A Local Journalism Experiment Pops Up In Calgary

Jeremy Klaszus was one of many Calgary residents who wished aloud that somebody would create what became The Sprawl, a hyper-local digital news outlet aimed at the city’s younger residents. But it was Klaszus, a former alt-weekly reporter, who managed to swiftly put the platform together—and then, just as quickly, take it down.

Calgary, Alberta, is a prairie city in Canada’s heartland with 1.2 million residents and a familiar North American problem: Its legacy news media is a shadow of its former self. The two broadsheet dailies, the Herald and Sun, now share an owner, a newsroom, and generally conservative editorial stances in elections. Owner Postmedia recently slashed 25 reporters in Calgary, which is the country’s fourth-largest market. Fast Forward, the city’s alternative weekly, closed in 2015. According to the national Globe and Mail, Alberta now has only five reporters covering the provincial legislature full-time. (Neighboring Saskatchewan has none.) And just this week, Torstar, a Canadian media chain that owns Metro Calgary—a free commuter daily—sold two other Metro titles in Winnipeg and Ottawa to Postmedia, which promptly axed both. (Disclosure: Until recently I was managing editor at Metro Edmonton.)