Village Media has launched The Trillium, a Queen’s Park-focused addition to its roster of local news sites, and it has brought on a team of reporters familiar with Ontario’s political landscape to lead it.
Though currently available for free, The Trillium will be a paywalled news service targeting Queen’s Park stakeholders, including public servants, political staffers, business leaders, lobbyists and strategists. In addition to news coverage on the website, the team will also send out twice-daily newsletters during the week, a week-in-review newsletter on Friday and a weekly podcast.
The site will be led by editor-in-chief Jessica Smith Cross, working with deputy editor Charlie Pinkerton and reporters Aidan Chamandy, Sneh Duggal and Jack Hauen.
Until earlier this month, Smith Cross was editor-in-chief of QP Briefing and iPolitics, working along with the team of journalists now making up her staff at The Trillium. According to reporting by The Toronto Star and tweets made by Pinkerton, Smith Cross and Pinkerton both resigned over perceived interference from the sites’ publisher over a story about Premier Doug Ford’s relationship with developers. In emails and letters obtained by the Star, publishers had objected to “personal details” included in the story, while Smith Cross defended the story as “accurate, fair and in the public interest.”
Two other journalists also threatened to resign, though they – along with a third currently on maternity leave – were then laid off. The layoffs were unrelated to the story and had been in the works as part of an agreement to divide the assets of Torstar between owners Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett. That deal was finalized last week, with Rivett receiving QP Briefing and iPolitics, and Bitove receiving The Toronto Star and Metroland Media, among other assets.
A Queen’s Park-focused site was already in the works at Village Media, which put up job postings for editorial staff roughly one month ago, as part of an ongoing expansion of its network of local news sites.
“Queen’s Park is the heart of power in Ontario, and what happens there has a ripple effect on every community in the province, including the many cities and towns that depend on our local journalism,” said Village Media CEO Jeff Elgie.
Village Media currently operates 24 community-focused, largely ad-supported websites and corresponding email newsletters for towns and regions across Ontario. In recent months, it has acquired Niagara-on-the-Lake Local and Voice of Pelham, bringing them into the Village Media network, and also launched a new site for Burlington. The company also has new sites for Milton and Oshawa currently in the works.
