Weekend reads: Back to the future

Luke Ettinger kicks off our new series on innovation in local news - in conversation with Peterborough's Jeannine Taylor, founder and publisher of kawarthaNOW.com

Peterborough, Ontario in 1955. (R. Gates/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

The future of news in Canada has been uncertain in recent months, with questions triggered by the controversial Online News Act. Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, has pulled out of news entirely, and, until it reached a deal with the federal government this week, Google threatened to do the same. This uncertainty has impacted our local news ecosystem, particularly independent and digital-only publications.

Public discussions around the crisis in Canadian media, meanwhile, often overlook such outlets — which happen to be some of the most resilient, creative, and trusted sources of news in our country.

That is why Lean Out is kicking off a series highlighting innovation in local news.

Luke Ettinger is a journalist I mentored at CBC. He’s a huge talent — smart, industrious, curious, and so committed to local news that during his five years in the business, he’s already worked in newsrooms across the country (including, full disclosure, one position funded by the government’s Local Journalism Initiative).

I’m thrilled, today, to have Luke kick off our series on local news. — TH

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On December 19th, Canada’s Online News Act, which received royal assent in June, will take effect. In response to the legislation, Meta has already stopped sharing news content on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. And until this week, when it reached a $100 million deal with the federal government, Google had threatened to do the same.

News of the Google deal comes as a mixed blessing for kawarthaNOW.com, an online news outlet based in Peterborough, Ontario. Jeannine Taylor, its CEO, founder, and publisher, tells Lean Out that her publication is relieved to hear Google’s plans to drop news have been headed off — but still has concerns around the benefits of the legislation.

“Based on Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge’s comments this week, it appears that the $100 million from Google in annual compensation for media will be based on the total number of journalists — potentially full-time journalists — employed by a media company,” Taylor notes, in a statement to Lean Out.

“If this is true, legacy newspapers and broadcasters — including the already taxpayer-funded CBC — with large rosters of journalists will receive most of the compensation. Independent media, often owned by self-employed entrepreneurs who rely on freelance journalists or employ a small number of full-time journalists, will see little financial benefit.”

Here, in this edited and condensed interview — conducted before news of the Google deal broke — Taylor talks about Canada’s media landscape, innovations in digital media, and how local news is key to winning back the public’s trust.

LE: You’re an online publication based in Peterborough, covering that city in southern Ontario, as well as surrounding towns and rural communities. Tell us about kawarthaNOW.co, and why you founded it.

JT: It’s a publication that covers all of central Ontario. We’re based in Peterborough. We cover the Kawarthas area, as well as the surrounding area, and we reach into the Greater Toronto Area too. We’re all about our local residents, our cottagers, our visitors, and GTA business and relocators. Originally, I founded our first online magazine [Quid Novis, the precursor to kawarthaNOW.com] in 1996. I had previously been an editor of three print publications, and I landed on the Internet in late 1995. After the Christmas holidays, I said to our publisher, “We need to do the Internet.” It was really early in 1996 and the Internet was new. People didn’t understand it, and he had no interest in publishing on the Internet. So I quit that job and launched quidnovis.com, which was a community magazine, in May of 1996.

LE: Tell us about your business model for kawarthaNOW.com.

JT: It has a somewhat traditional business model: our advertisers pay for advertising. We’ve also leveraged our social media followings — up until August of this year, with Facebook’s block. We leverage our social media followings, and our influence, to help our advertisers reach their target markets. And of course, we have a large audience area, so that helps. We have a 430,000-person audience area and traffic of 70,000 to 90,000 visitors daily.

LE: Have you accepted any government subsidies? Do you have any partnerships with organizations like Google or Facebook?

JT: We’re starting our first Local Journalism Initiative journalist, as of next week. We were approved for that funding in April, and we’ve had some struggles in hiring. That’s our first government funding. We did accept a small Google grant, during the first few months of the pandemic.

LE: As an advertising-based publication, how has the advent of Facebook and other social media platforms impacted your business model?

JT: Well, it’s been a 16-year ride with Facebook. At the same time that we were rebranding [Quid Novis] as kawarthaNOW.com, of course Facebook was emerging — and there was a lot of movement happening. MySpace was dying, and all of the original social media channels were just starting to emerge. So, we certainly went along for that ride — it’s where the audience was. It was an easy way to gather our communities from across our full region and get their attention.

I’ve also been a digital marketer for quite a number of years, and my golden rule was always, “Don’t build on leased land.” I think that a lot of media did, in fact, do that. We all fall into that trap. We go where our audience is, and we put the news in front of them. And we benefited from that. Our kawarthaNOW page on Facebook existed for 16 years and had 25,000 followers, up until August of this year.

LE: That was a result of the Online News Act, which received royal assent in June. The Canadian government says it aims to ensure that dominant platforms compensate news businesses, when their content is made available on their services. In response, Facebook blocked news content, in order to avoid what some call a link tax. What do you make of the federal government’s Online News Act?

JT: We’re pretty angry about it, and we place the fault of all of this situation squarely with the government. We don’t feel that the two tech companies should be forced to pay. And if they are forced to pay, then why not everyone? Why not Twitter? Why not LinkedIn? So, the premise is ridiculous. I have to point back to Lean Out’s interview with Michael Geist in early August. If people want to take a listen, it’s got a complete overview of where this went wrong, and where it went off the rails.

We’re pretty upset about it. I know that people are upset with Meta. I don’t think people generally understand what’s happening. Your average person in Canada doesn’t realize what’s happening. They tend to blame Meta, and it’s really problematic that that’s the case.

I mean, I definitely have some frustration with how Meta has handled this. I think Google is actually handling it much better, in terms of going through the process. Meta has completely shut us down and claimed that we can still use their advertising channels, but we can’t. We’re basically shut off. And it’s not just our Facebook, it’s our Instagram as well — which was also over 24,000 followers. So, it’s frustrating that basically our hands have been tied on those channels, where we have built. But again, we have some responsibility in this because we built on the leased land of Meta. It is, in fact, our own fault that we did that.

LE: In 2022, a coalition of independent publishers came together to say that the C-18 legislation stands to disproportionately benefit the largest media organizations, leaving smaller ones like yourself behind. You were not part of that coalition. Do you share its concerns?

JT: We may be an anomaly in this, but I’m sure that there are other independent publishers across the country who are operating in small vacuums. I guess maybe we’re just small enough that we tend to not be included in those coalitions. Quite frankly, we get so busy with our work that we don’t have time to look around and see what’s emerging. And even though we’ve been watching this issue for a couple of years, it’s not until it hits you in the face that you have to deal with it.

So, we are small enough to not be included [in such coalitions]. And that’s certainly happening with the discussion around legislation as well. It happened at the Senate hearings as well. It was really frustrating to listen to. Village Media represented all of us well in that, but it was definitely problematic that they are not hearing from small media. And when I say small media, I mean us — independent and also digital-only, because we don’t exist in print.

LE: Why do you feel like it’s important to highlight digital-only?

JT: I think that a lot of programs, and affiliations, and discussions around media tend to assume that the emphasis needs to be on print — and that the programs need to be designed for print. Even the News Media Canada program. They administer the Local Journalism Initiative. We’re participating in that, and I appreciate that that’s available, and I think that that’s a great program to continue to be hiring in journalism. But at the same time, digital-only is always at the bottom of the list, and lowest in priority.

Consider that I’ve been involved in this business since 1996. I’ve been basically waiting since 1996 for newspapers to fade away. I think that their revenue models are antiquated, and that the larger corporate legacy media can’t respond as quickly as we can. We pivoted quickly during the pandemic — while they were lobbying government to bail them out.

LE: How has Facebook pulling out of news impacted your traffic?

JT: This happened August 4th, basically, that we were shut down. It is interesting to note that as a publisher, I was blocked in advance of August 4th. I was blocked a few weeks prior to that … They basically shut down our account. It was much more than just blocking our news links. And it became really frustrating and apparent for our viewers. We had a tornado warning in our area that week, and we could have been sharing news, we could have been sharing weather reports, we could have been sharing a lot of community updates that weren’t related to our own news links. But basically our hands were tied completely. We’re really, really limited in what we can do in our account. That was really frustrating.

There’s [been] a lot of silver linings in this process, though, as it unfolded. August was a blur for us, in terms of our reaction to this. We have a very strong e-news subscription base. Luckily, we put that in place several years ago, and it’s been growing strong. We have over 15,000 subscribers on that email list. Which is significant, I think, for a small media company and for the size of our market.

So, we were able to use that to communicate to our readers, as well as our other social media channels. We also put into place a daily digest of e-news. Because we were hearing frustration from our readers: “What are we going to do?” They were angry. They couldn’t believe that they couldn’t share news.

So, Facebook is a little bit of a double-edged sword in that respect. Because people see the news there. They say that they don’t come to Facebook to see the news. But, in fact, they are there and we put it in front of them. So, we benefit from being there and having that presence. Our impressions were generally 2,000 to 5,000 minimum per post and usually 800,000 to 1 million impressions per month on our content. It was a loss for us. It was about a 30% loss, in terms of overall impressions.

The silver lining is that our readership immediately flocked to, and recommended, our e-news and embraced our daily digest. Which is still running at about a 70% open rate every day, which is also unheard of. They went direct to our website. So, by the end of August, our website traffic had in fact increased. So, thank you, Meta, we can exist without you. I mean, there’s something freeing about that. Yes, we can have a life without Meta.

Having said that, we’ve also created a new Facebook group called Kawartha Now Community, which is also growing. We did that in September and it’s growing reasonably well for a group, and we’re rebuilding our community there. So, we’re still using Facebook in that regard. But we have to do things like screen captures, which reminds me of 1996 digital marketing.

LE: Where would you like to see online news legislation in Canada go from here?

JT: I would like to see this particular legislation scrapped immediately. It just doesn’t work. The basic premise of it doesn’t work — for any companies to pay for linking, it’s a ridiculous premise.

My biggest wish right now, and I don’t think it’s going to happen, is that the government would hear all media. I think they’re certainly hearing the media that’s lobbying them. But I don’t think they’re hearing all types of media representation in the country. Right down to us — we’re probably at the bottom of the list.

I saw this happen in the Senate hearings. I watched as much of the hearings as I could. I saw the dismissal of small media, Internet media. We were dismissed as bloggers. Well, you know what? Not all of us are in that zone, of just being independent blogging sites. Although they are relevant, too.

I think that there’s a huge opportunity. We, in fact, are the innovators in the industry right now. We can react quickly. I think that corporate legacy media has demonstrated that they cannot pivot quickly — and those headlines go back to late 2020 when they were realizing they were in trouble during the pandemic. Our strategy during the pandemic was to provide great content and our traffic tripled. And it has stayed with us.

We feel that we’re not being heard. I’ve certainly tried to communicate with the Minister of Heritage. In the case of both ministers, no response.

LE: I want to touch on public trust. How do we in the media build trust?

JT: I think that it depends on which market you’re in. And, in fact, how large you are. Because obviously media is suffering from a lack of trust now. But my observation is that it really does depend on the publishing area. Because we’re not in the same boat as larger legacy media, or the CBC, or some of the larger broadcasters. We’re in a smaller market. Our audience may actually know us personally. They know a lot of our writers personally. So there’s a direct connection to our readers there, and therefore a direct connection to our advertisers and community. For us, it’s easier to manage that and to maintain that trust.

Ultimately, the trust is in our content. We’ve always delivered quality journalism. We did a big pivot during the pandemic to make a commitment to providing as much news as we could locally. As I mentioned, our traffic tripled during that timeframe.

LE: As the year winds down, what do you see as the biggest issue for local news organizations like yours in 2024?

JT: I think navigating this situation is going to be tricky. The trust factor for news is difficult as well. But there’s a big opportunity here for local media. When I think about some of the other local smaller organizations, media organizations in our communities, that’s where the trust lies — with the community and our readers. So, we have an opportunity to build on that, and to maintain that trust, and to continue to do what we do. And employ journalists!

Luke Ettinger is a reporter based in Nova Scotia. During his five years in media, he’s worked in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. He has a special interest in covering civic and rural stories.