One of the first areas that the Local Journalism Initiative allowed was Neepawa’s NACTV to expand was into the adjacent municipalities, enabling the station to cover not only the municipal council meetings for Neepawa itself but also the Municipality of North Cypress-Langford and the Rural Municipality in Rosedale. Both municipalities have seen a rise in engagement over the past year thanks to LJI coverage of the issues that the respective Councils are tackling, bringing what was once behind closed doors in the Council chambers into the homes of residents.
In the Municipality of North Cypress-Langford, a project arose that was threatening some of the pristine native grasslands. NACTV’s LJI-driven coverage of Council discussions, subsequent public meetings, and even one-on-one conversations with authorities and affected residents allowed many more people to not only become aware of the issue but engage on the local and even provincial level. They were able to bring their concerns to the appropriate venues and affect real changes in the parameters of the project in question.
In Rosedale, the increased visibility of Council deliberations and discussions has sparked an interest in many residents in the overall operations of the Council. Rosedale is a geographically large municipality with several smaller communities within it, each with their own priorities and challenges, and engagement has often taken the form of contacting the councillor for your ward about specific issues that are affecting you (such as snow removal, a perennial problem) but not knowing a lot about the bigger picture. This year residents have not only been contacting NACTV to ensure that coverage of the council will be continuing, but it brought residents out in person in significant numbers when the public hearing for the financial plan came around.
In both cases, LJI opened the doors for rural residents to become a bigger part of the decision-making process for their home region..
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About LJI
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.
