It’s no secret that Canadian journalism (like journalism everywhere) is in trouble. Newsrooms face a steady stream of layoffs despite a couple hundred million Canadian dollars of direct and indirect government subsidies every year. The vast majority of outlets eligible for these subsidies take advantage of them, and combined they can subsidize half of a journalist’s salary. News organizations are desperate to diversify their revenue streams.
The Hub is a right-leaning publication launched in 2021 with a focus on policy and politics. Notably, the outlet declines or donates their subsidies, citing a valid concern that the scale of such subsidies threaten the perceived trustworthiness and independence of the media.
In late January 2026, The Hub launched NewsBox, an AI-powered publishing tool. NewsBox aims to make it easier for creators to transform their content (written, audio, or video) into other formats, such as speeches, essays, or talking points, while maintaining the author’s distinct voice. You can see examples of the tool’s output on new articles in The Hub, each of which is accompanied by an AI-generated summary and list of quotes at the top of the page. There is also a “Hub AI” chatbot in the sidebar of every article.
The app very much uses The Hub’s branding, prominently featuring the outlet’s co-creators, who also created NewsBox. While their pitch talks about preserving creators’ voices to avoid the “soulless prose” and “slop” outputted by ChatGPT and similar tools, I have to wonder if tighter integration of AI into the news and opinion side of the operation will raise its own issues with trust. The Hub has always been fairly tech-friendly, including a longstanding sponsorship by Meta.
The beta version of the app is currently free for a subset of subscribers to The Hub. I have briefly tinkered with a handful of articles I have written, but not enough to really form an opinion on the tool. It will be interesting to see if this innovative enterprise works out for them and how tools like this will shape the online news and opinion ecosystem in the years to come.