The Story of Freshdaily
A national news brand, a two-week firestorm and a second life on TikTok
On October 21, 2019, the day Canadians went to the polls in a federal election, we launched a new national news brand called Freshdaily. Within two weeks, the launch had publicly unravelled. The editorial team I had spent months recruiting was gone, a media reporter was giving me hours to comment on a story about it, and a version of what happened had hardened into accepted fact before the site was a month old. That version followed Freshdaily and me around for years.
What few people know is what happened inside the company during those weeks, or that the site whose obituary was written after 14 days went on to become one of the most successful Canadian news brands on TikTok, with more than 1.3 million followers and hundreds of millions of video views a year.
This is the story of Freshdaily, from the beginning.