Local Media as Social Infrastructure
May 3rd is the UN World Press Freedom Day which serves as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom - which feels particularly pressing in these times. In fact, “according to UNESCO’s World Trends Report 2022–2025, press freedom has experienced its steepest decline since 2012. This decline is comparable to that seen during the most unstable periods of the 20th century – the two world wars and the Cold War.”
We see the fragility of local journalism as newsrooms continue to shrink or close entirely. As well, “information manipulation, including the use of AI by malicious actors, is weakening trust and national security.”
World Press Freedom Day reminds us that “by fostering access to reliable information, accountability, dialogue, and trust, press freedom and independent journalism are key to peace, economic recovery, sustainable development, and human rights.” It is an opportunity to:
celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;
assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;
defend the media from attacks on their independence;
and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
Ink-stained Wretches is a grassroots advocacy group dedicated to building a culture of appreciation for quality journalism in aid of democracy. On May 5th, Ink-Stained Wretches hosted its third local journalism festival at the Princess Cinemas. The movie they selected to highlight the importance of journalism couldn’t have been more appropriate: Spotlight. Prior to the movie screening, there was a panel speaking to the current local journalism ecosystem in Waterloo Region.
The event was offered with support from Midtown Radio, the Princess Cinema, and Waterloo Region Community Foundation (WRCF). The panel was moderated by Shannon Knelsen and speakers included former Regional Chair Ken Seiling, Stewart Grant (of Grant Haven Media), and yours truly.
The panel explored key themes shaping the journalism ecosystem in Waterloo Region, including current challenges and emerging opportunities, the evolving role of technology in news consumption, and the search for sustainable funding models. These discussions were grounded in the idea of local journalism as a vital form of social infrastructure.
Social Infrastructure and Local Journalism
“Social infrastructure is the glue that binds communities together, and it is just as real as the infrastructure for water, power, or communications, although it’s often harder to see,” author Eric Klinenberg stated on the 99 percent invisible podcast. Libraries, schools, community pools, community gardens, and parks are all great examples of social infrastructure. According to Klinenberg, these are the spaces where, “we become more likely to interact with people around us, and connect to the broader public. If we neglect social infrastructure, we tend to grow more isolated, which can have serious consequences.”
One of the important things about social infrastructure, compared to physical infrastructure, is it tends to be more malleable. Consider libraries, for example. The building itself may not change for generations, but the programming absolutely does. It can easily change to better address the interests and needs of the community it serves. I’d argue that local media is similar in that it offers a local community perspective that big media simply can’t provide. Because it’s right there in the community, it can be far more responsive. When we see local media outlets shrinking or closing up entirely, we lose out on that critical community connection.
The panel’s moderator Shannon Knelsen noted that the Waterloo Region Community Foundation defines social infrastructure as “the system of shared places, experiences, and resources that enable people to connect with each other, build the bridges necessary to build trust and civic participation, and to create a sense of belonging and well-being. Social infrastructure is the system that enables widespread sustainable community development.” When we look at local media through the lens of social infrastructure, it’s easy to see how media works to facilitate the system of shared spaces and experiences by informing the population with timely factual information to create a shared understanding of public affairs.
“People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures—not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow.”
― Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
To start the discussion, Knelsen argued that “Information is now faster, more accessible, and more diverse than ever before, but it’s also more overwhelming, more polarized, and at times harder to trust.”
I shared the concern that when anybody can become a creator, how do you verify information? How do you know which outlets should be a trusted news source? Yet, the flipside to that is the removal of barriers to creating content. As I said at the panel, “there has been a long history of stories that have been silenced and not told for many years. When anybody can become a creator, those stories are more easily accessed, produced, created and shared.”
The panel discussed the local media ecosystem in Waterloo Region. We noted that while far too many newsrooms and publications have closed down across the country in recent years, Waterloo Region actually seems to be a bit of anomaly in this area.
The WRCF Vital Signs report states, “Waterloo Region has retained a remarkably diverse and robust media ecosystem. The Waterloo Region Record, weekly community newspapers, CTV Kitchener and Rogers TV, CBC, 570 NewsRadio, CKMS, CKWR, Midtown Radio, The Community Edition. This combination of print, radio, TV, other audio, and online outlets makes Waterloo Region an exception in the current media landscape, where many communities have seen many of their similar local media institutions shutter.”
However, there are still fewer opportunities to get traditional local media than their used to be. “Whether it’s programs, services, or public spaces, the information gap is real – and it’s getting wider as the region’s media ecosystem shrinks,” says the Vital Signs report.
This rings true for me. I can’t tell you the number of things I’m subscribed to, paid and unpaid, traditional media and newer media. In order to stay on top of what’s happening in our community, I need to be intentional about doing so, spending time searching out the information and reading through everything that lands in my inbox; that takes both a financial investment from me as well as an investment of my time. I consider myself privileged to be able to do so, but what does that mean for folks who simply don’t have the time, money, or capacity to commit to such endeavours?
What have we lost?
Panelist Stewart Grant, who purchased his hometown newspaper, the St. Mary’s Independent in 2014, and has since grown to 12 publications, speaks to what we’ve lost with our shift from traditional media. “We’ve lost those shared experiences, whether it’s news, whether it’s music, whether it’s TV shows. Those shared experiences, that sense of community, is really missing. I think what our challenge is at the newspaper is, is to create that again.”
Former Regional Chair Ken Seiling also weighed in on this issue. “I think the problem that we have now increasingly is, how do people access their information and, with the media, I don’t think we get the breadth of coverage or the wideness, the richness, that could be found in those old newsrooms. And so I think it’s really important to find ways to do that, to recover some of that within our communities and with the news coverage.”
Seiling also described a shift towards “provincial-style media relations” which allows only a designated spokesperson to represent the municipality’s perspective. He says, “When I was still at the region, every staff member was allowed to speak to the media. There was no restriction on staff people, and if they couldn’t find somebody, we had another person who could find somebody within 10 minutes, and they spoke to them. I think that creates a level of trust that’s necessary for local government.”
Why is this so important?
Leni Spooner, author of Between The Lines, observes, “In hundreds of communities, there is no longer a reporter covering city hall. No one sitting through the budget meetings, the planning hearings, the late-night votes on capital expenditures. Without local journalism, municipal decisions don’t just go unscrutinized. They go unreported entirely. For most residents, staying informed about what their council is doing requires a level of deliberate effort that borders on a part-time job. Agenda packages running to hundreds of pages. Reserve fund statements published but never explained. Decisions made and implemented before most people know they were on the table. Municipal governance isn’t invisible by design. But the effect is the same.”
Local media serves as a connecting point, allowing people to learn about their community, creating a shared identity and and sense of belonging. In fact, at the risk of overstating things, I believe strong local journalism is foundational to democracy itself. Given what we’re seeing south of the border, and even creeping closer to home, we need to be vigilant in strengthening our democracy through journalism. Add to that the challenges around misinformation and disinformation, both of the unintentional and intentional varieties, as well as AI, it’s clear that real, verified information is under attack.
“Without democracy, there will be no independent press, and without an independent press, there can be no democracy.” - Martin Baron, Collision of Power.
The Vital Signs report considers access to local information as “foundational social infrastructure”. Without it, people may be limited in their ability to participate in civic life, access help, or connect with one another. “Closing the information gap will take coordination across governments, community groups, funders, and residents – but it’s essential to building a region that works for everyone.”
What specifically needs to be saved?
The panel was asked, aside from local council updates, which ‘news beats’ need to be preserved. Stewart Grant made the argument for what he called ‘soft journalism’. “It’s things like kids sports, celebrating fundraisers, that are happening in the community, getting people involved. That whole sense of community, I think is so important and that’s something that’s being lost. I don’t know how many of you had yourself in the newspaper the first time because of kids sports or maybe a school speech or something that maybe nowadays wouldn’t make it into the major papers but that got you your first taste of a of a newspaper. I think that’s really important.”
My response was the arts beat. “We have a really vibrant arts community in Waterloo Region. But I don’t think we highlight and celebrate that as much as we should. We hear of a decline in our sense of belonging - to me, arts is an important part of the remedy to that. It brings us together in meaning-making ways - whether that’s looking at something in a new way, considering a different perspective, or simply enjoying ourselves together as we listen to a local band in a cozy pub downtown.”
What can we do to improve things?
Much of the work that’s being done to fill in the gaps of what we’ve been losing with traditional media relies heavily, if not solely, on the efforts of volunteers. I think too, of the many newsletters, zines, collaborations that started up but are no longer around. Might they still be here if we had a new model of investing deeply in telling our local stories?
“All social infrastructures require investment, whether for development or upkeep, and when we fail to build and maintain it, the material foundations of our social and civic life erode.”
—Eric Klinenberg
As outlined in the Vital Signs report, a few digital-first outlets have stepped in. “CambridgeToday.ca launched in 2021 with two staff members. Midtown Radio, a volunteer-run community station founded in 2019, offers 24/7 streaming with a focus on local music and arts. TL;WR provides a weekly list of what to do – events, music, food, and more in Waterloo Region. Textile, a community arts collective and mentorship program focused on new and emerging writers and artists in Waterloo Region, has developed The Walldog to create space for critical arts writing and research.”
Ken Seiling argued for the importance of simply getting involved in the local issues happening in your community. He provided a clear example of community volunteers shifting the narrative as Waterloo Region prepared for the arrival of light rail transit. “Young people actually were a great help to us during the eight years of planning for the ion. There was a significant amount of opposition at that time. The reporter who covered us was opposed to the project right from day one. But a group called TriTAG, were a group of young people, university people, and they ran blogs and social media and all sorts of things, giving the information. We were giving the information as well, but it came from a third-party source, and they provided a very important and critical role to the whole success of getting that project approved.”
Stewart Grant says that there are some simple ways governments can support local journalism. “The province of Ontario announced in 2024 that they were going to require their largest four agencies to spend a minimum of 25% of their existing advertising budget with Ontario-based media, which of course they should. So, we’re not necessarily spending more, but let’s take what you’ve got and let’s keep that local and invest in local jobs and communities.”
The Vital Signs report outlines several actions that could help strengthen our local journalism ecosystem in Waterloo Region, including:
Centralized, accessible platforms that list programs, services, events, and opportunities – ideally co-created or supported by municipalities, libraries, and trusted nonprofits
Community ambassadors who can share information in-person and build trust, especially in lower-income, newcomer, and rural communities where digital access may be limited
Visible, in-person information infrastructure like physical bulletin boards in parks, libraries, community centres, transit stops, and social housing
Investments in hyperlocal media – whether through nonprofit newsrooms, community radio, school newspapers, or grant-supported local reporting partnerships
Support for multilingual and culturally-specific communication, so that residents can access news and updates in ways that reflect their identities and lived realities
More co-ordination across platforms; staying informed shouldn’t feel like a part-time job
“Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.”
― Eric Klinenberg
We need a shift in thinking from seeing journalism as simply a commercial product to valuing it as a civic practice in local democracy. Or as Mirko Petricevic, Chief Ink-stigator (coordinator) of Ink-stained wretches said, “The biggest takeaway is to reframe our thinking of local news media and see it as a community resource rather than a commodity to consume.”
Stewart Grant sees reason for optimism. He noted that this was the first year since 2013 that there were more community newspapers than there were the year before.
Additional Reading and Resources
Midtown Radio podcast: Do You Hear What I Hear: Local Media
CBC KW interview: Mirko Petricevic, with Ink-stained Wretches, and David Harmes, executive director of Midtown Radio Inc., talk about the importance of U.N. World Press Freedom Day and local journalism to our community.
Home Range Promenade is an experimental community radio magazine worth checking out.
Stay tuned to Midtown Radio for the full broadcast of the local journalism panel.
Before you go! If you’d like to display your commitment to local journalism, I have a free Ink-stained Wretches pin to send to one Citified reader. Simply comment on or share this post and I will randomly select a winner on May 20th.
Thank you for this fantastic post and taking us into this event. I too am consumed with thoughts about "the folks who simply don’t have the time, money, or capacity to commit" to subscribing, seeking and digesting all of the bits of news and information they'd need to be an informed community members. And - far too often in these parts I fear - there is less to find and digest. Valiant indies do their best. Hopeful newbies are trying. And thinned out mainstreams too. But that *experience* of a shared, inky community paper sitting on the kitchen table for the whole household to flip through - accidentally or on purpose? That's MIA just now, alas. There must be a solution out there?
Another great (and timely!) post Melissa! Grateful as always for your local wisdom and insights!