In today’s “survival-of-the-nimblest” journalism industry, an October summit organized by media advocacy group Press Forward aims to get people excited about journalism and the future of community-centred media in Canada.
The write-up in the local paper about the St. Mary’s Blackberry Festival promises warm blackberry cobbler. For a newcomer to the community, this is reason enough to attend. But so much more awaits. Beyond the jars of blackberry jelly and stacks of frozen blackberry pies (made by volunteers from berries picked by volunteers – they’ll sell out fast, I’m told), locals offer up cups of tea and a seat at one of the tables. A young girl distributes napkins folded to look like boats. Suddenly, a grey Saturday transforms into a moment of feeling like you’re part of something bigger than yourself – and all this thanks to an article in the Metchosin Muse.
The latest edition of the Muse – a three-decade old, independent, non-profit community paper on Vancouver Island – offers up other, more waistline-friendly options to become involved in one’s community, from voting information for the upcoming provincial election to attending a talk about a one-of-a-kind university course exploring Indigenous law.
The Muse forms part of a nationwide news ecosystem where independent, community-centred journalism – “doing journalism in ways that serve communities by partnering with them, not just reporting on them,” according to a recent Agora Journalism Center report – is having its moment. In a move away from what media experts describe as “tick-box journalism” to journalism as “an act of care,” on-the-ground caring is about more than dishing out blackberry cobbler; it’s a way to combat a steady erosion of public trust in media to where just 39% of Canadians trust the news, a 20% decrease since 2018.
Media has been in a state of crisis for as long as I’ve been a journalist, but now it feels like the ship is really about to sink.
Andrea Houston, Ricochet Media/Press Forward
But regaining public trust is just one of many battles on the crisis-in-journalism front. For the past year, The Philanthropist Journal has been making the case that healthy news ecosystems are critical to the well-being of our communities, planet, democracy – and funders’ missions. But for some it’s too little too late. In “Canadian Journalism Is Dying, and Philanthropy Won’t Save It,” Andrea Houston, managing editor of Ricochet Media, cites the recent closure of a “registered journalism organization” (one of only 11 media outlets in the country to have achieved RJO status) as a final nail in the coffin. “Media has been in a state of crisis for as long as I’ve been a journalist,” she says, “but now it feels like the ship is really about to sink.”
But it hasn’t sunk, not quite yet, and Press Forward – an independent media advocacy group “dedicated to ensuring people in Canada have strong independent and community-focused journalism” – is doing what its name suggests: pressing forward. (Press Forward is not affiliated with the U.S. organization of the same name.) The association is hosting a first-of-its kind summit on October 26 and 27 for its nearly 30 members (including Ricochet), and the guest list includes you. You as in a reader of The Philanthropist Journal and, more importantly, you as in a member of the general public.
For Houston, who is also treasurer of Press Forward, the summit is less about crisis than “getting people as excited about journalism as I am,” she says, “and as excited about the ability of journalism to make people’s lives meaningful, to challenge power and push back on bad decisions that are being made, and highlight those bad decisions so, hopefully, as a collective society we can work together to change it.” While it’s easy to get a bunch of journalists fired up about journalism, Houston’s “main target” is you: “I want the general public to get on board and this not be an insular conversation just within the journalism industry.”
I want the general public to get on board and this not be an insular conversation just within the journalism industry.
Andrea Houston
This focus on inclusivity reflects an ethos at the heart of community-centred media. When journalism is “done at its best,” Houston says, “we’re a proxy for the public. We are here to be asking questions on their behalf. And so, if they’re not there with us as we fight for our lives in some cases, then, you know, we’re not doing our jobs right.”
The members of Press Forward, whose motto is “the future of Canadian journalism,” are working overtime to get it right. They’re winning awards, such as the Michener Award for Public Service Journalism, for coverage on Ontario’s Greenbelt scandal. They’re changing laws, going to the Supreme Court about “illegal and unconstitutional” birth alerts in Indigenous communities. They’re looking for ways to “radically serve the community,” says publisher Lela Savić in a Nieman Lab article, asking, “How do we create a space that becomes a service?”
From coast to coast, Press Forward members are embracing the spirit of community service. The Sprawl – “slow news for curious Calgarians” – is taking to the streets with a pop-up press teaching residents to make zines about their neighbourhoods. The Investigative Journalism Foundation is offering public access to more than 20,000 internal government documents in its Open by Default database. Toronto’s The Green Line is launching Documenters Canada – an initiative to recruit, train, and pay community members to attend and document public meetings. In Halifax, The Coast is publishing voting guides for each of the city’s districts. On Vancouver Island, The Discourse is offering a free email course called Food for Thought – a solutions-journalism series about Coast Salish food systems. “Food is culture, food is medicine, food is economics, food is spirituality and food is relationships,” writes Jared Qwustenuxun Williams, a Cowichan Tribes chef.
This is an opportunity for Press Forward unlike any we’ve ever seen, because there’s a lot of attention being paid to the press and independent media and what it can do.
Vicky Mochama, The Resolve/Press Forward
The time is ripe for independent media to be taking the spotlight. “I don’t think it’s out of my scope to say this is an opportunity for Press Forward unlike any we’ve ever seen,” says Vicky Mochama, senior editor at The Resolve and Press Forward’s programs and communications coordinator, “because there’s a lot of attention being paid to the press and independent media and what it can do.”
What it can do is not only fill gaps left by legacy media; it can also repair relationships with communities. A growing number of critics note that regaining public trust is key to journalism’s survival. In an article marking World News Day, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, notes, “Everything important about journalism and its role in our society hinges on its relation with the public – its political impact, its social significance, its sustainability as an independent institution.”
For Mochama, the types of relationships independent media foster provide reason to flip the switch from negative to something more positive. “We focus on the doom and gloom because I think we feel the loss,” she says, but there’s also a lot being gained. As an advocacy group, “It’s all the more important to us that we find strategies and find ways to keep [Press Forward members] going and let them grow and let them become the publications they want to be,” she says.
In addition, the summit provides a chance to connect with potential funders and perhaps discover they’re on the same page. “It’s a rare opportunity to have a lot of people in the room who are invested in things like storytelling, narrative communities, advancing issues to do with everything from democracy to health to child welfare,” Mochama says. “These are topics that I know funders are invested in, but these are also areas that journalism has long been telling stories in, and where our members are really just working to drive narrative change, but also political change, policy change.”
Summit attendees can expect a “pulse-check” conversation from board chair and Tyee publisher Jeanette Ageson, lightning talks from publishers sharing “one great trick,” interactive exercises, and a “surprise” keynote. Advocacy for smaller, independent, non-legacy media in Canada is rare, Mochama says, so she has a “big ambition” for the summit. She’s keeping expectations in check, however. “I think it’s really important to get small balls rolling and see what happens from there.”
Dozens of new outlets, largely online, are innovating to build new business models for journalism by doubling down on their relationships with their audiences.
Emma Gilchrist, The Narwhal
Hope springs from such small balls. “As the big guys get little, many of the little ones are getting bigger,” a 2021 Maclean’s article about the growth of independent media notes. In Nieman Lab’s 2021 predictions, Linda Solomon Wood, publisher of Canada’s National Observer, wrote about Canada’s “independent media universe,” where “young and exciting” companies had formed an organization called Press Forward. Founding member and Narwhal editor-in-chief Emma Gilchrist noted at the time that “a quiet revolution” had taken place: “Dozens of new outlets, largely online, are innovating to build new business models for journalism by doubling down on their relationships with their audiences.” In And Now, the News: A National News Media Policy for Canada, the authors note that in a landscape where the newspaper business – the “backbone of Canada’s news and journalism industry” – had collapsed after 225 years, more than 200 such sites had launched since 2013, adding that “one person’s crisis is often another’s opportunity.”
But these days, no one is immune from crisis. The latest report from the Local News Research Map shows that while 387 local news outlets have launched since 2008, one-third have subsequently closed. Some outlets cite the Meta news ban as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Because of the ban, engagement with local news outlets has fallen by nearly 60%, according to Old News, New Reality: A Year of Meta’s News Ban in Canada. But good news may be on the horizon: Canada “bucked the trend” this year with an increase in the number of people paying for news, from 11% in 2023 to 15% in 2024.
Press Forward’s “platform agnostic” (digital-only, print, radio, podcast, hybrid) non-profit and for-profit members define themselves as “feisty,” or “a reimagining of the community newspaper,” or “journalism for transformation,” where survival as an independent is touted as a badge of honour. The Tyee’s recent 20th anniversary was hailed as a near miracle, testament to a changing media landscape: “Two decades is a blip for legacy Canadian newspapers, born in the 1800s. But it’s an eon in digital media, making The Tyee a bridge between two very different eras of news,” notes an article in The Hub’s Future of News series.
The feistiness of these independent news outlets is not without precedent. In the foreword of The Weeklies: Biggest Circulation in Town, published in 1972, C. Irwin McIntosh writes, “Outside of the great metropolitan centres the weeklies continue to confound urban despots who for generations have been predicting their demise.” According to the latest data from News Media Canada, whose local-news motto is “Put your money where your house is,” 45% of the country’s 949 community papers (today’s “weeklies”) remain independent, as opposed to just 4% of the daily papers.
There’s a hunger for a venue for Canadian independent outlets to get together. A lot of us are kind of working in silo.
Tai Huynh, The Local/Press Forward
Tai Huynh, Press Forward board director and founding editor-in-chief and publisher of Toronto’s The Local, hopes to continue to confound. As The Local celebrates five years, he says that “there’s a hunger for a venue for Canadian independent outlets to get together.” Summits exploring the business of independent journalism – how to sustain it, how to make it successful – don’t exist in Canada. “A lot of us are kind of working in silo,” he says.
Top of the agenda for day two of the summit (exclusively for Press Forward members) will explore “a clear purpose” for the independent journalism sector: “Where we see it going, and what kind of supports or advocacy a group like Press Forward can [offer] to help push that sector to a place where you can find success as a whole, and then for members as well.” It’s a chance “to open up the hood, so to speak, about what we’re all doing, what’s helpful to be a successful independent journalism outlet in 2024.”
For The Local – an RJO – philanthropic support has been an essential ingredient to its success. Huynh discovered early on that funders were less interested in “saving journalism” than strengthening communities. Initially, it was relatively easy to identify foundations in the Toronto sphere – city, private, public – that “could potentially be interested in the work of The Local,” he says. But after five years, this is evolving. “I think it’s becoming increasingly more difficult,” he says. “I don’t know that it’s just me not being out there more to seek other funders, or whether we’ve kind of exhausted the landscape in terms of organizations that have that kind of affinity. Maybe there aren’t more Toronto Foundations or United Ways or whatever out there.”
Having RJO status has helped move beyond relying so heavily on funding from foundations, Huynh says, where individual readers “who love what we do and just give us 20 bucks a month or something like that” is a fast-growing part of their revenue mix. And that seems to be the sweet spot, he says: build your reader base, get those readers to take the next step and support you. Examples such as The Narwhal – whose ability to build readership has earned accolades from many in the industry – are impressive, he says.
In today’s survival-of-the-nimblest journalism industry, a mix of revenue sources can mean you might make it to your 10th anniversary. “Philanthropic dollars alone cannot repair the journalism industry’s tattered balance sheets,” write the authors of Inspirit Foundation’s Funding Journalism: A Guide to Philanthropic Support for Canadian Media. But they can certainly help bump them back into the black. Advertising revenues were $3.5 billion less in 2021 than in 2012, they note. In 2021, foundations in Canada dispersed $10 billion. Canadian foundations collectively hold more than $120 billion in assets, with a requirement to disburse a minimum of 5% of their total assets annually. Three dozen of more than 11,000 foundations are funding the activities of media outlets. “News organizations and organized philanthropy are still relative strangers,” the authors note. “For a culture of philanthropic giving to journalism to thrive, the two sides need to become better acquainted.”
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Register for Press Forward’s Future of Independent Media summit here. The event will be held at OCAD University in Toronto on October 26. If you are unable to attend and would like to stay connected to this conversation, stay tuned for more coverage in the upcoming weeks.
