Village Media’s online empire continues to grow with the announcement of the upcoming launch of a digital news website in Orillia.
OrilliaMatters.com goes live on Jan. 8 and intends to follow the tried-and-true Village Media formula of delivering locally-driven, real-time, news to a central Ontario market that includes the Lake Country region of Rama, Ramara, Severn, and Oro-Medonte.
The Sault Ste. Marie-headquartered online media company’s stable is now up to seven including its cornerstone franchise SooToday.com, GuelphToday.com, BarrieToday.com, BayToday.ca, ElliotLakeToday.com, and TimminsToday.com.
The company also maintains strategic partnerships with Sudbury.com in Sudbury, TBNewswatch.com in Thunder Bay, the Manitoulin Expositor (manitoulin.ca), and Rogers Media in Halifax (HalifaxToday.ca).
The OrilliaMatters newsroom consists of two locally recognized journalists with Dave Dawson and Nathan Taylor. Joining them on staff is publisher John Hammill and regional sales manager Nicole Parkes.
Similar to Village Media’s motivation to start a news website in Guelph, Orillia recently had its community newspaper closed when Metroland Media Group elected to permanently shutter the Orillia Packet & Times.
“We believe that locally-driven news is essential to communities,” said Village Media CEO Jeff Elgie in a Jan. 3 news release.
“That’s why we’ve started or helped launch more than 10 digital news sites in communities just like Orillia within the past few years — communities that in some cases were also told their local newspaper didn’t factor into someone else’s bottom line.
“We are proud to be extremely community-minded and cover important stories in your city. We have a great team in place and look forward to becoming an integrated part of the community’s daily news.”
