Local news is at a tipping point. Will it survive?

Every week brings more layoffs and closures to local news outlets across the country, especially newspapers. It’s a result of a business model that simply doesn’t work anymore, say the owners making the decision, and it’s tough to argue with that. But there is a business model that has begun to succeed—small, community- or subject-focused digital outlets that survive and even thrive thanks to government grants and funding from a small number of passionate readers.

These are the publications that might replace the outlets that are vanishing, but they need to find an audience. And Bill C-18, designed to help Canadian media survive in the digital era, has set the world’s biggest platforms against these tiny but growing outlets, making an uphill climb even steeper…

April Lindgren is a principal investigator for the Local News Research Project (LNRP) at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism. “I honestly don’t know what the future is going to be if people don’t recognize how important it is to know what’s going on around you, so that you can have a say in the decisions made locally on your behalf,” said Lindgren. 

So how will local news survive in Canada?

You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify. You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.