Immigrants are said to bring a new zest and unbounded energy to their adoptive countries. Newcomers who have never launched out on their own develop entrepreneurial feet in their new nation, partly driven by personal passions, and partly compelled by the roadblocks they run into in Canada. New Canadian Media was such an invention.
This media organization was conceived on May 5, 2011, when four of us met around my dining table in Orleans, Ottawa, to explore the possibility of launching a digital platform that would represent the “immigrant point of view.” Interestingly, not all four of us around that table were new Canadians. It took another year to create a non-profit corporation that would serve as a bulwark for the pioneering journalism that was only a dream at that point.
It’s now November, 2024, and a lot has happened since then.
A few numbers: We published more than 3,000 stories in English and French, with 500 individual bylines. While we never asked our reporters where they were born, I think I can safely say well over 80 per cent were foreign-born. For many of them, our platforms gave them their first Canadian byline. Many of them have gone on to do excellent work in newsrooms across the country – eternally grateful for the first “break” we gave them.
Unfortunately, this great story has come to an end. The board of directors and I have come to the painful decision that there is no pathway to sustainability given our current sources of revenue. While we won virtually every public fund we applied for, revenue from “private” sources remained spare and donations were sparse. There just wasn’t enough money to pay for top-calibre editing and keep the lights on.
This insurmountable roadblock occurred despite checking every box that a young, non-profit media venture could aspire for:
- Charitable (“qualified donee”) status as a Registered Journalism Organization (one of very few in Canada),
- A collective of largely immigrant journalists who were cross-affiliated with the Canadian Association of Journalists,
- Launching a French site in 2021,
- Being cited in June 2021 by the Reuters Digital News Report as emblematic of “new diversity initiatives” following the “Black Lives Matter movement and racist incidents in Canada”,
- Membership of every conceivable media association in Canada,
- And a track record of collaboration with other media organizations and bylines from coast to coast.
As if this were not enough, in 2022, we won the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s digital news innovation award, competing with the very best in the business to take home this prestigious honour.
Unlike a lot of other lines of business, journalism is a matter of public record – and New Canadian Media will stay that way, thanks to our friends at Village Media who have kindly offered to let our content live on by hosting our English and French sites.
My sense is that the idea that I, and countless reporters and some highly regarded editors pioneered, will survive. All of us continue to believe in the need for a platform that speaks to the dramatically changing demographics of Canada, thanks to immigration. Immigration is both the present and future of this country.
So, we exit stage left, satisfied that together we gave this venture our best shot, feeling confident about our ability to serve the public good in other ways, convinced that we brought our A game to the table and optimistic about what lies ahead.
George brings 30 years of writing and newsroom management experience to New Canadian Media. He began his journalism career with The Times of India in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), followed by stints at the Khaleej Times in Dubai and as managing editor of The Peninsula in Qatar. A journalist with high ethical standards, George won the prestigious Nieman scholarship at Harvard University (1994-95), and more recently, pursued a Master’s in Journalism at Carleton University (2004).
