What Counts for News in Toronto

The bigger the city, the bigger and more unusual an event has to be before it will make the news. Out in rural communities, you might see a front page news article about a school play or a deer wandering onto the field during a soccer game, while in the GTA, you're more likely to hear about a fire, a murder, or a traffic accident that killed four people. It makes it seem as though life is inherently more dangerous in the city, but it's really just a question of population.

Other things that tend to make the news in a big city are economic changes that will affect the way citizens are able to spend their money. If top realtors or brokers in Toronto are predicting a housing boom, that can actually push developers and real estate buyers into action creating the boom that the analysts were predicting in the first place. This is why news outlets have to be very careful to report only those economic predictions that can be backed up by research and statistics.

Politics in the big city are almost always newsworthy unless the rulings they're making affect only one small subset of the population, such as a local business getting approval for a minor rezoning. Other issues that affect the whole city or a cohesive minority will be reported, such as changes in the traffic laws, new loan programs for immigrant business people, and the city council putting in a bid to host a major event like the Olympics.

If you have decided to start your own news blog so that you can report on the things that you think are important, remember that the success or failure of your endeavour doesn't just hinge on how well you write - it also depends on what people want to read about. But the most important consideration, as with all writing, is to start with what fascinates you, and go about learning more. These will be the subjects about which you can be passionate, about which you'll want to be informed and about which your writing will likely be interesting to others. There is tons of information to guide you in this process - hundreds of blogs about writing blogs in fact - so take some time to learn from others before you jump in.