Anthony Joseph’s journey into the newspaper industry was unplanned.
Over 30 years ago, Joseph initially placed an advertisement for his machinery company in a local newspaper. Upon learning about the newspaper’s financial difficulties, he volunteered to develop marketing plans to support it.
Three years into this endeavour, Joseph found that his focus had shifted entirely from machinery to “keeping the paper alive.”
Today, The Caribbean Camera is based out of Ajax, Ont., and serves Black and Caribbean communities in the Greater Toronto Area and Durham Region.
Joseph runs The Caribbean Camera out of his basement, a change prompted by COVID-19, forcing him and his five-person team to run the publication remotely.
He utilizes an integrated “phone system” that connects to the internet, enabling round-the-clock operations from home. This setup allows him to hire globally, with some of his employees working for him from Saint Lucia in Jamaica.
The Caribbean Camera offers an online platform and print edition and organizes the Impact Awards annual award ceremony.
Joseph says the event celebrates “great Caribbean people” like Miss Rollins and Carl James and will have its third iteration in October.
Despite the challenges faced by the print media sector, Joseph says the print publication is still going strong today.
“Either they have a lot of fish in the world, that are being wrapped with it, or a lot of people reading it. I kind of tend to believe it’s the readers,” he said.
Sandra Davis, an Oshawa resident, has been reading The Caribbean Camera since it began. She says she “grew up knowing” Anthony and the two share a history spanning over 30 years.
According to Davis, Anthony is a quiet observer and isn’t afraid to jump in and help with any community effort, even when he’s not there to get a story.
From the beginning, Davis lived in Scarborough and said the paper’s title compelled her to pick up an issue from a Caribbean store decades ago.
Years later, Davis still picks up an issue every week, and in her words, the “up-to-date news and information” keeps the newspaper in her bedroom.
“It’s a connection to my community,” she said.
As the news industry becomes more digital, Joseph says he’s surprised at how many people visit The Caribbean Camera website as their main source of local news.
“I remember when we first started, if we got 20 people [viewed it online in] week, we’d be happy,” he said, speaking of visits to the website. “Now we have, in the last three months… about 1.3 million people.”
In 2023, the media industry saw major layoffs from large organizations like CBC, Bell Media, and Metroland Media each year. Last year, Metroland Media cut 70 weekly community newspapers from its publications, leaving 605 workers without jobs.
Although advertisers help pay for his print paper, Joseph says staying focused on his goal of servicing the Caribbean community takes priority over any money he can make on the news.
Joseph prioritizes print newspapers and “boots-on-the-ground” journalism and values the physical paper over everything else.
The higher cost of printing a story on paper means he must put more effort into what he puts on the page.
He’s at “retirement age” now but has no thoughts of slowing down and says he’s always finding reasons to keep his publication going after 34 years as its owner.
“You never retire; you just find new things to do in the business, and you keep on going.”
In the many years he’s worked in journalism, the advent of AI has posed the most changes, he said.
Though technology has its ups and downs when it comes to work efficiency, he notes that fewer journalists today are willing to go out and work on a story, and it’s something that makes him grateful his team still “hits the ground running.”