Another One Bites the Dust
Mourning the Loss of a Local News Site
As reported by SooToday late last month, a source of local news is no more.
First Local News, which used to be known as SaultOnline, finally shuttered its digital doors.
Irrespective of how you feel about the site and its previous iterations, a loss of any local news is a sad story.
It’s especially sad because it’s not an anomaly. In fact, it’s part of a larger trend of local news sources across the country struggling to keep their doors open.
Before it became First Local News, SaultOnline garnered a reputation for being a plucky underdog competitor to the digital news supremacy of SooToday.
Although most wouldn’t have even noticed, the two sites sometimes traded barbs in their coverage. While some of this was unnecessary, the unfriendly competition sure did provide some good inside baseball entertainment value for the rest of us.
SaultOnline coverage wasn’t exactly award winning. Nonetheless, it was still a welcome addition to a local news landscape not exactly known for its diversity of opinion.
If there’s one thing that made SaultOnline so different, it was the fact that it didn’t simply reprint City of Sault Ste. Marie press releases or act as the stenographer of its senior leadership.
Instead, it actually tried to fight City Hall with critical coverage on occasion. Its antagonistic approach may not have worked in its favour, as the popular adage suggests, but it did show residents that they could ask questions of their municipal government if they were unhappy.
For that reason, it managed to attract a decent following, in no small part due to the reporting of Dan Gray, who seemed to chase stories around the clock.
Astonishingly, when SaultOnline transformed into First Local News under new ownership, the website and all the content of the former completely vanished.
I won’t speculate about why that happened, but it was a very unusual turn of events, and dare I say an insult to the people who created that content.
It’s easy to take journalism for granted because we usually reap the fruits of it for free and only see the final product. What we don’t see is the amount of time and resources required behind the scenes, and just how hard it can be to access records and get stakeholders on the record.
Additionally, while it’s not often acknowledged publicly, contemporary news reporting entails a huge emotional and psychological strain from being immersed in the depths of human nature and all sorts of tragedies.
In addition to the website disappearing act, the complete rebranding didn’t bode well for First Local News either.
With the current inability of users to share Canadian news content on Facebook, it would be difficult if not impossible to create the same brand recognition by starting from scratch and using mostly word of mouth.
Without attracting a steady stream of readers, advertisers will naturally flock to publications with more traffic for their ads, and that revenue is a lifeline for small publications.
In sum, these weren’t exactly ideal conditions for an outlet to thrive and grow.
So, the real question I’m left wondering is why someone would want to acquire a business that seemed doomed to fail.
The person at the helm of the company who kept it going told SooToday that it was “misrepresented” during the deal. That raises a lot of questions, to put it mildly.
In any case, Sault Ste. Marie needs more journalism and not less.
There are so many more stories to tell, questions to ask, and scandals to unfold.
To illustrate just one piece of the problem, look around Sault Ste. Marie and count the number of organizations and institutions that have a full-time staff member (or more) that handles their media and public relations.
Then, compare that to the number of journalists in the city that aren’t afraid to ask difficult questions of powerful people.
The gap between those two numbers is a reminder that there are many more people working to massage public perceptions in their favour than there are people that fearlessly pursue the truth.
When most producers of news content are hanging on by a thread and becoming dependent upon government subsidies, everyone loses. And that persistent state of financial precarity shows in local news coverage. It means there are precious few stories that delve deeply and find facts.
Want a concise summary of City Council business?
Want to know how the City is spending your money and why?
Want to know who’s contributing to political campaigns and lobbying different levels of government?
These simple types of information are increasingly becoming luxuries in small town Canada.
It’s hard to be optimistic given the grim state of Canadian news media right now but maybe mourning a loss can show just what’s at stake.
Unfortunately, we tend to only miss things once they’re gone.