Breaking News! Canadians Actually Care about What’s Happening in Other Communities! | Unpublished
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Source Feed: Walrus
Author: Carmine Starnino
Publication Date: May 30, 2025 - 06:29

Breaking News! Canadians Actually Care about What’s Happening in Other Communities!

May 30, 2025
“Nobody knows ­anything,” Hollywood ­screenwriter ­William ­Goldman once said. He was ­referring to the impossibility of ­predicting a box office hit. The ­internet is no less fickle. Some stories you pour everything into ­barely make a ripple. Others tossed out as a long shot end up dominating your site for days. Last August, we published an investigation on the cruise industry’s push ­into Lake Superior. Leah Borts-­Kuperman ­reported on how luxury vessels, drawn by the area’s austere beauty, are ­bringing economic gains to towns like ­Thunder Bay while wreaking environmental havoc. With up to 3,000 passengers aboard, these ships can generate 1,000 tonnes of waste daily. Does this kind of well-heeled tourism belong in one of the world’s great lakes? Should our most ­pristine spaces be up for sale? The story rapidly became one of our most-read pieces of 2024, with people clicking in from across the country. Most interesting, and instructive, were the livid emails from a tourism manager quoted in the article. He was upset our writer didn’t include the many upbeat talking points he gifted her. He went on to report us to the National NewsMedia Council, a news ethics body. Here’s what became clear: media in the Thunder Bay region has so deteriorated that our story was one of the first to honestly examine the impact of these floating hotels. If cruising regulations have grown lax, Canadian journalism has as well. Borts-Kuperman stepped in to ­fill the gap once occupied by ­local reporting. We started digging into other data points in our traffic and noticed a ­pattern. When we explored Montreal’s bold ­experiment with car-free streets, or ­exposed the failures of emergency shelters in Whitehorse, or praised the efficiency of traffic roundabouts in PEI, the response was immediate. Readers weren’t just drawn to national headlines. They were engaging with pieces that ­explained structural shifts in their own communities. Better yet, readers from other regions were interested as well. Nobody knows anything—except when they do. The secret, it seemed, was going granular—specific voices telling specific stories about specific communities. Canadians, to quote from Tom ­Jokinen’s feature in this issue about the rise of micro newsrooms, don’t care about “the doom-and-gloom ‘future of journalism’ debates. They care about where and how they live, what it costs, who’s left out, who’s telling the truth, and who’s lying.” To meet that demand, The ­Walrus with support from The Chawkers ­Foundation is building a network of six regional ­bureaus, covering the West, the North, Atlantic Canada, the Prairies, Ontario, and Quebec. The first three bureaus launch this year, with the rest to follow in 2026. The correspondents will be tasked with bringing their embedded perspectives to our national and international platform. But for this to work—for these bureaus to not just launch but last—we need your support. If you want to see more ­journalism that understands a place ­because it comes from there, I invite you to be a part of this effort and help us ­anchor reporting where it’s needed most. The post Breaking News! Canadians Actually Care about What’s Happening in Other Communities! first appeared on The Walrus.


Unpublished Newswire

 
After receiving hundreds of tips, analyzing hours of video footage and seizing electronic devices, the Nova Scotia RCMP insist there’s still no evidence that two young children who disappeared from the rural hamlet of Lansdowne nearly six weeks ago were kidnapped. The Mounties in a statement Wednesday described their investigation into the mysterious case as tenacious and intensive. They said they were getting help from the RCMP-run National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains, as well as provincial and municipal police agencies from Nova Scotia and other parts of Canada...
June 11, 2025 - 22:12 | Lindsay Jones, Greg Mercer | The Globe and Mail
Workers at Queen’s Park removed wooden boards on Wednesday morning that have surrounded a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald since 2020, when Black Lives Matter protesters covered it with pink paint. The decision by the Board of Internal Economy, the Ontario legislative committee that voted to uncover the statue, has stoked tensions with First Nations and debate over the legacy of the first Canadian prime minister. Macdonald played a key role in creating Canada’s residential school system.
June 11, 2025 - 21:50 | Sophia Coppolino | The Globe and Mail
Nearly half of the people forced from their homes by wildfires in Saskatchewan will be allowed to return later this week with conditions slightly improving in the province, but thousands remain displaced across large parts of Canada.Premier Scott Moe said around 7,000 people in the north-central Saskatchewan region around Lac La Ronge will see evacuation orders lifted Thursday. Still, he cautioned, his government is maintaining a provincewide state of emergency until further notice.
June 11, 2025 - 21:28 | Temur Durrani | The Globe and Mail