MAP EXCLUSIVE - Save Our Local News

The dramatic drop in news media all across Canada is alarming. The number of full-time journalists in the country dropped by 1,500 to 10,900 last year. The disappearance of newspapers, radio stations and news websites in urban centres confirms this crisis spreads beyond rural communities. Three out of four Canadianssay local news is important to them and they rely on it to know what is happening in their community.

In February of 2025, Glacier Media announced they would be shuttering 3 community newspapers in British Columbia due to “financial challenges.” The “Burnaby Now,” “New Westminster Record” and “Tri-City News” laid off most of their employees in May, 2024 and closed print publications for all three. These newspapers represent the only local news coverage for the three respective municipalities. Ten union members from Unifor Local 2000 were caught in these layoffs. The local president, Brian Gibson, has worked almost every role in a newsroom, but the sting of these layoffs was different he told MAP. “I grew up in Burnaby and the Burnaby paper told us everything. There’s a hole here now. Clients want to advertise but there’s nowhere to go. Reliable news by professional journalists is paramount to our democracy.”  So, when Brian received a call in March about resuscitating the local news scene in BC, he realized an incredible opportunity afoot.

The call was from the Union Co-operative Initiative . The UCI brings expertise in building and incubating co-operatives. A co-op is a business founded by a group of people seeking to satisfy common needs. In this case, journalists seeking employment and a community seeking local news coverage, just needed a matchmaker.  The UCI advises on finding startup money, advertisers, subscribers and building a sustainable business model. They currently have 12 active co-ops and 41 potential co-ops at different stages of incubation. This model has given hope to the group in BC. Gibson connected the UCI with 4 veteran journalists who were committed to keeping news coverage alive in BC – Janice, Mario, Theresa & Cornelius. “I’ve been in this industry over 40 years, and we think corporate ownership of local news is the problem,” Mario told MAP.  “This can give us hope. We’ve been living under this cloud of cutbacks and diminished resources. We think there is a path to sustainability.”

The proposed business model would revive newspaper operations through a community-funded co-op. A GoFundMe campaign was launched on June 5^th with a goal of raising $100,000 in startup money. Unifor got the ball rolling with a $5,000 donation at the opening press conference. The vision is encapsulated in the co-op’s slogan – ‘worker-owned, community-focused.’  

The team went to all lengths to embed themselves in the community. They did flyer drops, meet-and-greets, fundraisers and individualized presentations to attract donors and subscribers. After getting to the halfway point of their GoFundMe target in October, the co-op made their official debut as a news organization, with the digital publication The Freshet News. The response to the creation of an unbiased, hyper-local, regular news outlet has been overwhelmingly positive in these BC communities. But Mario acknowledges the bigger test of this co-op will be the ability to get a print publication off the ground and running: “A print publication raises the stakes considerably, trying to serve an area with a population of 600k, and serve advertisers.”

Apart from the 2019 community co-op which saved 6 Quebec newspapers and 350 jobs from going extinct, Gibson has one specific experience that leads him to believe the print publication will succeed. In 1979 there was union strike at “The Vancouver Province,” which lasted 8 months. The union continued to operate an alternate newspaper through a shell corporation, and they were very successful, with good revenue and unbiased articles. The company responded by giving employees of “The Province” an 18% salary increase to end the strike and shut down the union paper. Gibson held that valuable experience with him for decades and now he sees the parallels with the UCI.

Things are now lined up for the first media co-op in Western Canadian history.  The management structure is yet to be fully determined, but there will be a board of governors, likely featuring the 4 veteran journalists driving this project. Mario and his team know that success on the west coast could lead to bigger things around the country: “This can be a model for other communities, and if we can guide them that would be a great thing. We can start changing the conversation around local news.”

Visit the campaign here: www.saveourlocalnews.ca

Bookmark Freshet news: www.freshetnews.ca