OTTAWA — The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) and the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec today launched a new content portal featuring multilingual audio-visual media created by community TV stations and media centres across Canada.
Anglophone users can access the Community Media Portal at ComMediaPortal.ca. Francophone users can access le Portail des Médias Communautaires at PortailMédias.ca. Content is being developed in both official languages as well as several Indigenous ones, says the news release.
Stories on the portal come from 17 communities across Canada, ranging from Schreiber on Lake Superior’s North Shore, to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, to Acadian towns in Nova Scotia and Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula.
The Community Media Portal-le Portail des Médias Communautaires has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Under the LJI, more than 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life, says the news release. Seventeen are producing televisual content, which will be featured on the Community Media Portal. In a later phase, community TV stations and media centres that haven’t received LJI funding will be invited to contribute to the portal as well.
“We’re grateful to Canadian Heritage for this opportunity to increase civic coverage in our communities. We hope that the Community Media Portal will support dialogue about issues that are common to many parts of Canada, and to become more aware of what is going on in parts of the country that are seldom visible on the national scene,” said CACTUS executive director Catherine Edwards, in the news release.
