{"id":264709,"date":"2017-01-23T11:30:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T16:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/canadas-local-news-poverty\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T21:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:26:10","slug":"canadas-local-news-poverty","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2017\/01\/canadas-local-news-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s local news \u201cpoverty\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The death notice published on the website\u2019s home page was low-key and matter of fact. \u201cWe regretfully announce that NewsKamloops<\/a> will cease publication today, Sept. 30, 2016. We\u2019ve enjoyed the experiment of publishing an independent, online newspaper owned and written by Kamloops people, and we thank readers who have made us their news source over the past 14 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The demise of another news source attracted little attention during what was already a tough year for local news consumers. Across the country, local broadcast and print newsrooms were hit by cutbacks, consolidations and closures while some digital-first news sites such as NewsKamloops struggled to stay afloat.<\/p>\n

During the first months of 2016, PostMedia announced major layoffs and newsroom mergers<\/a> in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. The presses went silent<\/a> at the daily newspapers in Guelph, Ontario, and Nanaimo, British Columbia. And a study<\/a> commissioned by Friends of Canadian Broadcasting warned the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that without intervention, half of Canada\u2019s smalland medium-market television stations could disappear by 2020.\u00a0 Indeed, growing concern about the availability of local news prompted the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to launch hearings<\/a> on how broadcast, digital and print media inform people about local and regional experiences.<\/p>\n

In a bid to fill in some of the gaps in the data on the media landscape, our investigation into what we call \u201clocal news poverty\u201d explores the extent to which local news media are meeting the information needs of people living in rural areas, suburban municipalities and smaller cities and towns outside of Canada\u2019s major media hubs. Local news poverty, we argue, is greatest in communities when residents have limited or no access to timely, verified news about local politics, education, health, economic and other key topics they need to navigate daily life.<\/p>\n

Our research consists of a crowd-sourced map<\/a> that tracks changes to local news outlets across the country and a separate study<\/a> that examined how news media in eight Canadian communities covered the local race for member of Parliament in the 2015 federal election. The results suggest that local news is at risk and unevenly available across the country.<\/p>\n

The underlying premise of our research is that there is reason to be concerned if reporters aren\u2019t covering city council, reporting on the latest police arrests or providing updates on how money raised by the United Way\u2019s annual fundraising drive is being spent.\u00a0 The US-based Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy thinks so too. It concluded<\/a> that information is \u201cas vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools, and public health.\u201d In addition to connecting residents by providing them with a shared set of facts and information, the commission observed that access to information allows people to hold public officials accountable and enables community members to work together to solve common problems.<\/p>\n

Scholars have identified different types of \u201ccritical information\u201d<\/a> that citizens need to successfully navigate everyday life, benefit from education and employment opportunities and, if they are so inclined, participate in local democracy. The eight topics on these scholars\u2019 list include emergencies and risks, health, education, transportation, economic opportunities, the environment and civic and political matters.<\/p>\n

While angst about the state of local news has only recently pushed its way onto the public agenda in Canada, hand-wringing about what\u2019s going on, why it matters and what to do about it has been underway for some time in other places. A study of Danish newspapers<\/a> observed that although newspapers are no longer the direct source of news for the majority of citizens, they are the still the main\u00a0 providers of\u00a0 independent, professionally reported news that other local news outlets rely upon for their own local public affairs coverage. In the United States, researchers who compared the local news environment in three New Jersey communities found that \u201clower-income communities are dramatically underserved relative to wealthier communities\u201d<\/a> and that they also receive most of their news from fewer sources. Another investigation concluded that civic engagement declined in Seattle and Denver<\/a> immediately following the closure of local newspapers in those two cities. And a Pew Research Centre report on Local News in the Digital Age<\/em><\/a> found there was little discussion on Twitter about the high-profile local news stories covered by traditional media, and that when news was discussed at all, it tended to deal with national political issues.<\/p>\n

Our research contributes a Canadian perspective to this emerging body of scholarship.<\/p>\n

The Local News Map <\/strong><\/p>\n

The Local News Map invites contributors to add information about changes \u2014 launches, closures, service increases and service reductions \u2014 affecting local broadcast, online and print media in Canadian communities (figure 1). To avoid the inclusion of opinion-only blogs, websites that just list local events, and advertising flyers that masquerade as newspapers, we define local news producers as news organizations that\u00a0first, demonstrate a commitment to accuracy and transparency and,\u00a0second, focus primarily on\u00a0the timely reporting and publication of original, verified news about people, places, issues and events in a geographically defined community.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: The Local News Research Project<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The map launched on June 14, 2016, on the journalism news website J-Source.ca <\/a>\u00a0and became the site\u2019s most viewed item that month. Our objectives in creating this online resource were to spark debate about what\u2019s happening to local journalism, generate data to inform that debate, track changes in local news availability, and help researchers identify patterns and trends in the local news sector. The map offers a big-picture idea of what is happening to local journalism, and it also allows users to zoom in and examine what is going on at the community level. Its filters can be changed to show what is happening to a specific type of news media \u2014 community newspapers for instance \u2014 and to highlight changes to local news outlets undertaken by different media proprietors.<\/p>\n

The map, admittedly, is only as good as the information that users add to it. We do, however, moderate the content for accuracy, so we think the marker information is reliable and that the trends we are seeing reflect reality.<\/p>\n

So, what are we seeing? Six months after its launch, the map tells a powerful and disturbing visual story of newsroom closures that far exceed the number of new ventures. When we last examined the data on January 3, 2017, there were 305 markers on the map highlighting changes to local news outlets dating back to 2008. Of those, 171 markers documented the closure of local news outlets in 138 communities. By comparison, only 51 markers highlighted the launch of new local news outlets.<\/p>\n

The data also point to other trends, such as<\/p>\n