Mario Bartel was the featured speaker at a recent Royal City Rotary breakfast meeting. A veteran journalist, Mario, along with a dedicated team, has been instrumental in launching Freshet News, an initiative aimed at keeping local journalism alive and thriving in our community.
After big media closed local newspapers, Bartel and his colleagues Janis Cleugh, Theresa McManus, and Cornelia Naylor, leveraged their passion for telling local stories, and partnering with a co-op developer, and supported by their union, UNIFOR, they launched an awareness and fundraising campaign called Save Our Local News.
That effort evolved into Freshet News, which officially launched its website (freshetnews.ca) last October, covering New Westminster, Burnaby, and the Tri-Cities.
The team didn’t stop there. In December, Freshet News reintroduced a printed newspaper—something readers in these communities hadn’t experienced since 2023.
This is a story of four journalists doing something traditional in a new way—creating a model that could inspire other communities impacted by the loss of corporate local media.
