Changes to Canadian law will likely impact the ability of people to easily access local news and information from their communities. (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Alex Rawnsley

LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE

Water Cooler: Bill C-18 and the future of our local news in Nanaimo

Jul 4, 2023 | 2:18 PM

NANAIMO — The Water Cooler is NanaimoNewsNOW’s letters to the editor-style segment, featuring conversations about the news in Nanaimo and Oceanside.

This feature looks at the changing landscape of news in Canada, particularly around social media, and how it impacts local outlets like NanaimoNewsNOW.

IMPORTANT: Sign up here (https://nanaimonewsnow.com/news-wrap/) for NanaimoNewsNOW’s daily email news blast, to ensure you continue to know what’s happening in your community.

Pending implementation of Bill C-18, or the Online News Act, is poised to fundamentally adjust how news is delivered and early indications suggest it will hurt our ability to easily tell you what’s happening in Nanaimo and the surrounding region.

Essentially the Act, which will begin to be implemented in the months ahead, forces Google, Facebook (parent company Meta) and others like them to pay a fee to post and share Canadian media stories on their platform, regardless of whether we share it directly or your aunt Susan posts it to her wall.

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In response, Meta has said they will hide Canadian news outlets from feeds while Google is promising to follow suit. It means local news stories will not show up in your search results.

This will have a profound effect on those who rely on these avenues to be informed about what’s happening in their community.

It will also, likely, lead to an increase in misinformation spread online during to breaking news events, such as a widely-speculated “active shooter” during the August long weekend in 2022.

So what do WE do?
For months, NanaimoNewsNOW has seen traffic from social media on our website drop and engagement on many of our stories on Facebook dwindle.

Thankfully, according to analytics, many of those have found us elsewhere as our overall traffic is very strong, so our mission has been to make NanaimoNewsNOW easier to access away from social media…essentially control more of our own influence instead of relying on social media companies.

After a run through a few months of 2022 and into 2023, we’re proud to re-launch our daily news wrap which sends you our top, local stories every evening.

It’s free, will always be free and is a direct connection to all the news, sports and community events happening in Nanaimo, Parksville, Qualicum and the mid-Island region.

We’re also in various stages of development for some new ways for you to reach out, interact and receive the latest news for the region.

Rest assured none of them involve a pay-to-read subscription model as we believe local news should be barrier free to access.

And what can you do?
You can sign up for our free daily newsletter here: https://nanaimonewsnow.com/news-wrap/. You can share this story or the link with friends and family.

You can actively seek us out directly online through our website: NanaimoNewsNOW.com or you can download our app for Apple and Android.

You can always email us directly at info@nanaimonewsnow.com.

You can listen to our amazing radio partners in Nanaimo at 106.9 The Wolf and 102.3 The Wave, as well as 88.5 The Beach and The Lounge 99.9 in Oceanside. Local news airs hourly on most of those stations.

Finally, you can choose to stay informed.

Don’t blindly believe or share every social media post you see. Be critical of what you read and check with different sources to verify the information.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about local news or information you’d like to share, please email us at info@nanaimonewsnow.com or call our newsroom directly at 250 758 2467.

Local news. Delivered. Free. Subscribe to our daily news wrap and get our top local stories delivered to your email inbox every evening

info@nanaimonewsnow.com

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