Greetings City of Windsor councillors:

On behalf of ink-stainedwretches.org , composed of a group of former newsroom employees, I ask that you please consider the accompanying resolution requesting your support in encouraging elected leaders to build an ecosystem in which local journalism can provide vital service to people of Windsor and beyond.

Region of Waterloo councillors, during their council meeting on June 3, 2020, unanimously passed a similar resolution. The wording of the motion that regional councillors passed is as follows:

“Therefore Be It Resolved that Waterloo Regional Council recognizes that a healthy, professional news media is essential to the proper functioning of democracy in the region; urges other municipal councils within the region and across Canada to recognize that a robust news media is essential to the proper functioning of democracy in their jurisdictions; endorses legislation and regulations to support and rejuvenate news outlets across Canada; and urges the federal government to move quickly to pass legislation to ensure an ecosystem for a healthy news media to serve all Canadians. And that the resolution be forwarded to the area municipalities, local M.P.s and M.P.P.s and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Association of Municipalities of Ontario.”

As we have outlined in our proposed resolution to your council, and in the accompanying backgrounder document, we are concerned by the fact that residents in our municipality and throughout Canada have already lost vital services provided by local journalism outlets — and are in serious risk of imminently losing more.

According to the university based journalism website j-source.ca , from 2008 to 2018, 190 communities across Canada lost about 250 established news outlets due to mergers or closures. And more recently, in six weeks from the time the novel coronavirus pandemic struck in early March, more than 100 media outlets across Canada made cuts; nearly 50 community newspapers had shuttered; and about 2,000 workers were laid off.

So we are asking your help to encourage our elected leaders, at the provincial and federal levels, to help build an ecosystem in which local journalism — which is essential to the functioning of a healthy democracy — can thrive.

Thank you for your consideration,