Wordfest: What the Heck Happened to Local News? with Jeremy Klaszus

Join Wordfest for a passionate conversation about local news with Jeremy Klaszus, author of The Hollowing of the Calgary Herald (based on his 2023 Sprawlcast). He’ll be joined on stage by Herald alumni Bob Blakey, Catherine Ford, Gwendolyn Richards and Shelley Youngblut, who witnessed the newspaper’s heyday ­and its slow decline over the decades. Independent Alberta publisher Hingston and Olsen will be on site with copies of the limited edition hardcover, which features electric green paper, foil-stamped iconography, and a letterpress-printed title band. It also includes an all-new afterword in which Klaszus receives and responds to “letters to the editor” about the initial report. You can also pre-order the book here for pick-up at the event.

About The Hollowing of the Calgary Herald

An oral history of the slow, sad decline of a once-mighty daily newspaper, in book form for the first time.

For more than a century, the Calgary Herald was the heartbeat of Alberta’s largest city, reflecting—and reinforcing—the mores and values of Calgary itself. Other news outlets have come and gone, but no local publication had the power, influence, and longevity of the Herald. As the 21st century arrived, however, so did a number of threats: increasingly aggressive owners, awkward consolidations and mergers, and, of course, the internet. As the transition to digital brought the entire Canadian news industry to its knees, the Herald came right down with it.

Jeremy Klaszus’s The Hollowing of the Calgary Herald is a thoughtful and clear-eyed account of what happens when a big-city newspaper of record slowly crumbles. It is also, unfortunately, a story that is being repeated all across North America.