Canada

Do you think a 1000+ year old tradition is "news"? If so, why don't we have a dozen "news" articles about the opening of every single farmers market in every city across the country, or just as many news articles about the every 10k fun run across the country? Because they're not interesting or impactful to anyone in society. There's nothing at stake. They have thousands of firework events every year in cities across the globe. It's normal and generally accepted as normal. If the powers that be decided to stop allowing fireworks displays, then maybe it would actually be news worthy, as it would be a change and something of interest where the reasons for and against keeping the tradition would be part of broader social discourse. Trans rights important because they are neither granted broadly around the world, nor in Canada. They are interesting because the discourse occuring alongside them is involved in discussions of how we contemplate our identity as individuals. They are reported on because governments are making decisions regarding them. If they are as important as other government deliberations is subjective. Our main mechanism for deciding what is news worthy is capitalism - if it gets clicks, it gets pushed. If anything, government funded media is a bastion of resistance against treating media as a winner takes all sport. It affords a small group of journalists funding and an apparatus to do investigative journalism with a modicum more freedom than most media outlets afford. Sure blacklock might be a small example of other models that can work for niche markets, but their reach and impact (as you note) are non-existent in comparison to the big media corps. We could impose very strict rules about content percentages focusing on local, hyper local, national or international topics, but I suspect you would also be opposed to quota requirements of the like. So otherwise, what's your solution?