Why Local News Is Shunned By Journalists

Published 08/15/2025 · Updated 08/15/2025

University of Ottawa professor Evan Potter dropped along a line wondering why local news is getting so little play in local media.

He will be writing a column on Ottawa City Hall which will conclude with municipal election day next year.

It has puzzled me to no end why … apart from you and The Bulldog … no media outlet in this town really bothers with the politics of Ottawa City Hall. It kind of pops into some of the news reporting but there seems to be some deliberate avoidance. Or the city’s editors think that everyone is so fixated on the national stuff on Parliament Hill that there’s no bandwidth left for the politics of local issues.

There are a number of reasons not the least of which is lack of money.

Conventional media are the sources of news, online and otherwise, and there’s less of them. Advertising dollars are diminishing because ads are becoming so common. Websites written by artificial intelligence are creating a glut of opportunities for advertising and their numbers are skyrocketing. There’s more supply of advertising spots than there is demand. An ad spot once worth $5 a few years ago is often valued at about 60 cents. And in newspapers, no more $20,000-a-page ads are purchased in good-sized publications as they were a couple of decades ago.

The glut of advertising spaces versus demand is appearing everywhere online and in traditional outlets. Locally 1310News simply shut down its transmitter and flattened its tower. The Ottawa Sun and Citizen share the same reporting staff. The Citizen no longer has newsroom. It’s now a roller-skating rink. The minute staff works from home and the city editor operates by phone.

One recent Ottawa City Hall news conference had three reporters at it.

Big media is hurting. Network talk shows, once cash cows with low overhead, are shuttering. Stephen Colbert’s controversial show is being cancelled next May. Other shows are lowering the number of days they are being broadcast and nothing successful has been found to replace them.

So back to local news. The big reason for no coverage is money. Reporters cost cash and traditional media don’t have much money save the CBC. God help BCE that owns Bell Media including CTV. Every time there are layoffs in its media holdings, a huge outcry ensues. Do people think BCE likes laying off people? Hardly. But revenue is disappearing from traditional outlets very quickly.

Then there is a strange bias against local coverage within journalism itself. Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill are perceived as the highest pinnacles of Canadian journalism but, in reality, what readers, what few there are, of city newspapers want to consume is local news. You can get national and international news from a number of sources but local news is only available from local outlets. But local news doesn’t carry the prestige of Parliament Hill for journalists.

Local outlets have ignored local coverage at their peril.

The other thing is that local coverage is hard. Cover your first planning committee meeting at Ottawa City Hall and you think the entire gathering is being spoken in a foreign language. Cover your first major car crash. Not fun.

Local coverage means shoe leather on pavement in some pretty nasty conditions and situations and talking to real people rather than talking-heads politicians. And it hits home and carries with it the real possibility of being sued because local news is not some far-off topic. Your interviews are read by the interviewed.

And some journalists just don’t like local news. I’ll never forget a senior editor telling his charges: “The last thing I want to work for is a local newspaper.” And you wonder why newspapers are disappearing.

This just scratches the surface of why local news gets short-changed but it is a start.

Ken Gray