Recently, the Guelph Mercury, one of Canada's oldest newspapers, went out of print. It's still online, but losing there paper was a blow to the community, not to mention the loss of a bunch of jobs. Shortly thereafter, Postmedia, Canada's largest newspaper owner announced massive cutbacks. Publications were shut down, newsrooms were merged. Now, the London Free Press seems to be morphing into the National Post with a few pages of local news.
It can be hard to care about newspapers in our world that seems to be too connected. And after reading Christie Blanchford's coverage of the Jian Gomeshi trial, I'm really looking forward Postmedia's eventual collapse.
But even if you don't like particular papers, you have to admit that they fill a very important niche: local news. The only other source is local TV newcasts, if your city is big enough to have one.
It's one of the weird aspects of our information society: the lack of local information. On the one hand, it's easier than ever to stay informed about what's happening world-wide. On the other, communicating and staying on touch with individuals is easy. But in between, there's an unserviced aspect of communication, one for informing yourself about your community.
Yes, there are possibilities: many neighbourhood associations have their own web pages. And a lot of communities have a social media presence. The problem is, you're reliant on other members of your community taking the initiative; we haven't reached the point where this kind of thing is expected, so it often doesn't happen, or people don't know where to find it.
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