are going to bad actors. Less money reaches journalists. Then we wonder why democracy is failing.”

She connects the dots between content quality, economic incentives, and democratic health. “If ad dollars keep funding fake sites and AI-generated junk, while real journalism shrinks, we lose public trust. We lose informed citizens. It’s all interconnected.”

Reframing journalism

At FIPP Congress Sarah will discuss a study that reframes journalism as a critical component of a functioning economy. “We have to stop thinking about journalism as a charity.We don’t talk about how much money leaves the Canadian ecosystem that isn’t creating value for our local businesses and is not an economic driver,” she says.

This message is particularly acute in smaller nations where platforms contribute little local value. “In many countries, these platforms don’t have staff. They’re just sales teams. They don’t create content; they’re just conduits to content.”

Despite the challenges, Sarah sees hope in the enduring value of trustworthy journalism. “Local media environments generate more attention, more trust, more dwell time. It’s a better place for advertisers,” she says. “When you’re reading something of quality, it stays with you. Compare that to a recipe site where you’re hit with 14 pop-ups before the content loads. That damages trust.”

Her call to action is clear: “We all want businesses to grow. That means we need good places to advertise – with less fraud, more actual human beings, and great content that never goes away.”

The FIPP World Media Congress takes place in Madrid, Spain, from 21-23 October 2025.

This event will bring together media professionals from across the globe for three days of insightful discussions, keynote presentations, workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned industry leader or a rising innovator, the FIPP Congress promises to be an unforgettable gathering that will shape the future of media. Book now with the Pre Agenda Offer to save 650EUR from final rates.