Do You Miss a Daily Newspaper? Tell This Lady About It

Hard to believe, but it's been going on nearly a year now that Guelph has gone without a local paper. The Guelph Mercury-Tribune, Guelph Today, myself, and a few others have tried to fill the void of the old Guelph Mercury, but can anything really replace that hole left behind by a local daily newspaper, and how are we all coping with that? Well, I now know at least one lady who would like an answer to that, and she'd like your feedback as well. ‎

Ryerson journalism professor April Lindgren and professor Jon Corbett from the University of British Columbia are working together on a crowd-sourced map of news coverage in Canada. It's goal is to keep people updated on the job cuts at papers, or their outright closure, as well the map will identify the few newspapers that are adding staff, in addition to new ventures meant to fill the news void. You can find the map here.

“Access to local news is important to the democratic vibrancy and health of a community because people who have access to news are then equipped to participate in decisions that affect them,” Lindgren told j-source. “This project will examine the extent to which local news poverty is an issue outside of major cities where often there are still multiple newspapers and many other local news sources.”

In addition, Prof. Lindgren is looking to get feedback from local news enthusiasts in terms of how they feel about local news in their area. You can access the survey and fill it out by clicking here.