Indie startups hope to find audience for local news

New Brunswick's media landscape is changing.

As newspapers and radio stations reduce their workforces, some new local news sites are coming online.

"There may be fewer reporters, but there is still a demand and a need for local news," said Don MacPherson, who launched a free news site called the Fredericton Independent on Monday, a month after leaving the job he'd held for 21 years as a court reporter with the Daily Gleaner.

MacPherson is one of several experienced New Brunswick journalists who recently accepted a buyout package from Postmedia, which purchased most of the newspapers in the province from Irving-owned Brunswick News Inc. less than a year ago.

CBC News asked Postmedia for details of the change in its level of news staffing in New Brunswick since the takeover, but no response was received by publication time.

Tough for young journalists

"The current media landscape does concern me," said Aaron Sousa, the young journalist behind NB News Now, another new site, which launched last week.

It began as a "passion project" blog to hone his writing skills and tell local stories, but gained enough of a following that he decided to buy a web domain and build it up as he searches for a full-time job.

Sousa is soon to be graduating from St. Thomas University's journalism program. He's served as editor and photo editor of the student publication The Aquinian, and he's done casual work in private radio, where he met some of the people who were laid off this week at CHSJ.

Acadia Broadcasting announced Tuesday that because of economic conditions, 11 jobs were being eliminated across the company's 18 radio stations and online business news website in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Sousa says it's a disheartening situation as he enters the job market. He wants to stay in New Brunswick and keep telling New Brunswick stories, but he fears he'll have to go west for work, as many have before him.

A need to do 'everything'

He's not planning to monetize NB News Now at the moment, but that may change depending on how his job search goes. 

There are fewer employers, said Sousa. Student loan repayments will soon have to be made. The job expectations are higher. 

Journalism students used to be able to specialize in broadcast or print, he said. Now they're expected to do everything. 

The news industry has changed "radically" in the past 25 years, agreed MacPherson, recalling his first days at the Moncton Times and Transcript, when enough resources were available that he was able to shadow the more experienced court reporter and learn from him on the job, there were no smartphones, and reporters had to be in the office to file a story. 

Technology caused the industry and newsroom staffing to shrink, he said, as ad revenue diminished, competition increased from internet players such as Google and Facebook, and classified ads disappeared.

A lean operation 

But the flipside of that, said MacPherson, is overhead is very low for what he's trying to do now.

He can run his site with a laptop and a smartphone, as opposed to a two-storey building and a printing press.

The startup capital is similarly low for podcasting, he noted. "So there are many choices out there. Hopefully the quality of work will determine who the audience chooses to follow."

Now in his early 50s, MacPherson still wants to practise his craft.

"You don't get into this on a whim," he said.

Starting with court stories

His new site is on Substack, which is fairly popular with journalists around the world because it can be turned into a paid subscription site.

If he can build a large enough audience he plans to do that, but not for "at least several months."

MacPherson is sticking mainly with the court beat for now but says he may broaden his coverage if that proves too niche.

These days, most newsrooms have become too small for beat reporting, said MacPherson.

"It's like a submarine," he said. "Everybody needs to know how to do everyone's job."

In some ways that's good, he said, but it also results in a loss of expertise.

You might think you can find out what's going on from Twitter or government or agencies, he said, but "there's absolute value" in someone who is able to filter with a "critical eye."

He's optimistic he'll find a place in the market.

"I've been at it a week now and I've already managed to do some stories no other news outlet was aware of or able to cover."