The Green Line: 2023 in Review
How my hyperlocal, community-driven, independent outlet is doing less than two years in.
Hey y’all! My fir tree (real, of course) is up and decorated, while Mariah Carey is playing from my ceiling speakers, so I’m feeling real festive this holiday season. 🎄🎁🎅🏾
I’m also feeling quite grateful these days after a stellar year for The Green Line, on both the editorial and business sides, despite facing industry-wide challenges like the Bill C-18 Online News Act. These are the things that happened in 2023 for which I’m thankful:
We published five Action Journeys this year and an in-demand guide to creating an Attention and an Action Journey for newsrooms, in partnership with the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
Our increasingly diversified revenue increased 135 per cent from 2022 to 2023.
We were nominated by RTDNA Canada Awards, Digital Publishing Awards and LION Publishers Local Journalism Awards for seven journalism awards this year — of which we won four, including Product of the Year (Small Revenue Tier), Best Canadian Local News Award winner for Overall Excellence in Digital, Central Region Award winner for Feature News Video (Large Market) and Central Region Award winner for Overall Excellence in Digital.
I continued my speaking engagements about The Green Line’s unique model at conferences and on television/radio shows across North America.
Team culture and cohesion is the strongest it’s ever been, with The Green Line staffed with big-hearted and big-brained young journalists who are independent, innovative and nuanced thinkers, not to mention grounded, reasonable and compassionate humans.
The trusting and often longstanding partnerships I’ve built, particularly with community organizations on the ground who are closest to the people we serve, continue to thrive.
My leadership skills continue to grow, which helps put The Green Line’s mission in sharper relief; negative distractions, particularly from people who don’t share or understand my ethos, have fallen by the wayside as my focus on my many supportive friends and allies grows stronger by the day, playing both a protective and propulsive role in my professional life.
Most importantly, our impact is steadily growing, getting The Green Line closer to fulfilling our mission of serving Torontonians in need every day.
Whatever you celebrate, I hope you’re surrounded by loved ones and get some much-needed R&R in during the holidays.
Kudos
My last newsletter seemed to resonate with many of you, and I want to thank those subscribers who sent me thoughtful notes, included below.
“Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciated what you had to say in your newsletter this week — it's the same sentiment I've been trying to stress with the first years [university students] re. coming at these stories from a place of informing, not supporting whatever we might believe.”
“This was a great edition, thank you for writing it. From what I’ve heard there is some ugly tension cropping up within newsrooms these days. Glad to hear you’re having positive discussions in your own.”
The Green Line: We’re looking for a contributing editor 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.
We’re also interested in long-form pitches from experienced investigative and/or feature reporters based in Toronto that tackle the 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 (longform features are preferable).
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Quick and Clean
“In my community” and “Cool stuff I like” will be back…
I highly recommend picking up Antiracist Journalism: The Challenge of Creating Equitable Local News, a new must-read book by my friend and community journalism expert Andrea Wenzel of Temple University.
Check out “Student Housing Project,” an illuminating multimedia feature inspired by The Green Line’s Action Journey model, in Calgary Journal, a community news service by journalism students at Mount Royal University.
Read this summary of the insights out of Engaging Emergence: Advancing the Future of Journalism for All, a fantastic unconference I attended back in August.
As someone who’s experimenting with AI in journalism, especially for operations, I recommend registering for the Center for Cooperative Media’s workshop, Beginner's guide: Custom GPTs for local news publishers, which also comes with an accompanying guide.
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.