Clay Young has been reporting and working as an anchor since the 1990s. MTN's (now CityTV) saw the beginning of Young's work. The station, originating in Portage la Prairie, was to serve rural Manitoba but reached into Winnipeg to serve as the fourth station. Like CKND (now Global), it served up lots of local news and weather. Young was among those local staff. Arriving in the province after print and TV experiences in other communities, his news voice was distinctive and the anchor desk beckoned.
The 1980s and 1990s was a bit of a heyday for Winnipeg media. While specific examples of awfulness are there such as the Winnipeg Tribune, you had newsrooms in two print papers, multiple radio station and four local TV stations. It was a competitive market and the press gallery for political office was filled and columnists covering everything from sports to politics as part of the civic discussion.
In 2026, we have seen newsrooms get smaller and smaller. Most radio stations don't have any except someone reading something gleaned from other source. Even traffic reports are usually outsourced. Clay Young seems to get shunted around in these reductions of weekend news or evening news after several years in place from MT to CTV to Global. And now breakfast TV is dumping people so he likely had a choice of between retirement or part-time work.
He chose work at the Winnipeg Sun. This has been coordinated with the two month campaign for mayor by owner and publisher Kevin Klein. In fact, Young's first scoop was an interview with Klein about the election. It will be interesting to see who and what Young covers as a contributor. There are a few reporters for news and sports anymore. The newspaper once had 45 reporters in the good old days. A lot of staff in printing, administration and distribution as well. It is down to handful now.
The ad supported newspaper is a thing of the past. I have described how newspapers like the New York Times support journalist in the 1,200 range but they try to have area where they can make money. Hence, they bought Wordle. The created The Athletic which even has a reporter in Winnipeg covering the Jets (although they used to have two). Now, Winnipeg is not the New York Times but finding ways to earn income has to be a priority.
There is no doubt that AI is Hoovering up all data and often not paying for it to create content. The big tech companies are getting rich on peoples news, music, TV and movies and not paying. The Sun has taken the position that they won't take money from government. Copyright is government. It is something they seem to believe or they would produce their product for free. They need more people covering news to counterbalance opinion. All news does. While hiring Young helps bring a reporter on board, the Sun needs to stop thinking that government acting on antitrust is bad. Antitrust is what brought lower phone prices and affordable airplane travel.
Congrats to Clay Young. Hope he can produce interesting material for a newspaper that was seriously near shutting down. I think local news can recover with a new funding formula. It can't be AI creating slop they call news for our region. It needs people who produce original work.
This post has not been created with any AI.
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