About KelownaNow

KelownaNow

KelownaNow is a Kelowna-based digital news outlet serving the Central Okanagan, part of the NowCities network of community news sites (including KamloopsNow and PentictonNow). Founded in 1998, it describes itself as the fastest-growing media platform in the Central Okanagan — a dynamic team of writers on a modern digital platform, providing the region with news, lifestyle, events, entertainment, food, and fashion. With a distinctive editorial positioning around positive, community-first journalism, KelownaNow has built a loyal audience in one of Canada's fastest-growing cities.

Overview

KelownaNow publishes Kelowna and Central Okanagan news with a community-first sensibility: local news, lifestyle, events, entertainment, food, and the "stuff that matters" to the region's residents. The outlet's editorial philosophy — working toward "a more positive tomorrow" and telling stories "in a softer, more informative way" — distinguishes it from the crime-and-crisis focus of traditional local news. The tagline-era promise is that KelownaNow covers what matters to the community, in a way that brings positivity to the subjects it illuminates.

History

KelownaNow was founded in 1998 — making it one of Canada's earliest digital-native local news outlets, launched when the web was young and the idea of an online-only community newspaper was still novel. In 1998, Kelowna was a much smaller city — a quiet Okanagan town known for orchards and retirement, not the booming metropolitan centre it would become. The internet was dial-up, Google was a startup, and the notion that a community's news could live entirely online seemed speculative. KelownaNow's founders bet otherwise: that Kelowna's residents would embrace a digital news source built for the medium, and that the city's growth would create an audience hungry for local coverage.

The bet proved prescient. Kelowna transformed over the following decades — from orchard town to one of Canada's fastest-growing cities, from retirement destination to tech hub and wine-country magnet. KelownaNow grew with it, evolving from a desktop-web pioneer through the social media revolution, the smartphone era, and the platform age. The outlet that launched when "online news" meant a static webpage became a mobile-first, socially distributed, multi-platform community publisher.

The NowCities network expanded the model beyond Kelowna: KamloopsNow serves the Thompson-Nicola region to the northwest, PentictonNow serves the South Okanagan to the south — a constellation of community sites sharing technology, business operations, and editorial philosophy. Each site serves its own community with local writers and local focus, while the network provides the scale — shared CMS, shared sales infrastructure, shared best practices — that makes community digital media economically viable. The network's pitch to advertisers reflects its community roots: helping businesses in the Central Okanagan, the Okanagan Valley, and beyond with "a fresh, relevant and exciting new digital media choice."

The outlet's technology has been central to its identity from the start: a mobile-responsive platform designed to deliver content "wherever our viewers are, providing immediate access when they need it." The KelownaNow mobile app — developed with Csek Creative, a Kelowna digital agency — extends the brand onto readers' phones with push alerts and a native experience, while the website remains the flagship. The technology investment reflects the outlet's understanding that community news must meet readers on their devices, not wait for them to come to a homepage.

Content and Editorial Approach

KelownaNow's content spans the full range of community news: local news (city council, development, the issues shaping Kelowna's explosive growth — housing, transportation, infrastructure, the tensions between longtime residents and newcomers), lifestyle and events (the festivals, the outdoor culture of lake and mountain, the social calendar of a city that plays as hard as it works), entertainment and food (the dining scene, the wineries that define the region's identity, the farm-to-table culture), sports (from junior hockey to the outdoor recreation that is the valley's secular religion), business and real estate (the market that both drives and threatens the city's livability), weather (essential in a valley of microclimates and wildfire summers), and local columnists (the voices that give the site its personality). The site's business directory and events listings make it a practical resource, not just a news source — the place Kelowna residents check for what to do as well as what happened.

The editorial approach — "a softer, more informative way" of telling stories, oriented toward "a more positive tomorrow" — is both a philosophy and a market positioning. In a media environment where negativity drives engagement and outrage drives clicks, KelownaNow bets that a community wants news that builds rather than demoralizes. This doesn't mean ignoring bad news — the housing crisis, the wildfires, the social issues get covered — but covering it with a constructive sensibility: what happened, what it means, and what comes next. The outlet takes its social presence seriously — "our social presence is second to none and we take that responsibility seriously and put community first" — using the platforms to serve readers rather than merely to chase them, building community in the comment sections as well as in the streets.

Coverage and Audience

KelownaNow covers Kelowna and the Central Okanagan — one of Canada's fastest-growing urban regions, a city transformed by migration, development, and the wine-and-lake lifestyle that draws newcomers from across the country. Kelowna's population has more than doubled since KelownaNow's founding, and the region's challenges — housing affordability, infrastructure strain, wildfire risk, the preservation of agricultural land against development pressure — are the standing stories of the site's coverage. The audience is Central Okanagan residents: the families, professionals, retirees, and young people who make up the region's booming population, from the longtime orchard families to the newly arrived tech workers. The outlet's claim to be the region's "#1 news and events source" and "fastest growing media outlet" reflects its confidence in the community-first model — and the audience growth that has sustained nearly three decades of continuous publication.

Business Model

KelownaNow's business is digital advertising and marketing services sold to Central Okanagan businesses — the "fresh, relevant and exciting new digital media choice" for advertisers seeking to reach the region's growing population. The NowCities network gives the operation scale: shared technology, shared sales infrastructure, and a multi-market footprint (Kelowna, Kamloops, Penticton) that offers advertisers reach across the Interior. The model is the standard one for successful community digital media — local audience, local advertisers, digital efficiency — executed with the community-first branding that differentiates the outlet from both the legacy press and the social platforms. In a market where the traditional newspaper (the Kelowna Daily Courier) has diminished, KelownaNow's digital-native operation represents the future of Okanagan community news: built for the web, sustained by the community it serves.

Ownership

KelownaNow is part of the NowCities network of community news sites, operating alongside KamloopsNow and PentictonNow. The Kelowna-based operation — headquartered on Dickson Avenue in downtown Kelowna — serves as the network's flagship, with the Central Okanagan as its home market.

Digital Presence

KelownaNow publishes at kelownanow.com, with the mobile app extending the brand onto readers' phones. The website's clear layout — navigation, featured stories, weather, and community sections — reflects the outlet's service orientation: a practical, user-friendly destination for Central Okanagan residents. The social media presence — which the outlet describes as "second to none" — distributes the journalism across the platforms where the community actually spends its time. For Kelowna residents, KelownaNow is the community's digital front page: the site that covers what matters, in a way that builds up rather than tears down.