Whenever my job comes up in conversation, the most common follow-up question I get—from friends, family, strangers—is some variation of, “How do you find stories to write about?”
Sometimes it’s a press release or an email that lands in your inbox, or your editor assigning you to cover an event that happens every year. Sometimes it’s a familiar name on publicly-available court dockets, a Facebook post getting locals riled up, a conversation with a friend, or a news article from another outlet that has me wondering how a broader, global issue—inflation, for example—is impacting Whistler’s community on a local scale—in this case, more visits to the food bank.
But all of that boils down to a bigger question: what constitutes news in the first place?
Every publication has its own slightly differing definition depending on what its audience cares about, but as the federal government’s recently-passed Online News Act defines it, news, in part, “means content—in any format, including an audio or audiovisual format—that reports on, investigates or explains current issues or events of public interest.” But more on that legislation in a sec.
Just as often as I hear that first question, I see comments on Pique’s Facebook page that read something like, “How is this relevant to Whistler?” or the snarkier, “Slow news day?”
It’s worthwhile if unnecessarily sarcastic feedback that, alongside digital metrics, helps us gauge what our audience wants to read about. Indulge me for a hot sec while I point out the obvious: just because something isn’t important to you personally, doesn’t mean it’s not of interest to others.
Unless you’re a dedicated follower of Pique in all its forms, it’s easy to assume our reporters or columnists write every single story that appears on our Facebook feed. We don’t. The community publication you’re reading is owned by a larger corporation, Glacier Media. We have sister news outlets across B.C. we share content from on our website, which is also automatically populated with stories from the Canadian Press wire service and even the Globe and Mail. We try to highlight stories we think are of interest to Sea to Sky locals, even if they’re not always explicitly relevant to Whistler, but Pique’s four full-time reporters and editor-in-chief still exclusively focus on what’s happening in Whistler and Pemberton. It’s what you’ll find in the free print edition that hits newsstands every week.
Most people who read an article on Pique’s website find their way to our corner of the internet through a Google search or by clicking on a social media post. All of that content-sharing and Facebook-posting is part of a wider strategy aimed at helping smaller, community-oriented publications like Pique keep up in the fast-paced battle for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
That uneven fight is something the federal government is trying to address with Bill C-18, a.k.a. the Online News Act, which passed on June 22. The law obliges major tech companies like Facebook and Google (or rather their parent companies, Meta and Alphabet) to compensate Canadian news outlets for content shared on those sites.
In response, both companies have since promised to wipe any and all Canadian news links from their platforms before that law goes into effect later this year. Meta is already blocking news for about five per cent of its Canadian users.
That means you won’t be able to ask Google “Is there a shooting in Whistler Village?” and expect to find Pique’s—or the CBC, or Global’s, or any other Canadian outlet’s—coverage pop up in response. (You’d still be able to access links from international news outlets like the BBC or the Washington Post.) It means you couldn’t learn that Rainbow Park would be closing for the better part of a year during a scroll through Facebook. You’d need to visit Pique’s website directly to find the corresponding news article, or use a different search engine.
If that sounds as frustrating to you as it does to me, you might be tempted to pick up your pitchfork right about now. But hold your horses: Canada’s Online News Act was inspired by similar legislation Australia passed in 2021, which was met by even more dramatic responses. Google threatened to entirely suspend its service Down Under, in fact.
Aussies never lost the ability to use Google. Facebook’s news ban in the country lasted eight days. More importantly, Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code reportedly resulted in more than $200 million AUD flowing to news organizations from tech companies’ coffers in the year after the legislation went into effect.
The sky is darkening, but it hasn’t fallen just yet.
In the meantime, I’m going to throw the same questions I answer on a weekly basis right back at you: Where do you find news? What do you consider news in the first place? What would change if you couldn’t access it, from a publication you trust, in the same way you usually do?
Like Pique’s editor wrote earlier this month, there’s “no sense dwelling on things beyond our control. We adapt, as we have always done.” But we can still question what that adaptation could look like.
