Project

In those early days, The Local borrowed tools from ethnography, documentary filmmaking and journalism to look beyond what data can tell us about the issues, needs, gaps, and opportunities from a human experience standpoint. The social determinants of health were difficult to appreciate in human, practical day-to-day terms. Our approach was to let the data lead us to the stories, and then to let the stories take us beyond the data.

The Local was incubated at OpenLab between 2017 and 2019. Its rudimentary website was hosted on Medium, the US-based online publishing platform, and its contributors consisted mostly of freelancers. The lean, low overhead model allowed The Local to ramp up quickly and establish proof of concept. By 2019, it became clear that the type of content The Local was producing could serve a general interest audience, and being housed at a hospital innovation studio was no longer tenable for a journalistic endeavour. On May 21, 2019, The Local officially launched as an independent not-for-profit organization, rolling out Issue 1 — The Geography of Difference. Since then, the organization has won 2 National Magazine Awards and 8 Digital Publishing Awards, and covered important topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 Toronto municipal election.