On March 2, 1996, Conrad Black took an axe to two newspapers: the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. In a single day, later called “Black Saturday,” 182 people were laid off – 25% of each paper’s staff. Black argued that the papers hadn’t been profitable enough, and cutting staff was the best way to change this. In the ensuing months, each paper shrunk in size, with particular atrophy in the area of local news.

Given that Black gained control of Canadian newspaper giant Southam this summer – making him the nation’s biggest newspaper baron – James Winter has cause to be worried indeed.

In Democracy’s Oxygen, Winter – a professor of communications at the University of Windsor – argues that corporatization is ruining Canadian media. Drawing on examples such as Black’s purge, Winter paints a picture of how profit-driven layoffs are watering down media quality, even as increasing concentration of ownership destroys any competition between newspapers – particularly ruinous, when you consider that competition is perhaps the only force that can keep media half awake.

As a distillation of raw facts about the ever-wealthier barons who own our media, Winter’s book is an invaluable reference tool. Its research is particularly strong in the profiles of Black, his fellow baron Paul Desmarais, and the publishing giant Quebecor. And, leaning heavily on examples from the Windsor Star, Winter also attempts to depict the reasons why newspaper editors deliver such relentlessly status-quo coverage.

In understanding news making, this latter topic is arguably essential. Unfortunately, Winter rushes through it too quickly to do it justice. The culture of the newsroom is nuanced and depressing: chock full of petty rivalries, emotional minigolf, and mind-boggling dim wittedness. Although lousy news coverage can be traced, as Winters argues, partly to the pro-market political interference of publishers, the truth is that it’s more often a story of classic human stupidity – a force occasionally stronger than the profit motive itself.