When Meta started banning media content from Facebook in August 2023, Village Media suddenly had a huge problem. The Canadian media company operates a chain of ad-supported local websites and was dependent on Facebook for growth. The Canadians were also tired of news: Covid was over and Trump was not yet a threat.
Fast forward almost two years later: Village Media is profitable, well equipped for the local media future and is constantly expanding into new local markets. This is made possible above all by the use of AI and a concept of local journalism that turns the world back into a village and the local marketplace back into the center of conversations.
Village Media started eleven years ago with a single local news site in Sault Ste. Marie, a town of 75,000 people on the US border in the Canadian province of Ontario. The company now operates 29 ad-supported local news sites in Ontario, four more in Canada and the US, and one in Nigeria.
What makes Village Media unique is its new project Spaces, which launched in Sault Ste Marie in November 2024 after two years of development. After two days, the new network had already generated as many page views and three times as much engagement as an average local Village Media website at launch in a new market.
Spaces is like a cross between Reddit forums, Facebook groups and the neighborhood network Nextdoor. It's not about following people, it's about following topics. In various forums, citizens give each other tips on planting a vegetable garden, building a shed or where to find free firewood or the best cycle paths for children. The forums are moderated and the tone in the forums is friendly and constructive. There are now ten of these spaces in Ontario, where Village Media is optimizing the concept with user feedback and the help of focus groups before the planned rollout to other markets.
“We've done this because we've built relationships with communities as a trusted local media outlet,” explained Village Media CEO Jeff Elgie on a local news panel at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. “People feel that this virtual place feels different and positive and strengthens the community.”
Jeff Elgie (far left) on a local news panel at the IJF. In the right picture: Richard Gingras
Richard Gingras, Google's Vice President News, is also convinced of this. He is Chairman of the Board of Village Media and believes that the return to the principle of the local marketplace as a place for the exchange of information, opinions and goods is a model for functioning and profitable local journalism. “We no longer see ourselves as a pure media company, but as a 'community impact organization' with the aim of strengthening as many local communities as possible with our model,” Richard Gingras told me on the sidelines of the conference in Perugia.
Village Media's core business is still traditional advertising-financed local journalism, with 70 percent of revenue coming from local advertising. Jeff Elgie believes that “the digital advertising business, at least at a local level, does not work with the pure sale of display ads.” Village Media therefore relies on a diverse range of display, newsletter and video advertising, its own market research, sponsored content and a “Community Leaders Program” for sponsored journalism.
Local advertisers can also subscribe to a “Community Code” product that includes business directories, business profiles and classifieds. A special product called “Goldmine” enables local businesses to announce sales, jobs and events via an AI dashboard with integrated reporting.
Village Media applies the same principle focused on local advertisers to Spaces. Instead of the usual programmatic advertising with targeting, which annoys many users, the company prefers to approach local businesses to see if they would like to sponsor a forum, e.g. a gardening company for a gardener forum or a bike store for a bike forum. Such advertising is not annoying because local businesses can take part in the conversations and give valuable advice.
What does all this have to do with AI? Village Media's projects are steeped in AI and would not be scalable otherwise. Apart from tools for the editorial workflow (summaries, text optimization, tagging, etc.) Village Media has developed several innovative AI-powered tools that strengthen the community focus:
Poll platform: reads articles and suggests relevant community polls that can be integrated into the content
Comment engine: scans articles and suggests comments to engage the community in a constructive dialog about the topic
Monitoring and filtering: information from community sources such as school boards, police departments, city councils, health departments and hospitals is monitored, filtered for local relevance and newsworthiness and forwarded to editors
And last but not least: Village Media licenses its in-house AI technology to around 120 publishers across Canada and the US, showing that even local media companies can stand up to big tech platforms like Meta.