The membership of Local Media Association includes some amazing companies. Here is the second installment of our new series highlighting their success stories, featuring Village Media in Canada.

Village Media recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and in the last decade has grown its network of local news sites exponentially, from just two sites in 2013 to 25 local news sites, a site dedicated to Ontario politics coverage, a lifestyle site, a national news aggregator and a business news site.

David Turkstra
Chief Strategy Officer, Village Media

As our network grows, so does our team. Village Media now has approximately 150 employees.

We have over five million monthly readers across a network of owned and operated and partner sites that span across Canada and into the United States.

What was a major revenue success of your local media company in 2023?

In 2023, we introduced a product called the Ultimate Hub which enabled smaller advertisers to buy a comprehensive community marketing program in a trusted, locally focused news environment for $300/month. Hundreds of businesses signed up and the product proved to be a gateway to higher value premium products.

The product includes a profile on our network, email advertising, unlimited posting credits to classifieds, a sponsored content article, a logo ad and free retargeting (we build up an audience segment of all the readers who interacted with their content).

What have been some recent journalism accomplishments?

We launched The Trillium in 2023, which is the largest bureau covering the largest and most consequential provincial government in the country. In its first year, The Trillium’s team has been at the forefront of thoroughly covering significant developments (and scandals) within the provincial government.

A number of our journalists throughout Village Media were also named finalists in six different categories at the 2023 Canadian Online Publishing Awards for their work in covering community news.

What are your company’s top three priorities moving into 2024?

Our top priorities for 2024 include:

  • Launch the community network we began working on in late 2022. It’s effectively a safe space attached to our news sites where readers can exchange ideas, navigate their day-to-day life and connect with people in their physical community.
  • Work to replace newspapers and flyers in our markets for local governments (notices, tenders, releases), local grocers and larger retailers.
  • Sell out the products we just launched (premium email and interstitial units).

Why did you join LMA?

We joined the Local Media Association to stay connected with the industry, to support other publishers and to take advantage of any partnerships or training made available through the association.

What keeps you up at night about the local media industry?

A lot of traffic to the news industry comes via intermediary (Google, Facebook, etc.). News was recently blocked on all Meta products in Canada. So the dependency on third-party platforms for traffic is worrisome (and the driving force behind launching our own social platform).

What gives you hope about the local media industry?

The response from readers and the business communities in our markets and the prospect of creating a local, social environment that is integrated with our news network.