I’m co-hosting a conference on engaged journalism in Canada. You’re invited.
Calling all newsrooms and academics: Learn more in this newsletter and apply now.
Hey y’all! Anita here. I just got back from New Orleans, one of my perennial fave cities, where I was attending the 2025 Local News Summit hosted by the Lenfest Institute and the Aspen Institute. ⚜️
There were many compelling ideas put forward by assigned “provocateurs,” and among the conversations I had with fellow attendees was how to move community engagement in journalism — namely “what stories are we telling and how well do they represent the needs and concerns of the public” — forward.
That’s also top of mind for me in Canada, which is why I decided to co-host with Concordia University professor Magda Konieczna a day-long conference about the practice and scholarship of how journalists engage, called “Engaged journalism in Canada: Developing best practices”
Our event aims to continue the conversation from Magda’s first successful engaged journalism conference in Montréal in 2024, once again bringing together scholars, journalists, community members and others to talk about developing the field of engaged journalism in Canada. We also hope to design a community of practice, where journalists can share their successes and troubleshoot their challenges, as well as eventually build a country-wide engaged journalism network.
The event will begin with a visit to an engaged newsroom in a central location in Toronto (TBA) on the afternoon or evening of May 31. We’ll spend all day on June 1 in downtown Toronto discussing and learning from each other on this topic.
Everyone is welcome to attend — both journalists and scholars — so if you’re interested in coming as an attendee or speaker, please fill out an expression of interest by Feb. 15. We’ll use this information to create panels and workshops designed to fit your interests. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Magda at magda.konieczna@concordia.ca.
To learn more about the conference, check out my Q&A with Magda, below.
Tell me about the engagement conference and how it came about. Why did you feel the need to launch something like this in Canada?
I worked in the U.S. for a long time and there's a really strong community of people working on engagement journalism and projects there, and I think folks are able to really support themselves and support each other, both on the practitioner side and on the scholar side — people who are doing the research. And when I got here [in Canada], I was like: Oh, people are doing this kind of work. Tons of people are doing this kind of work in really interesting ways, but it wasn't so obvious to me that people were talking to each other — certainly on the scholar side, which is where I am. It didn't seem like people were necessarily identifying that their work was focused on engaged journalism, and then talking to other folks who were doing that kind of research. It started to seem that way on the journalist side, as well.
I wanted to create a space where folks can talk about that stuff, both on the scholar side and on the practitioner side, and so we did it for the first time last year in Montréal in 2024. My hypothesis is that a lot of people were working on that kind of stuff and interested in it. There were about 60 people who were there — a good mix of scholars and practitioners from Montréal and outside of Montréal.
Now, we want to do it again with some more specific goals and questions.
Why did you want to bring together practitioners and academics? Specifically, what do you think the value would be to each group?
Our field is a little different from math or philosophy in that there's an actual practice associated with what we do, and there are lots of places where the scholars and the practitioners are talking to each other. But I think there are never enough opportunities. We do research on things that we think are important and then we publish in paywalled journals and ways that are hard to read, and then we're like, “Why aren't you guys following what we discovered?” Then on the flip side, I think journalists probably don't think about scholars very much at all; but when they do, they're like, “Why are scholars asking these questions when there are these other more relevant questions?” And so, I think bringing folks together to where the journalists can say, “Hey, is there research on this? What does the research show?” Or “Hey, I wish there was research on this. We've been doing this thing, and I wonder what the impact of it is?” Or “What other directions could we go in?” And then scholars can say, “What can we do that will help you?”
I don't want to be researching journalism just to research journalism. I want to be able to do research that is helping the folks on the ground do the amazing work that you all do. And sometimes, I don't know exactly what that research is or what questions to ask.
I hope that we can go more in that direction this year [at the conference].
What do you envision will emerge from this conference that is tangible and practical for the industry?
I want to be guided by what folks say on the day of, because I'm not a journalist, right? I'm not working in that space. I think what I do have is the luxury of time that I know I never did have when I was a journalist. I have the ability to slow down and think about things, and try to intentionally build and design things. So, I want to hear from journalists who are there: What would be useful for them? But my sense is that — and you know, we heard this a little bit last year's conference, as well — that folks don't want to just meet up once a year but want to have some way to kind of check in with each other over the course of the year. And I really love this idea of communities of practice.
Organizations are facing similar challenges, and can support each other in figuring out some of the solutions.
One of the things that is most valuable to journalists is funding, especially for independent news outlets that are doing engagement work. So, how are you baking in discussions of funding into this conference that might help industry folks?
That's a great question and I think I've definitely been hearing that since I moved back to Canada. In the U.S., funding is obviously an issue. But here, it's like everyone’s number one, two, three and four issue. I understand that, and we talked about it last year — how could engagement work be framed in a way that is going to interest funders?
We did have some targeted journalists and funders who were able to join last year and that will happen again this year.
There's journalism funding, but there's plenty of other funders who are interested in work that engages communities in the interest of building democracy and building local resilience, fighting disinformation — all that kind of stuff. So, I'm hoping that we'll talk about the various other directions that we're looking to for funding, and that can also inspire folks. I think sometimes when we're just really siloed and thinking about: We do journalism and we're funded by journalism entities; that might be limiting in some ways. So, I'm hoping to open up that conversation, as well.
How can people, especially journalists, sign up and get involved?
The conference is open to anyone. It's free. It's gonna be somewhere downtown Toronto. There's an expression of interest [where you can sign up].
The purpose of [the conference] is just to find out what people are interested in talking about and doing; then our goal is to design sessions that are pretty hands-on, pretty workshoppy, that deal with the topics that folks raise. People are also welcome to write to me. Some people have said, “Hey, I have an idea that doesn't really fit the framework of this expression of interest form.” That’s great. I mean, we're pretty freeform about it. We're not envisioning anything in particular right now. It's not going to be one-hour blocks of people standing up and lecturing. The more suggestions and ideas folks have, the better.
Cool, is there anything else that you wanted to add?
There was a really great energy last year and on the day of, people were like, “Okay, when's the next one?” It’s before the Canadian Communication Association conference, which is a space that makes sense for us as scholars, and it's in the same location [as the CCA conference].
I'm hoping that some folks from last year will come, and it can also be a different group of people, as well. Just hoping to be as open and welcoming and hear what folks are working on as possible. I hope the energy from last year can continue, and we can get to some more concrete questions and ideas.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
The Green Line opportunities: text/video pitches
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Quick and Clean
Once again, I have another Matt Pearce Substack recommendation — this time interestingly about how people stopped using artificial intelligence to get information during Los Angeles’ wildfires because A.I. had a trust problem when lives and homes were on the line.
Journalism.co.uk reporter Jacob Granger recently put me onto BBC’s game-changing user-needs model pioneered by Dmitry Shishkin (who just shouted out my Nieman Journalism Lab prediction).
LION Publishers, for which I serve as a board member, is looking for Canadian coaches to help LION support indie publishers. Apply here by Feb. 21.
Another fave Substacker of mine, Tara Henley, conducted a fascinating Q&A with political theorist David Polansky who argues that Canada has become too complacent when it comes to holding its governing class accountable (you should also read Polansky’s opinion piece in The Hub titled “You need to be angrier, Canada”).
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