Dear readers,
Tuesday, Dec. 2 is Giving Tuesday.
It’s your opportunity to support J-Source for another year to help us continue to expand the reach and breadth of our coverage of journalism and media issues in Canada.
Despite a constant torrent of major tests, journalism continues to prove its essential role in a democratic Canada. Independent journalists and news organizations have pushed journalism towards a more inclusive, representative and nuanced practice by challenging traditional gatekeeping practices, proposing new approaches to reporting, exploring complex issues more thoroughly and better engaging with historically mis and underrepresented communities.
Journalists across the country continue to investigate and uncover wrongdoing by corporate and political actors, provide crucial analysis to make sense of current events, and also offer insights into potential solutions to the greatest challenges facing this generation.
In this time where journalism in Canada faces existential threats but is still finding ways to thrive, J-Source remains dedicated to continuous coverage of the multilayered conditions bearing on journalism and information ecosystems in the country. There is also little coordinated effort to counter these threats with information, commentary, analysis, research and facts about the role that journalism and press freedom does and must play in our society. Since 2007, J-Source has been one of those few places where journalists, journalism educators, students and the general public can find this essential coverage.
Donations to the J-Source FutureFunder site through Carleton University provide the funds we use to pay the contributors both to J-Source and to our Canada Press Freedom Project.
On Dec. 2, you can make a single donation or make monthly contributions deducted from your credit card. Whether you can help us with $5 or $500, Carleton University will issue a tax receipt for everything you donate. All the money you contribute through the Giving Tuesday FutureFunder campaigns goes to J-Source. There are no administrative or overhead charges applied by Carleton that might reduce the value of your donation.
Here is what Future-Funder contributions have helped support during the past year:
· J-Source continues to examine journalism in Canada and the issues it faces with a constructive and critical eye. We provide publishing opportunities for a diverse range of young journalists, recent graduates from journalism programs, freelancers and current students. We also retain strong links with journalism education and journalism research through J-Schools Canada and Facts and Frictions. Here are some of the stories J-Source has published during the past year:
- No room for debate
- Beyond the famine frame
- CBC pushed itself to connect with voters in unlikely places this election campaign
- Toronto indie mag pushes back against ‘AI-generated slop’
- Healing the journalism pipeline: Tips and tricks for understanding the legal state of post-secondary journalism in Canada
- First batch of Google’s $100-million is paid: here is who won big and who didn’t
- Montreal digital start-ups reimagine work in a struggle industry
· Our Canada Press Freedom Project is Canada’s only source of ongoing data, analysis and educational tools on press freedom incursions and violations across the country – everything from denials of access, to equipment seizure and damage to court rulings, to online threats, harassment and intimidation. We have tracked and reported on the CPFP site more than 170 press freedom violations across the country through submitted incident reports since the start of 2022. Our data is available free for researchers, academics and the public to use. Our educational tools on press freedom issues in Canada helps students, freelancers and small media outlets navigate press freedom issues they may encounter in their reporting.
Read our full 2024 CPFP annual report on the current state of press freedom in Canada.
Highlights include: Attention this year is focused on chilling statements designed to intimidate journalists or dissuade them from covering a specific issue and an increasingly restrictive environment for media workers. CPFP has documented a rapid increase in such statements from politicians, elected officials and representatives of public institutions. CPFP has also documented a substantial increase in physical attacks on journalists. At the same time, police and public officials have continued to routinely deny access to media workers, including many covering standard daily news stories. The 2024 data point to a continuation or normalization of some of the trends documented by CPFP and other media organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, as well as during Indigenous land defence protests in 2021 and 2022.
Facts and Frictions, the academic, peer-reviewed journal about journalism supported by J-Schools Canada/Écoles-J Canada and featured on J-Source, is now into its fifth year of publication.
Your contributions will help us continue all this work in 2026!
Thanks for reading J-Source. We hope you will take advantage of Giving Tuesday to support us for the coming year.
Christopher Waddell
Publisher
J-Source