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<\/p>\n\u201cThe challenges of creating an up-to-date list of local news outlets at the community level have vexed researchers and policymakers for some time,\u201d said the document, noting prior lists have tended to be incomplete and to become outdated quickly.<\/p>\n
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April Lindgren, professor emerita at Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s journalism school, is one of the academics working on the project.<\/p>\n
Lindgren said that while there probably aren\u2019t many absolute news deserts \u2014 places where there is no local news coverage at all \u2014 there are regions where news outlets aren\u2019t meeting the \u201ccritical information needs\u201d of the community.<\/p>\n
They might be places where newsroom staffing levels have dropped to a level where they can\u2019t consistently cover municipal politics, businesses or the local environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe they still try to cover all of those things, but the newsrooms are so diminished that it\u2019s very hit-and-miss what they pick up on,\u201d Lindgren said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Lindgren has been a proponent of a news directory for years \u2014 not just to target government supports where they\u2019re needed but to help Canadians find dependable local news sources.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s getting more and more challenging for people to find reliable local news in this era of AI misinformation and disinformation and pink slime websites that imitate local news,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Adding to the problem is the ongoing ban on news content on Meta\u2019s platforms. That means Canadians aren\u2019t encountering local news by chance on Facebook, she said, while the emergence of AI summaries means people are no longer clicking on links to news websites.<\/p>\n
The Investigative Journalism Foundation is using AI to help the federal government compile the directory.<\/p>\n
Lindgren said that before AI, there was no cost-effective, efficient way to identify all news outlets in Canada\u2019s 5,000 municipalities and keep the list up to date. She said AI can help by doing a first pass to collect the data, which will then be reviewed by a network of human verifiers, including local librarians.<\/p>\n
Max Hartshorn, technology manager at the Investigative Journalism Foundation, said the project uses a computer program to comb through data from multiple sources, including Statistics Canada and Google, to identify local news outlets.<\/p>\n
The results of that data collection in a particular community might include thousands of URLs, some of which \u2014 results with a Facebook URL, for example \u2014 are easy to identify and eliminate as non-local news sources.<\/p>\n
The researchers ask the AI \u201cto basically make its best determination as to whether or not this website is a local news outlet for that community,\u201d Hartshorn said.<\/p>\n
After the researchers have a refined list that may have 40 or 50 potential news outlets, those are passed on to human verifiers, he said. <\/p>\n
Hartshorn added in an email that one benefit of the machine-assisted approach is that the AI is \u201ccapable of surfacing new outlets that our reviewers had no prior knowledge of, for example, small community and ethnic media outlets that fly under the radar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is important since we want to ensure our survey covers the entire Canadian media landscape,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The memo drafted for the deputy minister of Canadian Heritage said there has been international interest in the project, including from Australia and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n
The first stage of the project was a proof-of-concept that cost the government $110,000, the document said. The second phase will map news outlets in all communities in Ontario and Quebec. Phase 3, set to be completed in 2028, will expand the data set to the rest of country.<\/p>\n
The document says the government is looking for funding partners for the second and third phases of the project and suggests Statistics Canada, the CRTC and CBC\/Radio-Canada could contribute.<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson didn\u2019t answer directly when asked if the government has secured the necessary funding and whether the project definitely will be going ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Department of Canadian Heritage is currently assessing the second phase of the project,\u201d the spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The statement said the first phase found \u201cthe decline of local news outlets is disproportionately affecting smaller, rural, and lower-income communities. The absence of local news leads to lower civic engagement, increased misinformation, and rising political polarization.\u201d<\/p>\n
It added that existing initiatives to address news gaps include the Local Journalism Initiative, which by March 2027 will have contributed $128.8 million toward the creation of local journalism.<\/p>\n
The Local Journalism Initiative is one of the government supports for journalism listed in the Canadian Heritage document, alongside the Online News Act and fiscal measures like the Journalism Labour Tax Credit.<\/p>\n
Lindgren already runs a crowdsourced map that tracks closures of news outlets and the establishment of new ones. The Local News Research Project has found that since 2008, 613 local news outlets have closed in 391 Canadian communities, while 270 opened and remain in operation in 196 communities.<\/p>\n
Magda Konieczna, a Concordia University associate professor of journalism who is also working on the directory, said as local news disappears or shrinks, \u201cwe see some of these societal impacts like loneliness, disengagement, mistrust.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, \u201cwe saw how disinformation can fill those gaps when folks don\u2019t know where to look, when they don\u2019t trust the official messaging.\u201d<\/p>\n
Konieczna said there is no reliable data indicating where the problem is most acute.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it certain neighbourhoods of Toronto or of Montreal that have problems with access to news? Is in more rural areas, which is what we sort of tend to think?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published in March 2025 found 2.5 million Canadians live in a postal code with only one news outlet, or none at all.<\/p>\n
It said that Canada has seen a net loss of 11 per cent of print media outlets since 2008, including both newspapers and online publications. Private broadcast outlets experienced a net loss of nine per cent.<\/p>\n
The report also said the urban areas suffering most from news deprivation were the suburbs of large cities, including Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have their own city governments, they have their own school boards, they\u2019ve got hospitals, and they have almost no local news coverage,\u201d said David Macdonald, who authored the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.<\/p>\n
Macdonald said about 25 news outlets are closing every year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of 2024, we counted just over 2,900 local outlets in Canada, but that was a year and a half ago,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably lower today.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 8, 2026. <\/p>\n
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe challenges of creating an up-to-date list of local news outlets at the community level have vexed researchers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-850587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}