I've been running this blog for four years now. I also maintain several other blogs, including vancouver2010insider.ca and tbirdbaseball.net. I have never asked for any financial support for doing this. Until now.

And actually, I'm not really asking for this money for myself (although it's possible that I could profit from it; see below). It's for a cause.

Here's the deal: because of the way that Canwest Global has run its business into the ground (for example, throwing away money on the National Post and turning their Vancouver newspapers into Fraser Institute shills), the value of their common stock has dropped from $3.07 per share last September to $0.13 as of August 13, the day I'm writing this.

This is a disaster for people who invested in Canwest Global, but it's an opportunity for myself and like-minded bloggers who are concerned about the concentration of media ownership in Canada.

The way I want this to work is, if I can raise $1,300 from the PayPal donations I'm asking for, I could, at today's price, buy 10,000 shares of Canwest Global. Canwest Global has 99 million shares outstanding, so I would own 0.0013% of the company. If 50 other bloggers do the same thing, that would be .06% of the company. That may not sound like much, but keep in mind that a lot of shares are held by nervous institutional investors (pension funds, for example) and mutual fund managers. Me and my fellow concerned shareholders could put shareholder proposals on the ballot, put up another slate of corporate directors, and attend shareholder meetings to ask embarrassing questions about, for example, why CEO Leonard Asper deserves to be paid $1,053,780 per year for the job that he's doing.

Now, about the "personal profit" issue; Yes, I could sell my shares and take the money any time I wanted to, but I'm not going to do that. The commitment I'm making, in return for your financial support, is that I will remain invested in Canwest Global until the objectives stated above are achieved, or a point is reached where there is no longer any chance of success. If Canwest goes under, I won't make a cent out of this. Frankly, it's because of this possibility that I'm unwilling to invest very much of my own money in this. If Canwest is bought out, the shareholders might end up with some cash; if this happens, I'll re-invest the proceeds in a similar "shareholder activism" project. And one other thing; if Canwest should pay a dividend at some time in the future, the dividend will be used to buy more Canwest shares.

So, that's the pitch. And if you don't like the idea of giving me money so I can invest it, you can always buy shares in Canwest Global yourself. Or, follow my example and take up your own collection.

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