09-23-2025, 06:56 AM
(09-19-2025, 04:49 PM)ac3r Wrote: The smart thing to do would be to amalgamate and operate this place like one big city, because it is one big city. The vague borders you can't see and out of touch ideas of identity/place is absolutely meaningless and obsolete. It's why nothing gets done and you can't treat this place like a serious urban Canadian settlement.
And some new media would help too. This region has, what, 700'000 people now? A lot of them are young and/or people who have lived all over the world. Why is it that the main newspaper is still some worthless rag that mostly seems to print weekly articles getting grandma and grandpas hot takes on rapid transit and dense housing development? A couple zoomers with an iPhone can do better journalism than the nonsense The Record of 570 News offers.
There are at least ten different media outlets that serve Waterloo Region in a local capacity. The local market for subscription print media is largely spent on publications based outside of Waterloo Region (Globe and Mail & Toronto Star) or even out of the country (New York Times, and pretty much every other news outlet that operates on a subscription model). That being said, some of those local outlets are mere shells of what they used to be and owned or controlled by companies outside of the Region (looking at you CTV née CKCO, or The Record)
If you think that it's easy enough to start another news outlet in this market, go for it. The Record is the final print survivor of a handful of publications that started over a century ago when each community had its own newspaper, financed by local businesses and subscribers who paid for either subscriptions or advertising.