Pop-up Journalism: A New Approach to Local News in the Digital Age

(Photo courtesy of Terje Sollie via Pexels)

As news sources shut down, The Sprawl is reinventing how to cover local news

More and more local newspapers and media outlets across Canada are closing their doors.

Earlier this year Postmedia Network Canada Corp., one of Canada’s largest newspaper publishers, announced it was closing six newspapers in an effort to cut costs, after terminating 36 publications in 2017. The same year, after 68 years in operation, Glacier Media closed down The Westender newspaper in Vancouver.

Media companies are stopping the presses as newspapers become less profitable in the digital age, largely due to decreased ad revenue and circulation rates.

Meanwhile, operational costs tied to daily and weekly newspapers are incredibly high. And with declining ad revenue, paying newspaper employees to cover smaller communities every single day is becoming less feasible.

Jeremy Klaszus, a freelance journalist reporting in Calgary for more than 15 years and founder of The Sprawl, found himself in a similar situation.

“In Calgary, and elsewhere, newsroom budgets were being cut,” said Klaszus. “The places I used to freelance, all of a sudden,weren’t an option anymore.”

Noticing a lack of in-depth local news coverage in Calgary, Klaszus created The Sprawl, a “pop-up journalism” news source that takes an in-depth approach to local stories.

(Photo courtesy of The Sprawl via Facebook)

“Rather than try to cover everything all of the time, we cover specific things for specific amounts of time” said Klaszus when explaining the concept of “pop-up journalism.”

Utilizing digital tools like Twitter, Medium, and Facebook to cover specific stories and issues in Calgary removed almost all overhead expenses, said Klaszus.

Since launching in fall 2017, The Sprawl has produced four “editions,” each of which tackle a single story or issue in great detail. Calgary’s municipal election and bid to host the Olympics are two examples.

“I call it ‘slow journalism,’” said Klaszus. “It’s the idea that I don’t need to be first out there with the story.”

“Instead of trying to cover everything in the city all the time, we make pop-up editions that go deep on specific stories for certain periods of time” reads The Sprawl’s eleven core principles, or “manifesto.”

Through The Sprawl, Klaszus is ensuring Calgary doesn’t become a “news desert,” a community with limited news sources.

More news sources means more information and different perspectives, allowing Canadians to form their own informed opinion on important social matters.

“Canadians cannot have a functioning democracy without information,” said Paul Morse, president of Unifor Local 87-M, the union representing unionized newspaper employees in Ontario. “‘Clickbait’ internet blogs will not fill that gap.”

The Sprawl Manifesto (Photo courtesy of The Sprawl via Facebook)

The Sprawl’s engagement with the local Calgary community has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, The Sprawl is able to sustain a budget primarily thanks to donations made by readers through crowdfunding platform Patreon.

But crowdfunding isn’t really a stable financial framework for a digital publication, a fact that Klaszus readily admits.

“The big thing for me is putting The Sprawl on a solid financial footing where it’s actually sustainable” said Klaszus.

As a DNIC company, Klaszus aims to utilize the expertise of the program’s mentors to ensure The Sprawl’s financial future.

“That for me is the biggest benefit, having people where you can map out a business plan and say ‘hey, this is how this thing can serve Calgary in the long run.’”