Imagine two neighbouring small Canadian towns. Both leafy burgs with the kinds of concerns Canadian towns are facing: increasing rents, an opioid crisis, budget crises, to name few. One of the towns has a newspaper that republishes articles chosen by editors in the next province and a radio station that announces the traffic and the weather. Meanwhile, the town next door has one newspaper with three staff reporters, a copy editor and a photojournalist, all led by a managing editor and a publisher. Which one is the “news desert?”
That’s why April Lindgren prefers the term “local news poverty.”
“It allows us to create a continuum and show that some places are underserved, but some are really underserved compared to others,” she says.
In February of 2024, she published a story for the Walrus titled, “Local News Is Dying. The Consequences Are Worse than You Think” that uncovers what local news poverty really looks like for Canadians. When a swirl of rumors about a serial killer and disappeared men hit the small Ontario town of Smith Falls, Lindgren finds that there’s something else missing from the picture: the ability for the community to learn any truths about what happened.
Recently retired from teaching at TMU, Lindgren looks at what happens in communities – from watching the nightly news to navigating emergency situations like wildfires – when reliable, accessible and consistent news has all but disappeared. She says, “I wanted to go beyond producing academic studies and reports to looking at how that translates into reality on the ground in different communities. I didn’t have to scratch the surface very much to find a gazillion examples. “
Lindgren is committed to researching local news poverty, particularly through a database she maintains, the Local News Map. Press Forward called Lindgren to talk about journalism as a public good, the signs of hope, and how publishers can better connect with the communities they serve.
Read the rest of this article on the Press Forward website, where it was originally published.
