{"id":264714,"date":"2017-01-25T11:30:32","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T16:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/after-the-local-newspaper-closes-shop\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T21:26:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:26:18","slug":"after-the-local-newspaper-closes-shop","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2017\/01\/after-the-local-newspaper-closes-shop\/","title":{"rendered":"After the local newspaper closes shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wally Nugent and Brenda Stonehouse were reviewing the ad they planned to run in the Lindsay<\/em> Post <\/em>for Canada Day. They were key organizers of the community\u2019s Canada Day festivities, and the paper was where people looked to find out about local events.<\/p>\n

But then their phones started pinging with shocking news: The Post <\/em>was closing. It would shut its doors for good, after 152 years, that afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we just went back to planning our ad,\u201d says Nugent, who owns a barber shop downtown that is a hub for local gossip and political chatter. \u201cIt didn\u2019t seem possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lindsay Post<\/em> covered news and posted details of local events for the amalgamated municipality of Kawartha Lakes in south central Ontario, a city of 73,000 composed of several rural communities. Population-wise, Kawartha Lakes is bigger than Prince George, British Columbia, Sarnia, Ontario, or any of New Brunswick\u2019s biggest cities.<\/p>\n

The Post\u2019s<\/em> history stretched back to 1861, six years before Confederation. That\u2019s when the Beaverton, Ontario, Canadian Post<\/em> pulled up stakes and re-established itself in Lindsay.<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em>\u2019s story is like that of so many other community newspapers in Canada. It was originally an independently owned operation, run by the Wilson family as the Lindsay Daily Post <\/em>from the 1890s to the 1980s, when it was sold to the Thomson newspaper group.<\/p>\n

Thomson sold the Post to the Hollinger Group in 1995, which in turn sold it to the Osprey Media group in 2001. By 2007, it was sold to Quebecor, under the control of the publishing giant\u2019s Sun Media Group, and shed the word \u201cdaily\u201d from its masthead as it shrank to a twice-weekly publication. It closed its doors completely only six years later along with several other papers in the Sun chain.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe writing was probably on the wall but maybe we were all in denial,\u201d says Lisa Gervais, one of two reporters still working for the Post<\/em> at the end of its life.<\/p>\n

Sun Media Group had stopped replacing the editor when he went on vacation, leaving Gervais and her colleague to write stories, take photos and put the paper together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no, \u2018We\u2019re in trouble. What can we do to salvage this?\u2019\u201d said Gervais, who is now the editor of The Highlander<\/em>, a weekly paper in Haliburton, about an hour north of Lindsay.<\/p>\n

As the Ryerson University School of Journalism\u2019s Local News Project has highlighted<\/a>, when local news outlets close, the vacuum is usually not filled completely.<\/p>\n

In Kawartha Lakes, things went from bad to worse for citizens trying to keep up with local news after the Lindsay<\/em> Post<\/em> closed.<\/p>\n

Seven months later, the other Lindsay paper, Kawartha Lakes This Week<\/em>, changed its publication schedule from twice to once a week. (Metroland Media, which publishes Kawartha Lakes This Week<\/em>, a tabloid with a circulation of 30,000, had bought independent weeklies in the Kawartha Lakes villages of Bobcaygeon and Fenelon Falls and folded them in 2004.)<\/p>\n

Now Kawartha Lakes<\/em> This Week<\/em> and the free news magazine Kawartha Promoter<\/em> (delivered by mail every two weeks to about 14,000 homes) are the only print outlets based in the city.<\/p>\n

Things aren\u2019t much brighter on the broadcasting side. CHEX-TV in Peterborough cut its Kawartha Lakes-based reporter more than four years ago. Lindsay\u2019s radio station, BOB-FM, which was independent until the early 2000s and is now owned by Bell Media, has one full-time and one part-time news staffer and no news director.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t pretend to be news-centric, but we do definitely want to be a source of information locally,\u201d said BOB-FM program director Dave Illman. \u201cThe more local news sources you have, the more balanced news coverage you\u2019re going to get.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes an election, for instance, \u201cyou might know who the candidates are, but where do you go to find out where they stand on things?\u201d said Illman.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Downtown Lindsay, Ontario. Photo: Nancy Payne.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People living in Kawartha Lakes are among the most underserved in the country as far as political news is concerned.<\/p>\n

A study of news coverage of the 2015 election<\/a> by the Ryerson Local News Project counted only 4.7 election-related news stories per 10,000 people in the community. Nearby Peterborough, by comparison, had 20.18 stories per 10,000 people.<\/p>\n

Since the Post<\/em>\u2019s closure, there have been provincial (June 2014), municipal (October 2014) and federal (October 2015) elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe media are more stretched,\u201d says Jamie Schmale, the local MP (Conservative) and a former news director at the Lindsay radio station. In 2015, he noticed, \u201cthey couldn\u2019t cover as much of what we were doing. We included the local media but put more effort into social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the problem isn\u2019t just with covering big political events like elections.<\/p>\n

When Mike Puffer was editor of the Lindsay Post<\/em> from 1988 to 1991 (he was a reporter and sports editor before that), there were enough reporters to attend meetings of school boards and council committees as well as full council meetings, where sometimes five or six reporters would show up.<\/p>\n

Now This Week<\/em> is the sole publication in Kawartha Lakes regularly covering city hall, and it goes to press on Wednesdays before the weekly council meeting has wrapped up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou open the paper and you see dates that have passed,\u201d says Kawartha Lakes mayor Andy Letham. \u201cThings are happening fast but people are not getting the news fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you only have one reporter, who\u2019s the voice of the checks and balances?\u201d Gervais says. \u201cAny two reporters in any town are going to have different reactions to what happens in a council meeting. Then at least the reader gets two perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as if the public has lost its appetite for news in the community. This Week<\/em>\u2019s website generates a healthy number of page views per month, a large proportion of which come from readers in Kawartha Lakes,\u00a0 according to editor-in-chief Lois Tuffin.<\/p>\n

Twitter discussions, whether through BOB-FM or This Week<\/em>, or via people\u2019s individual feeds.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s good and bad, says Tuffin. \u201cI love the immediacy of it, but there\u2019s a lack of context and a lot of half-truths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gervais cites a 2016 incident in Haliburton where police responded to a call involving someone with a gun. Social media turned it into a gunman on the loose after killing three people, when it was nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media is a misnomer. I don\u2019t find it particularly sociable. It\u2019s mean and it\u2019s nasty and it\u2019s gossipy. There needs to be something else,\u201d says Max Miller, publisher of the Kawartha<\/em> Promoter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The lack of reliable local coverage is a problem, Schmale says. \u201cEveryone with an iPhone seems to think they\u2019re a journalist now. That\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing the emergence of fake news. The value of having local news will never go away, but the lack of competition is not helping things in our area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond politics and accountability, the loss of the Post <\/em>and other media has affected charities, schools, churches. It\u2019s tough to spread the word about their community initiatives says Puffer, now the communications officer for a charitable organization. \u201cWe\u2019re all trying to fit into that very small space and it\u2019s physically impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s less room for death notices, letters to the editor, events listings, photos\u2014the things that connect people. \u201cWe used to hold press conferences for events. Now when you\u2019re doing something they say \u2018Take a picture and send it to us,\u201d\u2019 says Nugent, who is heavily involved in civic events, and initiatives for youth through the Optimist Club.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Barber shop owner and community volunteer Wally Nugent. Photo: Nancy Payne.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is there hope for a news renaissance in Kawartha Lakes, after so many media groups failed to sustain a 152-year-old paper?<\/p>\n

MP Jamie Schmale thinks so \u2013 pointing to the Haliburton area of his riding. With a year-round population of just 17,000, Haliburton County has the weekly Minden Times<\/em> and Haliburton County Echo<\/em> (owned by the same company), the Highlander<\/em>, MOOSE-FM, and community radio station Canoe FM.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at what\u2019s happening in Haliburton \u2014 they have a ton of content and their advertising pages are quite full,\u201d says Schmale.<\/p>\n

If three papers can survive in Haliburton, surely Kawartha Lakes can support more than one, Nugent says. \u201cIn the perfect world, half a dozen local business leaders would sit down and say \u2018let\u2019s start a newspaper.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller of the\u00a0Kawartha Promoter<\/em>\u00a0is willing to bet the appetite for local news and information \u2014 and the advertising dollars to support it \u2014 will sustain her planned expansion of the Promoter<\/em> delivery area this spring. She\u2019s realistic about the returns, but businesses need to advertise, she says. \u201cI don\u2019t need to make a profit, but I do need to pay the bills.\u201d<\/p>\n

The additional coverage will be welcome, says Nugent, as will the message it sends about Kawartha Lakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have your paper die is an indication of how your community is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article is part of the special feature\u00a0The Future of Canadian Journalism<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo: Nancy Payne<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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