By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
As media outlets across the country are forced to close, news deserts — communities with limited access to area news — have become increasingly common. The result? 2.5 million Canadians lack access to local news. In February, parent company Glacier Media announced the closure of Tri-City News, Burnaby Now, and New Westminster Record. Now, four local journalists are stepping up to fill the void with the support of their communities behind them.
On June 4, the reporters helped announce the “Save Our Local News” campaign. The Peak attended the kickoff event and spoke to some of those involved with the initiative.
Writers Janis Cleugh and Mario Bartel (Tri-City News), Cornelia Naylor (Burnaby Now), and Theresa McManus (New Westminster Record) were joined by managing director of the Union Cooperative Initiative (UCI) Jonny Sopotiuk, as well as Unifor representatives Gavin McGarrigle, Brian Gibson, and Bill Catterall at the event.
UCI supports workers in building co-ops, which are businesses owned by members seeking to “satisfy common needs,” while Unifor is “Canada’s largest private sector union.” Unifor Local 2000, which Gibson and Catterall work for, specifically “represents more than 700 media workers throughout BC, primarily the newspaper and printing industries.”
The campaign is in its fundraising phase, with the end goal being a new publication in place of the three recently defunded papers. “This grassroots project shows the tenacity and dedication of journalists who care about their communities, and the work they produce,” said McGarrigle. “This is not just a fight against news deserts, this is a fight for democracy,” he added.
“This grassroots project shows the tenacity and dedication of journalists who care about their communities, and the work they produce.” — Gavin McGarrigle, regional director, Unifor Western
This news outlet, which hopes to run in both print and digital, plans to be “community owned [and] worker run,” said Naylor. “We’re not going to have to worry about American owners pulling out funding and cutting local news,” added Sopotiuk. Postmedia, an American media conglomerate which operates in Canada, has been criticized for buying local papers and cutting funding in a “slash and burn” fashion. Postmedia owns over 130 publications, including the three BC publications The Vancouver Sun, The Province, and Prince George Post, as well as National Post. This practice of major companies buying and cutting, along with shifts to digital news, has largely contributed to the current news desert landscape. The Online News Act, though originally designed to help bring money back to news organizations, has resulted in additional harm due to Meta’s decision not to comply.
While the co-op initiative may be new to BC, this approach is not the first of its kind. The campaign is modelled after a news co-op in Quebec, formed in 2019 in response to six local papers losing their funding. According to J-Source, the freshly formed co-op saved six local news outlets and more than 300 jobs with support from the community and the Quebec government.
“We’ve already got two other communities, one in BC, one in Western Canada, that’s interested in the model,” Sopotiuk told The Peak. “If it’s successful here, we’re going to be looking at news deserts all across Canada, and providing a toolkit for communities to do this themselves.”
“Let’s get that newspaper out to the communities where it belongs, and where it’s been in BC for so many decades before,” McGarrigle said in his closing remarks. “Let’s put an end to this [local] news desert, and let’s support local, quality journalism.”
Those interested in supporting the campaign can donate at saveourlocalnews.ca
