The Big Story 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...
GUEST: April Lindgren, principal investigator for the Local News Research Project (LNRP) at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism.
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