The crisis of journalism has been solved.

“If every newspaper and magazine put Justin Bieber on the cover and charged $20 a copy, I'm pretty sure journalism would be saved.” So tweeted Amanda Ash, a recent grad from UBC’s School of Journalism. Yep. It’s that bleak.

If you thought the media is bouncing back from the crisis its experienced over the past couple of years, think again.

An anecdote: I ran into the managing editor of the Globe and Mail’s B.C. Bureau at a party a couple of weeks ago. He told me that now that the economy is bouncing back, things should start to get better.

“Do you really believe that?" I asked. "You really think the economy is bouncing back?”

“Well you know, it’s like the economists say,” he clarified. “It’s bouncing back… Like a dead cat.”

And even a dead cat bounce is probably an optimistic assessment of Canada’s mediascape.

“We’re in the middle of the biggest downsizing ever in our industry, and it is ironically going totally unreported,” said Lise Lareau, president of the Canadian Media Guild.

During a Thursday evening panel, Lareau joined a host of panelists in describing the structural nature of the crisis in the Canadian media. Over the weekend, media activists and academics will discuss some of the opportunities presented by the ongoing crisis in the Canadian media.

But first, the doom and gloom.

Robert Hackett, a professor at Simon Fraser University, is someone who insists that the debate about the crisis of media simply can’t be looked at in isolation.

Militarization. Corporate control. Capitalism. Ecological destruction. Media concentration. Whatever crisis you can put a name to also has a reflection in the media landscape.

Take the global financial crisis, which is also playing out in the media.

Over 1,000 journalists have been laid off every month for the past two years in the U.S., says Laureau. Canada is “not quite as bad,” she said, but has far from escaped the challenges of centralization and outsourcing in the capitalist media.

The result? “No time to dig, fewer complex stories,” said Laureau. Mentioning Sarah Palin, says Laureau, is a quicker way to generate hits than carrying out in depth investigation.

“Crises stem from making media private, opportunities will come from making media public,” said one of the conference organizers in her opening remarks.

Reimagining the corporate media is a time consuming task that diverse communities are taking on. Hopefully over the weekend there’s a ray of sunshine or two among all these dark clouds.

Stay tuned. I'll be covering the Make Media Public conference for the rest of the weekend.