Category / Read / Research

New poll finds Canadians still think they’ll get the news even if their local newspaper disappears

By H.G. Watson, Managing Editor Canadians don’t seem too worried about our troubled local media landscape — at least according to a new poll released last Friday. In a survey released on June 16, Abacus Data, a Canadian polling and market research firm, found that 86 per cent of Canadians feel they would still get…
Muslim communities are telling new stories to break old stereotypes, say panelists

By Angela Long for the Local News Conference If you want to learn about the Muslim community, don’t read the news, says the associate editor of The Islamic Monthly. Steven Zhou, who converted to Islam six years ago, said writing about a community takes time and resources. As a result, too many publications produce “surface-level” stories fulfilling…
Researchers urge journalists to examine who gets quoted in news stories

By Abby Plener for the Local News Conference While the value of different sources can be subjective, newsrooms have a responsibility to interrogate their choices surrounding which voices get the most coverage, researchers agreed at a recent conference on local news. Asmaa Malik, assistant professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism, emphasized that in a fast-paced newsroom,…
How 80-year-old Radio-Canada, the French-language arm of the CBC, is driving innovation from within

By Tracey Lindeman for Nieman Lab Up in the tower of Radio-Canada‘s Montreal headquarters, overlooking the Jacques-Cartier Bridge and the old Molson brewery, is the nervous system of the 80-year-old national public broadcaster’s digital shift. This particular meeting is centered on chatbots — namely, the chatbots being built by a small team of engineers at Radio-Canada, the…
Journalism, public relations and the author in between

By Erin Leite Game Face: The Media Training Playbook - 19 Cautionary Tales, a self-published book by Toronto public relations consultant and former journalist Bodine Williams, brings two seemingly similar but often clashing professions together. It lays out the dos and don’ts of interviewing for the people answering the questions, and has a lot…
Journalism students can play a key part in building sustainable journalism models

By Magda Konieczna Missing from the Shattered Mirror report’s recommendations for Canadian journalism were insights about journalism education. A panel discussion at last week’s Canadian Communication Association conference in Toronto aimed to fill that gap. It also reflected the challenges inherent in teaching journalism against the backdrop of an evolving and struggling industry, something that…
Here’s all our coverage from the Local News conference

Here are all of our live blogs from the Local News conference at Ryerson University in Toronto on June 3-4, 2017. Understanding Local Journalism: An Overview April Lindgren, Colette Brin, Damian Radcliffe and Michelle Ferrier give overviews into their research around local news. Does Local News Matter? Tales From the Trenches James Gordon, Brian Lambie and…
How to scale our understanding of local news health

The economics of local news are no small challenge, but soon we may be able to anticipate significant causes of unhealthy news ecosystems in different U.S. cities.
How do cultural attitudes shape crime reporting?

Researchers to explore differences in European newsrooms in June conference.
Police practice of withholding crime victims’ names can pose challenges for journalistic credibility

One researcher calls this a “tremendous step back for press freedom” that could put the public at risk.