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Courtesy West End Phoenix

Since 2018 ([link removed]) , I’ve written occasionally about a community newspaper in Toronto ([link removed]) with leads that include:
Almost six months ago, a Canadian rock star started a community paper. Amazingly, that’s the least interesting thing about West End Phoenix. ([link removed])
It’s nonprofit and ad-free. It comes out every five weeks. It’s created by a staff of six. Subscriptions cost $75 for the year. It covers Toronto’s West End. And it’s not online. (At least not really. There is a website and a healthy social ([link removed]) media ([link removed]) presence ([link removed]) , but the stories online are a curated few.)
And in 2021 ([link removed]) :
Last year on Twitter, publisher Dave Bidini lamented the loss of book reviews as “a lost art, in a way.”
“At the same time, we were trying to reach a goal of 2,021 subscribers by 2021, so Margaret vowed to write book reviews if followers would subscribe to get us to that number,” Bidini said. “And we did.”
The Margaret he’s referring to is renowned author Margaret Atwood. ([link removed])
Bidini checks in now and then with updates, and his most recent felt worthy of an update here, too. One year ago, his newsroom opened a storefront space for the community.
“It’s been seven years, which is mind-blowing for most of us considering that we started as a gesture against the demise of community print journalism, and if we'd simply made our point and moved on, that would have been acceptable,” Bidini told me via email. “Like any independent media, there are good days/bad days, and the quest for sustained funding and philanthropy is a ceaseless task — wearying, too — but the community of readers gets us through. Knowing that annual renewals are fairly strong helps us weather the most challenging times, but that requires engagement, too. It’s work that, frankly, is the most rewarding: getting notes from people who believe in what we do and who write to tell us that.”
Several years ago, staff started looking for an affordable spot in the right location with a landlord who understood what West End Phoenix was hoping to do there.
“One day a reader who ran an oyster shop in our catchment wrote us that they were thinking of moving, and it turned out that the space was once an Italian deli much beloved in the neighborhood — a meeting place for locals — so the vibe (and the price) seemed right,” Bidini said. “People in the area were excited that they could get back in that space and be together, only this time instead of espressos and sandwiches, they came out to town halls and readings and performances. It’s only 50-60 seats but we had most of the mayoral candidates there in the last election plus we staged a six-hour telethon with music and speakers in support of a group trying to save Ontario Place — a public park at the bottom of the city — from development (into an Austrian spa, no less). We’ve had songwriters Dan Bern and Sarah Harmer perform — hoping to do more of that since it’s such an intimate environment — as well as former Blue Jays manager John Gibbons and author John Ralston Saul. We make tickets aff
ordable. The idea has always been that you don’t have to go to some fancy expensive venue downtown to hear and see amazing things. This stuff should be happening in your neighborhood — right outside your door — and that’s a (modern) newspaper's job, too.”
(More below.)

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Call for Nominations for the 2024 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award at Colby College

Colby College is seeking nominations for the 2024 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism. In the spirit of Lovejoy's commitment to American freedom of the press, the award, which was established in 1952, is presented annually to a member of the news profession. The selection committee recommends finalists for the award on the basis of:
* Integrity, without which no news organization can function in its traditional role as a public servant.
* Craftsmanship, without which no one can succeed as a journalist.
* Character, intelligence, and courage.
* Potential of the work to stimulate engaging campus conversations around important issues of our times.

More information and nomination form here ([link removed]) . Deadline: April 10.

There are bright spots in local news, (and I’m not the only one who sees them ([link removed]) ). And there is still a lot to feel defeated by. What’s worked at this publication for the last seven years?
“One thing we determined from the beginning was: Everyone has to get paid, and everyone has to get paid respectable rates,” Bidini said. “That’s made it a much higher bar to jump over, but subscribers, patrons, advertisers and corporate partners know that 100% of their dollars are going to pay contributors in their neighborhoods, and the reason people want to be in those places is because artists can live and work there. Journalists and photographers are just as much a part of where we live as, I don’t know, the butcher or the florist. Plus, the city and the hood are changing so much. Someone needs to document this.”
The publication is a nonprofit, “but like anyone, we could always have more money in the bank, more support. Finding time to exhale is the hardest part, really. No matter where we’re at, community journalism is still an endangered species.”
This one, at least, has a habitat. West End Phoenix is planning a series of events in the storefront during the spring and summer to focus on mis- and disinformation and the Online Harms Act ([link removed]) .
“We’re also hoping to launch a prize for innovative housing design as a way of generating ideas behind housing and innovation in a city that is becoming uninhabitable for so many who can’t afford to be here,” Bidini said. “We’re just lucky that these ideas can find us and we can host them and kick them into gear. I know it’s weird to say, but, if it can survive, I really think that independent media can be many things, and many new things: not just stories on the page, but an active organism in the community and city. We may be morphing into a community organization that also publishes versus a newspaper that’s also a community organization.”

While you’re here:
* Check out tomorrow’s Beat Academy ([link removed]) , Economic Realities: Understanding your local economy and telling compelling stories centered on people and families.
* I haven’t seen many updates around Press Forward, but here’s a profile ([link removed]) of its new leader from CJR.

That’s it for me. I met my book deadline on Monday and actually felt pretty relaxed about it during the weekend. Who even am I? 😃
Kristen
Kristen Hare
Faculty
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])
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