As Jasper, Alta., burned in the unprecedented wildfires of the summer of 2024, the Jasper Fitzhugh, a weekly community newspaper, reported faithfully on the incident. And as the town began to rebuild and restore infrastructure, the Fitzhugh reported extensively on their progress; for example, alerting readers to the deep cleaning required in Jasper’s schools and the work of volunteers recovering items from damaged homes.

Yet, only one year later, on Aug. 11, 2025, editor Peter Shokeir announced the Fitzhugh’s closure. After twenty years of service to the Jasper community, the newspaper was no longer financially sustainable — the wildfire had destroyed local businesses that previously supported the Fitzhugh through advertising revenue. 

It was the final blow to a community paper facing the same challenges as most local Canadian news outlets: consolidation and layoffs, ad revenue flowing to social platforms rather than news publishers and fallout from Bill C-18, the federal law passed in 2023 requiring online platforms (specifically, Meta and Google) to remunerate news producers for their content.

Meta responded to Bill C-18 with its now-infamous ‘news ban,’ blocking users from sharing links to Canadian news articles. The ban had disastrous impacts on the reach and viability of local news outlets. Research suggests nearly a third of small Canadian outlets stopped using their Facebook and Instagram pages in the year following Bill C-18. 

Crossover between traditional and digital media has offered a breadth of communication options in the days that disasters unfold and conditions change rapidly. Social media platforms have long been recognized as essential tools because of their speed and reach, and the Municipality of Jasper and Parks Canada used X, Facebook and Instagram extensively to share information about the 2024 fires. Posts about evacuation, mental health services, housing and rebuilding provided the Jasper community with timely, accurate information to guide their return and initial recovery after the fires. In fact, the coordinated messaging from municipal and park officials was later recognized as a strength of the collective response to the fires. 

But the reliability and appropriateness of social media for disaster communication and management is under question. People searching for news cannot reliably find it on Facebook or Instagram. If they check another platform, like TikTok or X, the information they need might be drowned out by AI-generated content or misinformation. Public trust in platforms is falling. Platforms’ terms of use can also block the flow of essential information. Canadians in need of news must seek it elsewhere, like on local news sites; but the average Canadian is unlikely to do so.

The public tends to regard local news as more trustworthy. Local journalists and news outlets are positioned nearer to disasters, have local knowledge and connections and can hold policymakers accountable during the disaster response process. Post-disaster reporting like that of the Fitzhugh is vital to keeping the community engaged and aware of recovery progress. When considering the newsroom’s outsized role in the recovery communication ecosystem, the loss of the Fitzhugh — and its implications for future wildfire incidents — is palpable. 

Implications for the future of disaster communications

When two of the most popular social networking sites in Canada don’t allow news sharing, communicators must make trade-offs to reach the highest number of people while navigating misinformation and platform governance. But an ideal communication strategy gives the least legwork to the public: a person shouldn’t need to monitor Facebook, X, news sites, television broadcasts and emergency alerts to get the full picture. 

Communication professionals and strategists must understand where their audience lies, perhaps making use of demographic surveys to decide whether certain platforms will capture broader segments of the public. They must also be constantly monitoring for policy changes, like Bill C-18, and platform regulations, like post limits, that could strangle information flows at critical times. 

To combat misinformation, there should be alignment in messaging among levels of government, Indigenous leadership, news providers, aid organizations, community groups and businesses. When reflecting on public communication during the fires, Tyler Riopel, the CEO of Tourism Jasper, put it succinctly: “Stay in your lane.” Amplifying verified sources and refusing to engage in the rumour mill are vital to ensuring people know what information they can trust. 

Most necessary is supporting the work of local news outlets — where they still exist, since 2.5 million Canadians are living with almost no local news. Small and rural communities with fewer resources are the most vulnerable to disasters, but their local news producers are disappearing, leaving coverage gaps that make recovery more difficult. Building climate-resilient communities requires more investment in Canada’s local news outlets while facing the reality that social media platforms are more unpredictable than ever.

Emmerson Jull is a freelance journalist, digital communications researcher, and associate editor at The Ontarion, University of Guelph’s independent campus newspaper. Her work explores topics like environmental change, disaster communications, and urban sustainability. 

Jennifer J. Silver is a professor at the University of Guelph with expertise in oceans and fisheries governance, political ecology, and rapidly changing dynamics at the interface of digital technology and environmental change. She is also an associate editor at the journal Conservation & Society. 

© National Observer