How my journalism innovation residency at Toronto Metropolitan University is going so far
Updates on my Entrepreneurship workshop series and a peek ahead at my Engagement workshop series for students.
Hey y’all, happy 2024! Weirdly, contrary to what most (even my old self) would think, I find myself being able to prioritize my loved ones and hobbies (piano! French lessons!) much more now as a media entrepreneur than when I was a full-time staffer working for other outlets (Note to self: Write about this in a future newsletter). So, I hope you had as restful and joyful a holiday season as I’ve had this past month. 🎊
One of the most fulfilling initiatives I’ve been part of last year was coaching Toronto Metropolitan University students who participated in my four-part media entrepreneurship workshop series, which I held as Journalism Innovator-in-Residence during the fall semester. My goal was to equip aspiring young entrepreneurs with the editorial and financial skills they need to excel in today’s shifting Canadian media landscape. As part of their participation, I committed to providing four one-on-one coaching sessions during the winter semester for those who attended all four workshops in person and completed related assignments (students could also view the sessions asynchronously via Zoom recordings).
Ultimately, seven ambitious students were eligible for coaching, and are planning to or are in the midst of creating some very cool media products that provide news for underserved Canadian audiences. They include: a rural Albertan town that’s been hollowed out after local manufacturing left the area; newcomers in Oakville, Ontario; young Torontonians who are interested in news about local underground subcultures; Canadian journalists who want a central source for news-related tools and resources; BIPOC Torontonians who want arts- and culture-related news out of their communities and more.
After developing the “Opportunity Exploration” course for the City University of New York’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program alongside Jeremy Caplan back in 2020, I was able to take away learnings from that experience — that and my growing traction with The Green Line helped me take a fresh and Canadian-centric approach to building my TMU workshop series. Here’s a high-level overview of each workshop:
Workshop 1:
Understanding Your Audience: Master techniques to identify and engage your target audiences, including community surveys and user personas.
Market Research Essentials: Dive into demographic studies and industry research, and conduct a landscape analysis to understand your competitive (and collaborative) environment.
Workshop 2:
Crafting a Business Plan: Learn to use lean startup methodologies and clarify your value proposition.
Brand Identity and Resources: Develop your brand using design-thinking, and map out your essential resources and stakeholders.
Workshop 3:
Audience-Centric Journalism: Explore how to create journalism that resonates and fulfils audience needs.
Building Engagement: Use audience funnels to encourage specific audience actions and address their coverage needs.
Workshop 4:
Audience Development: Learn how to develop organic and paid marketing strategies, as well as how to build effective and impactful partnerships.
Revenue Strategies: Learn about early-stage revenue streams from corporate, philanthropic, audience and other sources.
Beyond coaching this winter semester, I’ll be holding a four-part Engagement workshop series in which I hope to explore pathways that combine humanistic and community-driven newsgathering practices with AI-supported operations and business development — a potentially powerful combination (especially for cash- and resource-strapped indie media outlets) that I’m experimenting with at The Green Line. I’ll keep you posted, so stay tuned…
The Green Line: We’re looking for a contributing editor + short-form and long-form pitches
The Green Line is looking for a part-time contributing editor who can support me in editing multiplatform journalism content (i.e. articles, videos, etc.), and help me manage assignments for my team of 11. If you’re interested, please send me your resume, cover letter and links to three examples of your editing work.
Freelancers, we’re also interested in short-form and long-form pitches for text-based articles as well as videos from experienced reporters based in Toronto that tackle systemic issues in the city through a solutions lens. We offer highly competitive freelance rates. If you’re interested in pitching, please send me your resume, cover letter and links to three clips.
Quick and Clean
I absolutely loved “Toward equitable models of journalism sustainability,” a Medium post by Madeleine Bair, founding director at community-centred news outlet El Tímpano, who eloquently describes the wealth bias of traditional news revenue models and whose model is very similar to that of The Green Line.
The first of my two favourite 2024 Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism comes from The Markup editor-in-chief Sisi Wei who says news mirages, communities that lack access to reliable information but are flooded with mis- and disinformation seeking to manipulate people, are an even bigger threat to democracy than news deserts — something I wholeheartedly agree with.
My other favourite Nieman Lab Prediction comes from my collaborator and Hearken founder Jennifer Brandel who writes sagely about the importance of centring love in news media, contrary to our industry’s tendency towards spotlighting what’s wrong, who’s terrible and the “crisis du jour.”
How you can support The Other Wave
My professional mission has always been to support the global movement towards more thoughtful, impactful news coverage, and all the ways that manifests. If The Other Wave gets you to think even a little differently about journalism, especially in Canada, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. And if TOW gets you to take action and support Canadian media outlets — especially ones that strive to be innovative and inclusive — I will have exceeded my expectations.
If my values and goals resonate with you, please consider supporting fiercely independent media analysis that fills in gaps in coverage of the Canadian journalism landscape. How? Feel free to provide feedback, pass along resources, donate money or simply share this newsletter with your friends.