About Aurora Today

Aurora Today

Overview

Aurora Today, published online at AuroraToday.ca, is a digital-only local news outlet serving Aurora, a town of 62,057 people (2021 census) in Ontario's York Region, within the Greater Toronto Area. The site is owned and operated by Village Media, the Sault Ste. Marie–based publisher of hyperlocal news websites across Ontario, and it follows that company's established format: free-to-read local reporting written by journalists assigned to the community, supplemented by weather, obituaries, events listings, community announcements and Ontario and national news drawn from elsewhere in the Village Media network and The Canadian Press. Aurora Today is the dedicated news source for a fast-growing suburban town situated partly on the Oak Ridges Moraine, immediately north of Richmond Hill and immediately south of Newmarket, its closest sister publication in the Village Media network.

History

Aurora Today is one of the newest outlets in the Village Media network. Village Media announced the launch in the spring of 2024, and AuroraToday.ca went live on 28 May 2024 as, by the company's own count at the time, its 25th owned-and-operated local news outlet in Ontario. The launch extended the company's York Region coverage northward from Newmarket: Aurora Today was set up as a sister site to NewmarketToday, initially led by NewmarketToday's editor, Debora Kelly, with reporter Bailey Moreton assigned to cover the Aurora community, NewmarketToday's Kelsy Chapman working on community partnerships for the new site, and regional publisher John Hammill supporting the launch.

The timing followed a sharp contraction in Aurora's legacy local media. The town's historic community newspaper, the Aurora Banner, had been absorbed into Metroland Media Group's regional YorkRegion.com website, and in September 2023 Metroland's parent, Nordstar Capital, placed the business into bankruptcy protection, ending the print editions of roughly 70 Ontario weekly newspapers and eliminating 605 jobs. Aurora Today therefore arrived in a market where residents had recently lost their printed community paper, a pattern that has preceded many Village Media launches in mid-sized Ontario communities. Its launch also sat within a rapid sequence of Village Media openings: MiltonToday had joined the network in April 2024, AuroraToday followed in May, and TorontoToday launched that October, giving the company a near-continuous chain of York Region and Greater Toronto Area outlets. The newsroom has continued to develop since launch; in September 2025 Village Media's staff bulletin welcomed Yoyo Yan as a new AuroraToday reporter.

Content and Coverage

Aurora Today's reporting is organized around the institutions and daily concerns of the town: Aurora town council and York Region council, development and housing in a community still absorbing Greater Toronto Area growth, roads and traffic along the Yonge Street and Highway 404 corridors, local schools, police and court news, minor sports, arts and community events. Its coverage of the October 2026 municipal election illustrates the approach: in September 2026 the site surveyed Aurora's ward candidates on e-scooter safety, putting candidates on the record about stronger provincial regulation and coordinated enforcement after injury numbers reported by Southlake Health drew attention to the issue.

Alongside breaking news, the site carries community features that tie it to local institutions. A history column, "Aurora Then," is produced at auroratoday.ca in partnership with the Aurora Historical Society and the Aurora Museum & Archives, drawing on archival material — the Society's spring 2026 newsletter directed readers to the column on the site. Standard Village Media service elements round out the offering: obituaries, a community events calendar, weather, reader polls run through the network's Village IQ polling tool, and sponsored community content. Provincial coverage from Village Media's Queen's Park outlet, The Trillium, and national and world reporting from The Canadian Press appear alongside the local file.

Audience and Reach

Village Media does not publish an audited, outlet-by-outlet audience figure for Aurora Today, and no independent circulation audit exists for the site; its readership is Aurora and the surrounding York Region communities the town's commuters, schools and minor-sports organizations draw from. Network-level figures are the company's own: in a 2026 industry profile, Village Media described its network as reaching more than five million monthly readers, sending more than 450,000 daily newsletters, and comprising 33 owned publications, with its proprietary Villager publishing platform powering some 80 sites. Those are company-reported totals for the whole network rather than measurements of Aurora Today's individual audience. For scale, chief executive Jeff Elgie told a House of Commons committee in 2023 that the company had grown from a single publication with two journalists a decade earlier to 25 Ontario publications employing about 150 people, roughly 90 of them journalists.

Digital Presence

Aurora Today is published exclusively online at auroratoday.ca; there is no print edition. The site runs on Village Media's in-house Villager platform, the same content system the company licenses to other Canadian and international publishers, and it is formatted for desktop, tablet and mobile reading with stories updated through the day. Readers can follow the outlet through its email newsletters, social media channels, and Spaces, the locally focused social networking platform Village Media announced in 2024 and has been rolling out across its markets as a moderated, community-by-community discussion space attached to its news sites. Aurora stories also surface in the network's audio programming, including the Closer Look podcast, in which Village Media journalists discuss the day's significant local stories each weeknight, and Inside the Village, the company's weekly podcast about its newsrooms and the state of local journalism. Contests, reader polls and sponsored local events form part of the digital offering; Village Media's monthly bulletins list AuroraToday as a sponsor of community initiatives including the Aurora Cultural Centre and the Aurora Historical Society in 2025 and 2026, as well as a local holistic healing fair and a start-up help event in October 2025.

Ownership and Organisation

Aurora Today is owned by Village Media Inc., a privately held company headquartered at 298 Queen Street East in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Village Media traces its roots to SooToday, launched in 2000 as a regional shopping and business directory by former broadcaster Dick Peplow before pivoting to local news; Peplow launched the company's second site, BayToday, in 2003, and after his death in 2007, IT consultant and minority investor Jeff Elgie increased his stake and became chief executive, taking majority control in 2012. Elgie and his family remain the majority owners, with Glacier Media holding a small minority interest, according to the Harvard Future of Media Project's Canadian Media Ownership Index. The model Elgie built keeps reporters and sales staff in each community while technology, advertising operations, product development and finance are centralized in Sault Ste. Marie. Aurora Today's editorial operation is regional within that structure: it was launched under the editor of neighbouring NewmarketToday, Debora Kelly, with reporter Bailey Moreton, community-partnerships support from Kelsy Chapman, regional publisher John Hammill, and reporter Yoyo Yan joining in 2025. Village Media is a certified living-wage employer in Ontario, and its sites are free to read, funded by advertising and sponsorship rather than subscriptions.

Contact and Availability

Aurora Today is available free of charge at auroratoday.ca, updated daily. Readers can submit news tips, event listings, letters and community announcements through the contact and submission tools on the website, sign up for its email newsletters on the site, and follow its coverage through its social media accounts and the Spaces community platform. Its publisher, Village Media, is based at 298 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and maintains its corporate site at villagemedia.ca, where the network's other Ontario outlets — including sister York Region site NewmarketToday — are listed.