New online media outlet launches in Ottawa

Ottawamatters.com launched this morning, the latest media startup in Ottawa since a stable of community papers closed earlier this year.

Village Media, the company that owns a chain of similar local news sites, launched the new service under a partnership with 1310 News and promises coverage of breaking news, local events and community information.

“1310 NEWS takes great pride in serving Ottawa audiences, and the launch of OttawaMatters.com allows us to further our investment in the community as we continue to evolve in today’s shifting media landscape,” said Mark Campbell, director of news programming, 1310 NEWS, in an article posted this morning . “With the recent changes in the market, we saw an opportunity to serve this community even better by expanding our local news coverage through the creation of a site dedicated to stories reflective of this region.”

Journalists at 1310 News will lead the website’s editorial coverage. A job ad was posted in January for a multimedia reporter for ottawamatters.com as well as another forthcoming news service, kingstontoday.ca.

Village Media’s business model revolves around all-in local coverage, mostly with stories that don’t take much time to develop and revenue is made off local ad sales, according to _ j-source.ca _ .

“The approach so far has worked: the “core sites” of Village Media are profitable, but the company overall loses money through investing in new markets,” a _ j-source.ca _ profile said. “A site needs two to three years to garner enough of a footprint in a community to become profitable.”