April Lindgren

Professor Emerita/ Adjunct Professor

EducationBJ, Carleton University; Diplôme in International Relations, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

https://localnewsresearchproject.ca/

Biography

April Lindgren is a professor emerita/adjunct professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's School of Journalism. She founded the Local News Research Project (external link) (LNRP) in 2008 and now continues to co-direct the initiative with TMU professors Nicole Blanchett and Angela Misri. Prof. Lindgren coined the term local news poverty, which she uses to describe situations where the critical information needs of communities are not being addressed by local media. Her research in this area led to the creation of the crowd-sourced Local News Map (external link) , an ongoing project that tracks the launch - and loss - of local news outlets across Canada. In addition to leading projects that document the extent to which local news is at risk and unevenly available across the country, Prof. Lindgren has more recently turned her attention to what can be done to counter the erosion of local journalism.

The Local News Data Hub, (external link) which she established and ran from 2021 to 2025 when she retired, was an experiment (external link) designed to train student data journalists and shore up local journalism by supplying newsrooms with data-driven stories (external link) . She also recently collaborated with Inspirit Foundation (external link) , the Canadian Association of Journalists (external link) and Philanthropic Foundations Canada (external link) to create practical guides (external link) for foundations and news organizations interested in harnessing charitable support for local news.

Currently, Prof. Lindgren is working with Professor Colette Brin (external link) at Université Laval and Concordia University’s Magda Konieczna (external link) on building a directory of local news organizations. The research team is using a custom-built automated scraping and filtering tool to gather the names of news outlets in each census subdivision and assembling a national network of local librarians and others with relevant expertise to verify the AI-generated results. When it launches in 2028, the directory, funded by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage, will make it easier to identify news deserts and communities with limited access to local news, help people to find reliable news sources in their communities, and create another way for news outlets get their stories out to the public.

The Local News Research Project (external link) has received funding from a variety of sources including SSHRC, CERIS-The Ontario Metropolis Centre, the federal MITACS program, Toronto Metropolitan University and the Rossy Foundation. Past studies included an analysis of news reporting on disadvantaged Toronto neighbourhoods, research on how ethnic newspapers portray the Greater Toronto Area to newcomers, an examination of how other racial and ethnic groups are covered in ethnic media, and an investigation of news coverage of the 2011 election in the ethnic press.

Prof. Lindgren was the School of Journalism’s Velma Rogers Research Chair from 2018 to 2021. She was the founding director of the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre in 2011 and led the organization for the next seven years.

Before joining the School of Journalism in 2007, Prof. Lindgren spent more than 20 years as a journalist. She covered economics and politics on Parliament Hill and at Queen’s Park for the Ottawa Citizen and what was then the Southam/CanWest chain of newspapers. She was also a regular political commentator for Global Television’s Focus Ontario public affairs show.

Prof. Lindgren has a bachelor of journalism degree from Carleton University and a diplôme in international relations from the Graduate School of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2005-2006 she was the St. Clair Balfour journalism fellow at the University of Toronto's Massey College, where her studies focused on urban issues. Prof. Lindgren is the author of Headline: Murder, nominated for the 2009 Arthur Ellis Canadian Crime Writing Award for Best First Novel.