KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Some things don’t change. In 2009, when the Halifax Media Co-op was just getting started, the Chronicle Herald laid off 25 percent of its newsroom workers, the Daily News had folded the year before, and people were wondering where they were going to get their news.
The Halifax Media Co-op is dormant now, but it had a good seven years or so, making a small difference in a city and province where news, real news and the kind of reporting that actually surprises, is becoming a bit of a rare occurrence.
We should cherish what is left though. Local Xpress, the CBC, the local TV stations, Metro, the Coast, they all do excellent work from time to time. Hopefully we will get our Chronicle Herald back one of these days.
No matter how large a newsroom, some topics will be under-reported. That’s the vacuum the Media Co-op wanted to fill.
“We’ve tried our best to help amplify underrepresented voices, focusing on Indigenous issues, voices of people in poverty, workers, queer folks, and others,” writes the interim editorial collective that announces the Co-op’s suspension.
Under-representation is not a new phenomenon, and neither are efforts to counter it. In the late sixties -early seventies there was the 4the Estate. There have been many others.
Similarly, some reporting that’s happening now wasn’t there in 2009 when the Media Co-op first arrived on the scene.
Now there are Tim Bousquet, El Jones, Erica Butler and Linda Panozzo at the Halifax Examiner. Mary Campbell watching over Cape Breton politics at the Cape Breton Spectator. Maureen Googoo covering Indigenous news in Atlantic Canada for Kukukwes.com.
If you care about independent news you should support them. With money, I mean. They pick up where the the more established media steps back, either because it doesn’t sell advertising or because they just don’t have the resources.
Even at the tiny Nova Scotia Advocate we can’t keep up with news in the beats we try to cover. For every story we write, there are ten others we would like to tackle, but can’t for a lack of time. Mostly, if we don’t write the story, nobody does.
We need more Bousquets, Googoos and Campbells. There’s plenty of room.
If you can, please support the Nova Scotia Advocate so that it can continue to cover issues such as poverty, racism, exclusion, workers’ rights and the environment in Nova Scotia.
