In marketing, there’s an oft-used acronym called FOMO – “fear of missing out”. It’s leveraged to encourage sales of a product by highlighting its scarcity – “limited time offer” is the classic phrase.
In marketing, there’s an oft-used acronym called FOMO – “fear of missing out”. It’s leveraged to encourage sales of a product by highlighting its scarcity – “limited time offer” is the classic phrase. Taken to its extreme, it leads to things like the run on toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic five years ago.
A new study released last week by the Public Policy Forum (PPF) may have uncovered another kind of FOMO related to local news.
The PPF, the Michener Awards Foundation and the Rideau Hall Foundation have created a report called The Lost Estate, highlighting the sea changes that have taken place in local news in Canada in the last 20 years – not coincidentally, since social media platforms became mass media like the world has never seen before.
It notes that 526 news outlets have closed in 347 communities across Canada since 2008, with 402 new outlets (mostly digital) opening but only 274 surviving. That’s barely one new outlet for every two that have vanished. Worse still, half of those closures have happened in communities with populations of 20,000 or less.
Part of its report includes a poll of 1,001 Canadians taken in January of 2025. Among the poll’s findings: 77 per cent of respondents said having a local source of news is important to them, while 87 per cent said local news is important to a properly functioning democracy.
Respondents also agreed that less local news leads to fewer ties to their community, less knowledge of the workings of local government, schools and hospitals, decreased participation in local events, and less of a sense of caring for one another.
The PPF also found research that people in communities that have lost their local news source tend to retreat into their partisan corners and rely on social media – “where truth and falsehood compete on equal terms.”
I have to dispute that last phrase – there’s no equal competition. Speculation and falsehood travel at light speed on social media, while the boring old facts disproving them arrive on foot.
As I’ve said in these pages several times, Facebook is not for news. It’s for cat pictures, recipes, and for catching up with friends and family. The closest thing it comes to in terms of news, since Facebook in its wisdom shut off links to actual news sites, is rumour. It’s for things that might become news, if at all, when they’re verified by professionals whose job is to separate truth from fiction.
The PPF report has a lot of suggestions on how to sustain restore local news, from non-profit support to mandating government advertising spends go towards Canadian-owned media outlets. (I can’t believe we have to ask for governments not to support U.S. media giants with increasing ties to the Trump administration, but apparently we do, given the federal government’s recent return to advertising on Meta platforms like Facebook.)
It also has some stories of hope in the Canadian media landscape – “green shoots,” they call them. I hope that more green shoots grow.
But for those of us who still have mature oak trees – like you, dear reader – I encourage you to have just a little FOMO. Don’t take local news for granted. Balance out your social media diet with a trip to your local news site, and share the habit with those you speak with. If you have the option, contribute to its financial health with a subscription or a membership (more on that for the St. Albert Gazette soon).
Strong local media builds strong communities. That’s something none of us should miss out on.
