• The launch of The Conversation Canada is an opportunity to contribute to the quality of explanatory journalism in this country. Screenshot by J-Source.

    It’s time to start The Conversation in Canada

    By Mary-Lynn Young and Alfred Hermida for The Conversation Canada The launch of The Conversation Canada is an opportunity to contribute to the quality of explanatory journalism in this country — and the promise such journalism holds for democratic engagement, informed policy and media innovation. It brings academics and experienced journalists together to share timely analysis and…
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    CBC Ombudsman: The “f” word — A threshold for its use in news

    By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The complainant, Curtis Hopkins, thought swearing on an online video of an eyewitness recording of a bus billowing smoke was in violation of policy. The video was a powerful account of a breaking news story, although the swearing was not critical to the understanding of the story. Since the crew…

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    Globe and Mail Public Editor: Does an idiom have a ‘best before’ date?

    By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Our language doesn’t stay still. It adapts to a changing world, gains new terms, drops old ones and changes course when a term or phrase is widely acknowledged as hurtful and derogatory. One of those phrases appeared in the big headline on the front page of the…
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    Globe and Mail Public Editor: Overuse of term ‘populism’ can be misleading

    By Sylvia Stead, Globe and Mail Public Editor Here’s a word that has surged in popularity in the last year. It has been used to describe Donald Trump’s ascendancy, the majority vote on Brexit and the second-place showing of Marine Le Pen in this month’s French presidential election. I’ve seen business articles in The Globe…
  • Fake news has always been with us and people have always made money from it. Image courtesy of Ted Rheingold/CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Are Canadians really falling for fake news?

    By Christopher Waddell, Publisher I have been a grocery shopper for about 40 years. During that time in checkout lines I have read about cars that can run on water that the oil industry keeps secret from us, the pregnancies and affairs of hundreds of politicians and celebrities, regular UFO invasions of the earth hushed…
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    CBC Ombudsman: Beware of generalizations

    By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The complainant, Mr. Marco Mura, objected to the characterization of the government of Turkey as “fundamentalist.” I agree that the term is too broad to be accurate in this context. Adjectives are seldom a news writer’s friend. COMPLAINT On December 7, 2016, The World at Six ran a feature about…

  • Why freedom of the press should apply in Indigenous communities

    By Wawmeesh Hamilton Freedom of the press enables citizens to know about the things that public bodies do that impact them. It’s what enabled me to report on civic affairs for a community newspaper for seven years. I reported about city taxes, school board decisions and regional district swearings in of new First Nations members.…

  • Shelley Pascual reporting for Cardiff News Plus last year in Wales. Photo courtesy of Shelley Pascual.

    After living abroad, I can’t find a journalism job in Canada

    This story was funded by the J-Source Patreon campaign. By Shelley Pascual When I completed my International Journalism MA degree in the U.K. last year, I had no idea that of all the countries in the world to land a journalism job, it’d prove trickiest in the country that I’m from, Canada. And I’m not just referring…