Local Journalists Work to Create New Newspaper after The Record's Demise

This spring, NewWestminster lost it's local newspaper – The New Westminster Record. The publisher, Glacier Media, also shuttered the papers in nearby communities.... Burnaby Now and Tri-Cities News. 

This is part of a national trend that has seen community journalism outlets being slashed over the last 20 years since the financial downturn in 2008. This puts citizens in the difficult situation of having no 'good' knowledge of what is happening in their communities. 

The Record moved to publish online only in 2023, and the expectation given by the publisher was that that there were no foreseeable changes in the offing.

Four journalists, who lost their jobs in the local papers, are working to get a new local paper going that would cover the news for the whole area covered by the three lost papers. The Record's main journalist, Theresa MacManus. and a fellow journalist from Burnaby, presented their plan at the City Council Meeting of June 23rd. 

The news industry has been substantially affected by the social media giants – Meta and X (formerly Twitter) who are now the main purveyors of information. When the Canadian government decided to tax these companies in 2023 to recover some of the content revenue lost to Canadian news and other organizations, the companies decided to disallow any news on their sites - thus making a difficult situation worse for our democracy.

This issue has just raised its ugly head again on June 26th when President Trump decided to once again break off trade talks with Canada because of the desire by Prime Minister Carney to keep the tax requirement on the social media giants in place, including the desire for back taxes to 2023. On June 29th, Prime Minister Carney rescinded the tax, so now let's hope that the social media corporations will allow news on their services again.