Of lessons, legacies and hope for the future: Introduction to the Fall 2025 issue
Scholarly publishing is a form of collective and care-based labour that demands not only rigorous research, peer review, and editing, but a shared determination to record current challenges, nurture new possibilities, and pass on new findings and approaches. As I take on the role of journal editor-in-chief, I aim to centre principles of care and collaboration in my approach and in furthering the journal’s legacies, by continuing to foreground mentorship to emerging and first-time scholars, promoting the interdisciplinarity of journalism studies, and inviting a range of original multimedia contributions to knowledge.
I bring a background in digital and print journalism to this role, as a reporter for the Edmonton Journal and as a reporter, editor and online engagement director for Canada’s National Observer. I hold a PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University and I am an associate journalism professor at Carleton University. My own research focuses on journalism coverage of climate change and fossil fuel extraction, digital and start-up journalism, and journalism education. In the issues ahead, I look forward to working with contributors and collaborators to develop special issues, thematic sections, or publication-focused roundtables, and to continue the work of Facts & Frictions in advancing journalism studies, practice, and pedagogy in Canada while experimenting with what a scholarly publication can look like.
In the spirit of experimentation, we begin this issue with Chloe Kim’s audio documentary, “If They Close.” This documentary draws us to the heart of Toronto and a debate about closing safe injection sites. This is the third peer-reviewed work of journalism published by Facts & Frictions since we began publishing in 2021, an effort that recognizes knowledge mobilization in journalism studies can and must take multiple forms, including sharing and reflecting on the results of on-the-ground reporting. Kim employs methods of slow, trauma-informed reporting. The result is a call to action to journalists and educators to trouble their own reporting practices.
Iman Kassam’s and Jaigris Hodson’s article, “Trust in the Age of Algorithms: How Gen Z Canadians Navigate News, Skepticism, and Selective Exposure,” highlights how young people consume news. In dynamic online interviews with nine different participants, Kassam follows their journeys, from identifying interesting news stories to determining whether those stories can be trusted. In tracing users’ experiences and reflections on news, Kassam & Hodson make clear this is not a generation suffering from apathy or lack of interest in facts. They convey, instead, study participants’ “heightened sense of personal responsibility” to get to the bottom of the news as it is presented to them. Kassam & Hodson’s original findings make way for further research to be done.
Teresa Goff et al.’s article, “Academic News Partnerships: A Literature Review,” also lays out paths for further research, showing the unique potential for post-secondary journalism students to report and share news in communities that have few or no other live news operations. At the time of publication, however, Goff’s own journalism program at Durham College is expected to be folded into a program focused more on “content creation …than journalism.” As Goff et al. write, “Without a steady influx of trained journalists, gaps in local news coverage will continue to widen, limiting public access to essential information for democratic engagement.” Goff et al.’s warning echoes that of a recent J-Schools Canada Board of Directors call to “invest in journalism education rather than dismantling it,” noting “recent suspensions of journalism programs at colleges and universities” (para. 1). The board, which includes educators from across Canada, writes in an open letter:
As journalism educators, we believe that journalism programs need to remain accessible to students committed to this vital work. And these programs do more than train the next generation of reporters; they provide essential media literacy education that helps citizens discern fact from fiction, fostering a more informed and engaged public. Without these institutional avenues for journalism education, we risk leaving future generations ill-equipped to navigate an increasingly complex information landscape—one where AI-generated content, deepfakes, and propaganda blur the lines between reality and fabrication. The loss of each journalism program is a loss for the public’s ability to access fact-based, trustworthy information.
Goff et al. provide more evidence for how the loss of post-secondary journalism programs will directly affect communities.
In the research note “Reporting in Black Communities: Early Findings From Focus Groups With Black News Consumers in Four Canadian Cities,” Eternity Martis and Nana aba Duncan offer insights into their research practices and what they learned from conducting focus group interviews in Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. The note, including participants’ shared reflections, sets the stage for Martis & Duncan’s planned bilingual reporting guide and resources for “journalists, students, and educators to report on Black communities in Canada with accuracy, dignity, and equity.”
Chris Arsenault also turns to practical training and how to improve reporting practices in the research note, “‘Fixing’ International Reporting in Canadian Media: Practical Frameworks for Newsgathering Collaborators for Foreign Coverage.” Arsenault opens the piece on the ground, “Stepping off a plane into the chaos of Caracas to cover a Venezuelan presidential election” before elaborating on practical approaches for finding and working with reporting partners.
Closing this issue, Brooks DeCillia and Gaston Sawadogo share book reviews that take on pressing questions about misinformation and technology, respectively. DeCillia makes the case for reading Timothy Caulfield’sThe Certainty Illusion: What You Don’t Know and Why It Matters through the lens of journalism practice. Sawadogo, meantime, shows us how Cédric Canton illuminates the “challenges facing journalism in the Big Data era” [“les défis du journalisme à l’ère du Big Data”] in La nouvelle société de l’information : Nos démocraties à l’heure du Big Data.
Reflecting on community
Since 2021, founding editor-in-chief Dr. Patricia W. Elliott led the publication of Facts & Frictions and the mobilization of journalism-centred research that is: interdisciplinary, multimedia, bilingual, and open-access; representative of a range of work being produced by journalism scholars across Canada and elsewhere; and, contributing to a growing sense of community across institutions and career stages.
Launching the fifth volume of Facts & Frictions, I am grateful for the journal editorial board’s trust and support. I thank Drs. Samuel Lamoureux and Paul Fontaine for taking on the roles of French-language and book reviews editors, respectively. Numerous volunteer peer reviewers, whose contributions are anonymized, share their expertise and insights and are core to realizing each issue. And, I thank Dr. Elliott for her continued mentorship, production, and editing contributions to this issue, and her foundational efforts to build a community around this journal.
I also want to explicitly note the students or recent graduates who contributed to this journal issue. Toronto Metropolitan University graduate Chloe Kim leads “If They Close,” and Royal Roads University graduate, journalist, and Seneca Polytechnic faculty member Iman Kassam leads the article “Trust in the Age of Algorithms: How Gen Z Canadians Navigate News, Skepticism, and Selective Exposure.” Durham College professor Teresa Goff wrote “Academic News Partnerships: A Literature Review,” alongside students Izza Adil, Sunmeet Kour, and Gage Patte. Doctoral student Gaston Sawadogo reviews Cédric Canton’s book, La nouvelle société de l’information : Nos démocraties à l’heure du Big Data. Sawadogo’s contribution was invited and first edited by Yéroséo Aris Kusiélé Somda, a doctoral student at University of Ottawa who continues in the role of journal editorial and administrative assistant this year.
New generations of researchers and reporters invigorate the ongoing work of Facts & Frictions. While journalists, journalism organizations and journalism schools face existential challenges—many of which are discussed in this issue—emerging reporters and scholars remind us of our collective capacity and obligation to intervene, work together, and imagine new approaches.
Dr. Trish Audette-Longo is an associate professor of journalism in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and editor-in-chief of Facts & Frictions. editor@factsandfrictions.ca