Straight Goods News closes, merges with rabble.ca

Straight Goods News one of the oldest independent Canadian online magazines has gone out of business and merged with rabble.ca, joining the forces of two of Canada's leading online progressive news sources. According to a release, Straight Goods contributors and staff have already started working for rabble on such events as covering the recent Conservative convention. 

Rabble.ca, based in Toronto has been providing free news content for 12 years; Straight Goods News, based in the Ottawa Valley, has been around 13 years.

"It's hard to say goodbye to a dream," said founder and publisher Ish Theilheimer in the final editorial "but speaking and writing truth have never been lucrative. We launched in 2000, when online news was new and untested. It was the era of so-called 'media convergence,' when ultra-rich conservatives like Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch were creating huge media monopolies designed to flood the public with their right-wing views while  laying waste to the jobs of thousands of reporters and others working in news. 

"Truth-telling has actually become considerably more difficult since then. The difficulties we had trying to expand the readership and support base for SGNews are very typical of what many others doing serious work encounter on the Web."

Rabble.ca director of emerging media, Wayne MacPhail, said:

"Combining the strengths of both publications is great news for our shared readership, as well as for our funders and members. This merger can only enhance rabble.ca's ability to harness emerging media to tell compelling, progressive stories in new ways."