Going Local or Going Niche: New News Opportunities

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Where some see pitfalls in the media business, others see opportunity. So it is with Village Media, which is expanding its hyper local Ontario online news sites across smaller cities during a general decline in community newspapers. So it is, too, with media startup The Logic, a subscription news site focused on Canada's innovation economy — and whose founder believes the future of local news may lie in more creative uses of technology. Join us for this overview of the media landscape and how both established and new players are helping to reshape it.

Join speakers Jeff Elgie, CEO of Village Media; April Lindgren, Velma Rogers Research Chair and principal investigator for the Local News Research Project at the Ryerson School of Journalism; and David Skok, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Logic, in a conversation guided by Sonya Fatah, editor-in-chief of J-Source and assistant journalism professor at Ryerson University.

Thursday, October 4
Doors open 6:00pm | Discussion 6:30pm | Reception 8:00pm
Google Toronto
111 Richmond Street West, 9th Floor
Toronto

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Jeff Elgie is CEO of Village Media. He is a born and raised entrepreneur. From the age of 15 he has founded, owned and operated businesses in the Information Technology and Digital Communications sectors. In 2013, he retired as the founder and CEO of Lucidia Ltd., the largest Integrated Marketing Communications agency in Northern Ontario and moved on to become the CEO and majority shareholder of Village Media. Jeff has been recognized locally, regionally and provincially with a wide range of business and entrepreneurship awards. @JeffElgie

April Lindgren is the Velma Rogers Research Chair and principal investigator for the Local News Research Project at the Ryerson School of Journalism. Her current research explores local news poverty, a term she uses to describe situations where the critical information needs of communities are not being addressed by local media. Working with colleagues from the University of British Columbia and Royal Roads University, Prof. Lindgren has led a project that documents major differences in the availability of local news across Canada and spearheaded the creation of The Local News Map, an online crowd-sourced tool that allows members of the public to add markers highlighting changes to local news media. @aprilatryerson

David Skok is a strategist, technologist, journalist, editor and a leading thinker on digital transformation in media. He is the CEO & Editor-in-Chief of The Logic, a subscription news site focused on the innovation economy. Prior to founding The Logic, he was the associate editor and head of editorial strategy at The Toronto Star. He was also the managing editor and vice-president of digital for the Boston Globe and the co-creator and director of digital for Global News. He has written for the Nieman Lab, and is the co-author of ‘Breaking News: Mastering the Art of Disruptive Innovation in Journalism,” a framework developed with world-renowned innovation expert and Harvard Business School professor, Clayton M. Christensen. @dskok

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Sonya Fatah is the editor-in-chief of J-Source and an assistant professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism at Ryerson University where she co-instructs the courses that produce the Ryerson Review of Journalism and the Ryersonian. She has 15 years of international reporting experience. She has reported in Canada, Pakistan, India and South Africa. Her work has appeared in Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Walrus, Columbia Journalism Review and GlobalPost. Sonya's research interests include nationalist discourse and its influence on foreign and local coverage and the impact of youth journalism projects in vulnerable communities. @sonyafatah

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*Program subject to change