Newsflash: Canadians are still getting their news from, well, the news!
If you are reading this, I am likely preaching to the converted, but perhaps you can tell that friend or relative who only quotes current events from social media “content creators” about this column.
News Media Canada, the association that advocates for the media industry, has measured newspaper readership across different platforms—print, computer, tablet, cellphone—and by time of day since 2012.
Last week, the organization released its 2025 Newspapers 24/7 study, which showed that four out of five people in Canada, or 86%, read newspaper content each week and trust the content they read, regardless of format.
The study was conducted nationwide during the winter of 2024–25 and included responses from 2,418 online interviews.
At The Squamish Chief, we stopped labelling ourselves strictly a newspaper years ago. We call ourselves a media outlet. Obviously, we are proudly still in print, but we know many of our readers are consuming us online.
Personally, I hope we always have print papers—especially here in Squamish, considering the modern-day version of our town was built by the forest industry.
But we also meet people where they are at (other than on Facebook and Instagram, where accredited news is banned). Thus, we have our popular daily newsletter that arrives in your inbox; we are on lots of social platforms, like the journalism-founded Syrup, and we tell stories in photos, text, and video.
Back to the study.
News Media Canada found that 54% of the adult population reads newspapers in traditional formats: either in print or an e-edition. (Find The Squamish Chief’s
e-edition format on our website by clicking DIGITAL under the NEWS tab at the top of squamishchief.com.)
Six out of 10 (57%) adults currently access newspapers in an online format.
But do younger folks really consume news from media outlets like ours?
Yes, indeed!
The study found that total weekly readership across all formats by Millennials, also called Gen Y (ages 28 – 44) is 89%, slightly higher for Gen Z (ages 18 – 27) at 90%.
All this to say, the media, ironically, gets some bad press, but is still the main way folks find out accurate stories about what is happening in their communities.
That is a fact we take very seriously here at The Squamish Chief.
Thanks for reading!
