Finding reliable and independent local journalism can depend on where you live in Canada. A new project led by a group of veteran journalism professors aims to make it easier for people to identify news outlets that serve their communities.

The Canadian Local News Finder, funded by Heritage Canada, will create a bilingual, open-source directory and map of local news outlets in more than 500 municipalities.

“The whole goal of the project is to make sure people have access to reliable information that is independently produced and verified and upon which they can base their decisions around elections and other issues,” April Lindgren, a co-lead on the project, told Dispatch.

Project leaders include Colette Brin, a professor at Laval University; Magda Konieczna from Concordia University, and Lindgren, a professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

Brin served as chair of the federal government’s Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures, which provided recommendations on the criteria for the qualified Canadian journalism organization designation.

Lindgren has led TMU’s Local News Research Project, which tracks closures and start-ups. From 2008 to Aug. 1, 2026, the tracker documented that 624 local news outlets shut down in 395 Canadian communities. During that period, 430 news sites launched, though only 269 survived.

The Canadian Local News Finder will target all existing local news media outlets. 

Shuttered or shrinking newsrooms represent a significant loss for civic literacy and Canadian democracy, as study after study has concluded. 

The media space is increasingly being filled by AI slop, misinformation, disinformation and polarizing content.

Lindgren said the news-finder tool will help government policymakers, philanthropic funders, consumers and community leaders identify sites dedicated to fact-based, reported journalism. That could be particularly useful to municipalities and provincial governments, some of which now require that a certain percentage of their advertising budget be allocated to local media. 

To be included in the directory, a local outlet must be dedicated to reporting and disseminating timely, verified, originally produced news in a geographically defined community. And it must be independent, as opposed to being part of a marketing enterprise or a partisan organization.

The Local News Finder has teamed up with the Investigative Journalism Foundation, which developed an AI tool to search the internet for Canadian local news outlets. It has enlisted local librarians and others to verify search results.