I was inspired by the story of Joey Coleman, an independent and crowd-sourced reporter in Hamilton, who I learned about from this great episode of CANADALAND about the collapse of local news. It made me think about my local news media landscape, and I decided to compile a list of all the news media outlets in our fair city.
There are two conditions to be on this list:
First, I am only including outlets that provide some amount (however small) of local, civic content. In other words, I exclude outlets that are purely about culture, wine, tourism, festivals or other community events. Not that those aren’t great, I am just more focused on outlets that contribute to an informed citizenry. I want to list the type of outlets that would have a reporter in a city council meeting (hopefully every time…).
Second, I want outlets that create original content. I did not want to include aggregators, of which there are a ton. The orgs on this list have live bodies that type stories on a keyboard, or even better get sent outside to gather news.
The list below is based on what I could find out online, and asking around on Twitter and via email. It is probably not complete, but I am confident I have a pretty good foundation. If you have anything to add, please do so in the comments and I will update the list. Or, if you want to reach out privately, contact me here.
TV
Global News Okanagan. Owned by Shaw Media. 2 field reporters and 1 web reporter in Kelowna; 1 field reporter each in Vernon and Penticton. (source)
ShawTV Okanagan. Owned by Shaw Media. No real news coverage, but they do broadcast City Council meetings on Channel 11.
CTV Okanagan. Owned by Bell Media. 1 news reporter, 1 videographer/editor, and a Facebook page. Responsible for covering BC interior for CTV Vancouver. (source)
Radio
CBC Kelowna including Daybreak South and Radio West. The local incarnation of our public broadcaster, owned by us. Covering the entire Okanagan (and more): 1 reporter, 2 asst. producers, 2 producers, 2 radio anchors, 1 news editor. (source) But no podcast… that’s how I listen to The Current and Spark and all my fave CBC shows!
AM1150. Owned by Bell Media. 4 reporters. (source) Soundcloud which basically means podcast. Provides news coverage to the two other Bell Media radio stations in Kelowna: 99.9 SunFM and 101.5 ezRock.
The other stations don’t seem to have any news coverage, aka:
- 103.9 JuiceFM owned by Vista Broadcast Group.
- Q103.1 Kelowna owned by Jim Pattison Group.
- K96.3 Kelowna’s Classic Rock owned by Newcap Radio.
Newspapers
Daily Courier. Owned by Continental Newspapers Canada Ltd. 1 reporter? (awaiting response).
Capital News. A Black Press paper, owned by David Holmes Black (no relation to Conrad). As far as I can tell, 1 reporter covering civic news (a couple more doing sports and the like). (awaiting response)
Web
Castanet. Owned by Nick Frost. 4 reporters? (awaiting response by email) I like that they have audio uploads of city council and are even distributing them as a podcast, but what they should be doing is recapping them and providing analysis.
InfoTel. Owned by Bonnie Derry. 2 reporters. According to our Lord Mayor, these guys are regulars at City Council.
KelownaNow. Owned by Jim and Nikki Csek and one other minority shareholder. 5 “journalist reporters” in total (confirmed by email with the GM). Not sure how many actually cover civic affairs.
So what does this all mean? Could Kelowna support a Joey Coleman? Considering he is only approaching the break-even point in a market that is four times the size of us, I am doubtful. Yet one reporter for every 10,000 residents seems too low. Well, with only a 30% voter turnout (about 30K people), it is more like one reporter for every 2000 voters. I wonder if these two problems are linked?
Although I am not a media scholar and have no framework for analysis, I certainly think we could be doing better. That is in both quantity and quality. Shaw and Bell own a lot of our traditional news media, while the web-based news orgs are all private and self-identify as "marketing" companies. It'd be nice to see the CBC step up here, maybe add a digital presence, but they have a lot going on already.
