There are big elections coming up in Canada and the U.S. How do we get people to care?
Poynter, Hearken and The Green Line have partnered on a solution.
Hey y’all! I can’t believe we’re already two months into 2024 — it’s clearly already been a whirlwind of a year. 🌪️
I’ve been working on an exciting program still in its development phase with nonprofit media institute Poynter and Jennifer Brandel of pioneering audience engagement platform Hearken that helps local, community-focused newsrooms across North America adapt The Green Line’s Attention and Action Journey models. The program aims to chart a course for editorial initiatives that encourage voting and other forms of democratic engagement among the public, based on these models, which have been successful in engaging audiences by actively involving them in the problem-solving process to address systemic issues.
This is particularly important since critical elections are coming up in Canada and the U.S. this and next year. Here in Canada, recent research from Statistics Canada has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically affected where and how youth are able to volunteer, provide care, and engage in political and social activities. StatsCan also suggests that people aged 15 to 30 are less likely to be interested in politics than older adults.
So we hope that by supporting newsrooms in their efforts to create election-focused Action Journeys, their audiences will become more informed, more inclined to participate civically in their communities and more likely to vote at all levels. This in turn will hopefully help strengthen democratic institutions — during a time when they’re under attack globally.
The Green Line previously published two election-related Action Journeys: one for the 2022 Toronto municipal election (which saw a record-low voter turnout of 29%) and one for the 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election that took place just eight months later. Both times, we made a strong impact, with high levels of engagement with our news content and events.
In particular, our events seemed to resonate with our target audiences of gen Zs and millennials, with around 80 people attending our Action Journey event for the 2022 Toronto municipal election, SIX Degrees: Toronto Talks Election 2022 in partnership with the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) Toronto and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Canada. The political speed-dating event, matched up Torontonians with opposing political views who were willing to have constructive conversations. Our goal was to provide a model for healthy discourse of political issues, and to generate community-driven solutions for increasing voter turnout among young Torontonians.
For our Action Journey event for the 2023 mayoral by-election, more than 250 people bought tickets to Tune In, a concert event in partnership with Green Majority Radio, CIUT 89.5 FM and The Grind Magazine that explored the Toronto we could become through a night a music, art and community conversations
If you’re interested in supporting the program I’m developing with Poynter and Jenn, whether that’s through partnership, funding or other kinds of support, please reply to this email.
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
Check out the Global Journalism Innovation Lab’s database of English-language digital-born news outlets in Canada, which tracks those that launched since 2000 to gauge how Canadian journalism is being repaired and transformed during a time when our commercial media system is showing signs of market failure.
Apply for the Center for Community Media and the Lenfest News Philanthropy Network’s Fundraising for Community Media, a 3-month, tuition-free online program that trains teams from Asian, Black and Latinx newsrooms to develop business strategies and sustainable revenue streams around fundraising.
I support the ethical use of AI in journalism, so it’s essential to remain critical and discerning in our embrace of the technology, especially with news that there’s a cottage industry of plagiarism-as-service companies that make it easy to repackage and republish articles using AI, and get them to rank high on Google.
I highly recommend subscribing to Tangle, one of my favourite newsletters, by Isaac Saul who deftly and fairly illuminates the varied perspectives on some of the most challenging issues of our time, including this recent edition on the ICJ's ruling on genocide in Gaza. Despite getting reams of criticism across the board (and regardless of whether or not I agree with him), Saul’s nuanced reporting and reasonable approach are particularly important in our polarized time.
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.