About Stratford Today

Stratford Today

Overview

Stratford Today (styled StratfordToday) is a digital-only local news outlet serving Stratford, Ontario, the Perth County city known around the world for the Stratford Festival theatre company. Statistics Canada counted just over 33,000 residents in the city in the 2021 census, and the outlet covers that community in the round: city council and its committees, police and the courts, schools, the Festival and the wider arts scene, local business, minor sport, obituaries and the community events calendar.

The site, at stratfordtoday.ca, is owned by Village Media, the Sault Ste. Marie company that operates a network of free, advertising-funded local news websites, most of them in Ontario. Stratford Today is edited by Matt Harris and staffed by a small team of local reporters. It arrived in a market that, unlike many of the towns Village Media enters, still had a legacy daily newspaper, the Postmedia-owned Stratford Beacon Herald, which continues to publish. Stratford Today therefore grew up as a digital challenger brand: faster, free, newsletter-driven and deeply embedded in the sponsorship fabric of the city's festivals and community organisations.

History

Village Media does not appear to have published a precise launch date for Stratford Today, but the site was demonstrably operating by the early summer of 2022. Contest documentation hosted on the company's content network shows StratfordToday running a "Stratford Festival Dinner and Show" contest, promoted through stratfordtoday.ca and its social accounts, in June 2022, followed by a Stratford Summer Music ticket contest in late July and August of that year. By the summer of 2022 the outlet was already listed among the sponsors of some of the city's signature institutions — the Stratford Festival, Stratford Summer Music, Community Living Stratford and the Dragon Boat Festival — a launch pattern built on visibility and partnership rather than an inherited print audience.

The launch campaign itself became a calling card for the network. Village Media's July 2023 bulletin reported that StratfordToday's site-launch contest, run with the Stratford Festival, had taken first place for Best Contest and/or Promotion at the Local Media Association's Digital Innovation Awards, announced in 2023. According to the company's own account of the campaign, it drew thousands of entries and more than 2,000 new email subscribers, and 13 per cent of the city's population entered — figures reported by Village Media itself, offered here as the company's description of its launch rather than independently verified results.

In the years since, the newsroom has been built out steadily. Village Media welcomed editor Matt Harris to StratfordToday in May 2024, and he remains in the role: the company's April 2026 Replay shows Harris, captioned as StratfordToday's editor, alongside community partner specialist Mac Sinclair at the Stratford Home Show. Reporters Mo Fahim and Rob Ross joined during 2024, and reporter Alex Hunt was welcomed in February 2026. Sponsorships have continued in step with the city's calendar, from the Stratford Rotary Dragon Boat Festival in 2024 to Fever Dream Comedy and the Provocation Ideas Festival in 2026.

Programming and Content

Stratford Today's daily file is built around the institutions that govern and animate the city. Council coverage extends to the committee level — its newsletter's events listings track bodies such as the Heritage Stratford Advisory Committee and the Committee of Adjustment — and to policing, including community initiatives such as the Law Enforcement Torch Run. Courts, fire and emergency news, road closures and development disputes fill out the hard-news side.

Culture is not a sideline in Stratford, and the site treats it accordingly. The Stratford Festival, whose season dominates the city's economy and identity, is covered as both arts journalism and community news; a Community Story in the outlet's newsletter, produced through Village Media's Community Leaders Program, marked Seana McKenna's Stratford Festival Legacy Award. Stratford Summer Music, gallery nights and museum programming recur in its events calendar alongside school activities such as Reading Buddies.

The remainder of the mix follows the network pattern, adapted to local material: obituaries; Village Life lifestyle features; grocery flyers; a local-business Spotlight; and the Village Report, which surfaces stories from sister Village Media sites across Ontario. Its newsletter also carries provincial-politics material from within the network, giving Stratford readers a line to Queen's Park alongside the council chamber. Obituaries, event listings and community announcements round out a product designed to be checked daily rather than weekly.

Audience and Reach

Stratford Today does not release a market-specific audience number, and none is claimed here. Its potential readership starts with the city's roughly 33,000 residents and extends to the wider Perth County area and to the Festival's large seasonal visitor economy, which brings theatre audiences — and their attention — to Stratford for much of the year. A launch contest that, by the company's account, persuaded 13 per cent of the population to enter suggests the brand achieved broad local name recognition early, though that figure is promotional and unaudited.

The reliable context is the network's. In a company profile current in 2026, Village Media reported more than five million monthly readers, over 450,000 daily newsletter subscribers, 33 publications and about 190 employees, with 80 sites running on its Villager platform, including partner publications outside the owned network. It has also reported 19 SPACES communities with more than 500,000 active users by 2026. All of these are Village Media's own network-level claims, attributed as such; Stratford Today's individual share is not published.

Digital Presence

Stratford Today's entire product is digital. Its website runs on Village Media's Villager platform — the same system the company licenses to other publishers in Canada and beyond — and is optimised for mobile reading, with section fronts for news, community and lifestyle content, an obituaries section and a detailed events calendar.

The email newsletter is a principal distribution channel: archived editions of the StratfordToday newsletter show the standard network bundle of Stratford headlines, Village Life items, flyers, a business Spotlight, obituaries, the Village Report and Community Stories. The outlet has maintained social accounts since launch — its 2022 contest rules list facebook.com/StratfordToday and the handle @stratford_today — and its launch strategy of contest-led subscriber acquisition won industry recognition from the Local Media Association. Since Meta began blocking Canadian news links in 2023, Village Media sites including Stratford Today have emphasised owned channels — the website, the newsletter and the network's SPACES communities — over social referral traffic.

Ownership and Organisation

Stratford Today is owned and operated by Village Media Inc., headquartered at 298 Queen Street East in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The company traces to SooToday, started in 2000 by former broadcaster Dick Peplow as an online directory that evolved into a local news service after regional television news cutbacks; Peplow's death in 2007 was followed by the rise of Jeff Elgie, an early investor who became chief executive and took majority control in 2012. Elgie's Village Media expanded by launching advertising-supported newsrooms in mid-sized and small Ontario communities, supplying each with local reporters and sales staff while centralising technology, advertising operations and editorial support.

Locally, Stratford Today's organisation is headed by editor Matt Harris, in post since May 2024, with reporters Mo Fahim, Rob Ross and, from February 2026, Alex Hunt, and community partner specialist Mac Sinclair representing the outlet at events such as the Stratford Home Show in April 2026. The site is free to readers; revenue comes from local and network advertising, sponsored Community Stories produced with community partners, and promotions of the kind that marked its launch.

Contact and Availability

Stratford Today is published free of charge at stratfordtoday.ca and can be read without a subscription or registration; its email newsletter is available to sign up for on the website. The outlet's parent company, Village Media, is based at 298 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario P6A 1Y7 — the address used in Stratford Today's official contest rules — and details of the company and its other publications are at villagemedia.ca. News tips, event information and community announcements are welcomed through the contact options published on the Stratford Today website.