Taproot co-founder helping to update Canadian journalism ethics guidelines

Karen Unland, Taproot’s co-founder, is bringing her perspective as a leader of an independent journalism startup to the future of ethics guidelines for Canadian journalists.

Karen has served on the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) ethics advisory committee since September 2021. Board-appointed, the committee exists to provide advice on ethical issues faced by Canadian journalists in their regular work. Its 11 members, drawing on experience in independent and mainstream media and academia, meet about once a month to discuss key issues and develop policy and discussion papers.

"Something that has emerged, for me," said Karen, "is an appreciation of how smart the committee members are and how deeply they think about these issues. It is intellectually stimulating to have these discussions."

Karen said the committee offers a space for "sober second thought away from the thrust of daily decision-making" and allows members to thoroughly interrogate the profession’s foundational principles and practice. One recent discussion paper, for example, sought to define the meaning of journalism to capture dramatic transformations and growing diversity in the kinds of activities that could be considered journalistic work.

In early 2023, Karen joined a subcommittee to review the CAJ’s Ethics Guidelines. This widely cited document, which is designed to help new and seasoned journalists hold themselves accountable for their professional work, has not been updated since 2011.

"This is the sort of topic that I like to nerd out about," said Karen. "Although I am not the only representative of independent media, I thought it would be valuable to bring perspective from someone working in an emerging newsroom and running a journalism business."

Taproot co-founder Karen Unland moderated a discussion on updating CAJ’s ethics guidelines at the 2023 CAJ conference in Vancouver. (Supplied)

Karen’s participation also took her to Vancouver in mid-April for the CAJ’s annual conference. She moderated a panel featuring fellow committee members Pat Perkel and Anita Li. Perkel is a former executive director of the National NewsMedia Council and a veteran of small newsrooms in northern Ontario; Li is the founder of a hyperlocal environmental publication called The Green Line and a journalism innovation newsletter called The Other Wave. They outlined how they are approaching the revision of the ethics guidelines and solicited opinions for working journalists in the audience about how they use them.

Taproot is helping to shape the future of the industry

Karen said she is approaching the review of the ethics guidelines in much the same way as Taproot approaches its work, by focusing on the end user. That means considering how to make the guidelines as useful as possible to journalists who may be working in new newsrooms or depleted ones that lack institutional memory or robust policies of their own.

"I think we’ve made some really decent progress around updating the guidelines for the world we find ourselves in right now," said Karen, "and future-proofing them a bit for things that come along that we can’t yet anticipate."

Karen is grateful to the CAJ for this opportunity to take part in national conversations shaping the future of our industry.

"We want to reassure our readers that Taproot is here for the long haul," said Karen. "We conduct our work the best we can and with a view to continuous improvement. Because of this, we are increasingly able to access opportunities and share what we know and learn with others."

Let’s Find Out joins Taproot Edmonton

Let’s Find Out, the award-winning podcast that explores Edmonton’s history through listener questions, is joining Taproot Edmonton!

Let’s Find Out is hosted by Chris Chang-Yen Phillips, who served as Edmonton’s fourth historian laureate, and is co-produced by his longtime collaborator Trevor Chow-Fraser. Since it launched in 2016, the show has tackled a wide range of topics across its 63 (and counting!) episodes. For example, Episode 21 looked at green onion cakes, Episode 42 explored the icons of Ritchie, and Episode 60 — which featured a question from Taproot co-founder Karen Unland — looked at how garbage dumps in the river valley were transformed into parks.

The April episode of the monthly show answers a question about how to make parks more fun in the winter, which creates an opportunity to consider the decade-old Winter City Edmonton initiative.

Let’s Find Out and Taproot Edmonton collaborated on a live event in 2019. (Mack Male/Flickr)

We at Taproot have been fans of Let’s Find Out for a long time. We sponsored the show’s 2019 season, which explored how nature shapes us, and we collaborated on a live event — complete with a story garden! — to kick it off.

The end of the Alberta Podcast Network presented an opportunity for us to explore a deeper collaboration. The curiosity-driven approach of Let’s Find Out is a perfect fit for Taproot, and we’re thrilled to be able to support Chris and Trevor as they continue to explore Edmonton’s history.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll integrate Let’s Find Out more closely into our operations. Fans of the show can expect more great episodes, and we are excited to bring the stories of Let’s Find Out to a wider audience via our website and The Pulse.

Welcome to Taproot, Let’s Find out!

Meet Taproot Edmonton’s new reporter

We’re thrilled to introduce you to Colin Gallant, the latest addition to Taproot Edmonton’s growing editorial team.

Colin joins Taproot as a reporter to help us publish original stories about what’s going on in our city. He was previously an editor at Avenue magazine in Calgary, served as co-editor-in-chief at The Calgary Journal, and worked at BeatRoute magazine. Colin studied journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

"My favourite thing about being a journalist is that it gives you permission — nay, encouragement! — to be as nosy as you like," Colin says. "I’m half-kidding, but I am glad that being a Taproot reporter gives me a licence to become an expert on all things Edmonton."

Colin Gallant is Taproot Edmonton’s newest reporter. (Mack Male)

Colin is off to a great start on that, filing stories about the end of Edmonton’s NextGen, how local startup Maggie aims to empower women, and the impact of the provincial budget on municipalities.

Originally from Nova Scotia, Colin has called both Calgary and Edmonton home. He enjoys the off-leash areas of Mill Creek Ravine with his two dogs, cycles as his preferred mode of transportation (he describes himself as a certified NUMTOT), and is a big fan of the chicken from Seoul Fried Chicken.

"I love that Edmonton has several pyramids," he adds.

Hear more about Colin and his thoughts on public art in Episode 212 of Speaking Municipally.

Welcome to the team, Colin!

Declaring our roundup experiment a success

We’re declaring the experiment we started last month a success. Now when you open a roundup, you’ll find a message from a member of our team pulling some threads together in the Taproot way — with curiosity and desire to understand our community better.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback. Here’s a sample of the things we heard:

  • "I love the new roundup format."
  • "I really like the new opening perspective from the editor."
  • "I’m writing to tell you I’m enjoying the new format of the roundup. I think it’s a great addition."

We’re grateful for the evidence that this approach is working!

Our previous format was to include a story at the top of the roundup, which meant there was duplication between the roundups and The Pulse. We want to encourage you to subscribe to The Pulse for a daily look at what’s happening in Edmonton, and to the roundups for deeper dives into what’s happening in tech, food, health innovation, the region, the arts, and business. The new format makes that more likely.

“I like to start my notes to you as if we’re in the middle of a conversation,” Meg Ryan’s character says in You’ve Got Mail.

We think the new format makes the roundups themselves more engaging. Instead of dropping you right into a story, we greet you in a more conversational way without any unnecessary preamble (as we always strive to save you time). I’m reminded of Meg Ryan’s character in You’ve Got Mail, who writes to Tom Hanks’s character, "I like to start my notes to you as if we’re in the middle of a conversation."

One of the things we’ve learned through the experiment is that this format is a useful way for us to connect the dots. While each edition of a roundup is informative on its own, paying attention to a topic over time yields greater benefits. We notice patterns, connections, and trends that we can share, and the new format is a good way to do that.

What’s next?

We’ll still write stories about our roundup topics even with the new format in place, and you’ll still find them curated into items for the roundups they fit best. Those stories will also make it into The Pulse. But the new format provides us with some operational flexibility that we’re excited to take full advantage of.

For instance, in The Pulse you’ll increasingly find stories like our look at the community sandbox program, which doesn’t exactly fit one of the roundup beats. It also means we can publish stories like today’s about Future Fields securing US$11.2 million in funding whenever it makes sense to do so, not just because it fits a particular day’s roundup.

We’re working on additional improvements to the roundups, The Pulse, and our website, and we’ll have more to share on that soon. If you have any feedback on what would make the reader experience even better, please let us know!

And as always, if you’d like to help us go further faster, become a Taproot member or sponsor. You’ll be helping us build what comes next in local journalism.

Kicking off 2023 with an experiment

We’re trying something new at the top of some of our roundups, as part of our continuing quest to build a sustainable, tech-enabled media business that helps our community understand itself better.

Taproot is experimenting again, as we are wont to do. (Alex Kondratiev/Unsplash)

Instead of a story at the top of the Jan. 17 Food Roundup and the Jan. 18 Health Innovation Roundup, you’ll see a message from the editor pulling together some threads in a meaningful way. We pay a lot of attention to these topics, and sometimes we notice things that aren’t really stories and aren’t really items, but are still worth attention and context. That’s what we’d like to provide at the top of the roundups, in a way that’s more conversational than our usual editorial voice.

We’ll try this again with a couple of other roundups next week to see if we’ve hit on a format that will stick. We’d love to know what you think — send your thoughts to hello@taprootedmonton.ca.

Why are we doing this?

Change is the Taproot way. We started with long-form features inspired by readers’ questions, and we published them as soon as we had the time and money to put them out, which in the early days was at a pretty slow cadence. Then we introduced roundups, our weekly newsletters gathering items on specific topics, serving readers’ curiosity in a different and more frequent way and opening up a new revenue stream via sponsorship. Their format has evolved over time.

Two years ago, we launched The Pulse, a weekday newsletter that distributes our stories and curates news and items from other sources to help Edmontonians get on with their day in an informed way. That product has become the centre of our editorial work, and its readership is much higher than that of any roundup.

When we started The Pulse, it made sense to distribute the stories that we wrote for the various roundup beats in that newsletter, along with elements that are only distributed in The Pulse, such as some of our city council coverage, our weekly moment in history, and our event listings.

Now we’d like to differentiate the content of The Pulse from that of the roundups, partly for some operational flexibility but also because we think it will be a better experience for readers. We want to encourage you to subscribe to The Pulse for a daily look at what’s happening in Edmonton, and to the roundups for deeper dives into what’s happening in tech, food, health innovation, the region, the arts, and business. You may have a greater incentive to do that with less duplication.

Will we still have stories on our roundup beats?

Many of our story ideas emerge from the topics our readers want us to pay attention to, so we will naturally continue to cover stories that fit our roundup beats, whether this new format sticks around or not. Those stories will continue to be curated into items for the roundups they fit into, as is our practice now.

This gives us the flexibility to publish daily stories that aren’t necessarily related to or timed with a particular roundup. We think this could improve the quality of our work.

What’s next?

We’ll experiment with this for a couple of weeks, then make a call on whether to keep doing it. If we do, that will likely lead to some other changes we’re considering to improve the experience for readers and paying members.

As always, if you’d like to help us go further faster, become a Taproot member or sponsor. You’ll be helping us build what comes next in local journalism.

That’s it for 2022, but we’ll see you in 2023

Happy holidays from the crew at Taproot Edmonton! We’re taking a break until Jan. 3, when we’ll return with The Pulse and our regular collection of weekly roundups and podcasts.

We’re heading out for the rest of 2022, but we’ll be back in the New Year to keep you informed about Edmonton. (Mack Male/Flickr)

We have put together a few things to keep you informed in the meantime:

If you have any news to share with us, be sure to send it to hello@taprootedmonton.ca. Just remember we won’t be able to publish anything about it until we return.

We hope you have a fun and restful break, and we look forward to seeing you in the new year!

Building a thriving team at Taproot

This month we’re wrapping up our participation in the 2022 GNI Startups Lab on Building and Managing a Team, hosted by LION Publishers in partnership with Google News Initiative. We’re thankful to have been among the 16 publishers selected for the program that provided training, coaching, and funding.

For the past eight weeks or so we have learned about many aspects of building and managing a team. Planning for growth, hiring, onboarding, employment policies, management, and addressing and avoiding burnout were all among the topics covered. While much of the information was familiar to us given the stage we’re at, we also took away several new ideas and insights that we have already been applying. For example, we have adopted the use of user manuals, a helpful articulation of how someone likes to work and collaborate with other people. Participating in the program also caused us to follow-through on some work already underway, such as improving our employee handbook and onboarding process.

We enjoyed meeting with and learning from the other publishers that participated in the program. Most of all, we are grateful for the chance to work with our coach, Bene Cipolla. As the former editor-in-chief and publisher of Chalkbeat, we knew she’d have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. Every week we looked forward to hearing her advice and guidance on the issues we were tackling. Bene’s engagement, enthusiasm, and expertise made the program an impactful and enjoyable experience for us.

During our summer break we identified growing our team as a key priority, so the timing of the program was great. We hear regularly from the communities we serve that our work is having a positive impact, whether you start your day with The Pulse, listen to one of our podcasts while doing the laundry, or you receive one of our briefings through your employer. With a thriving team, we can continue to grow and improve our ability to help communities understand themselves better.

At Taproot, we’re curious, courageous, and we care. If you’re interested in working with us, we’d love to hear from you! Please fill out our simple intake form or reach out to me directly via LinkedIn.

We’re on a break — see you Sept. 6

As was the case last summer, Taproot Edmonton is taking a publishing break. This time, we’ll be off for two weeks, from Aug. 22 to Sept. 5.

We’ll resume publication on Tuesday, Sept. 6, after the Labour Day long weekend, feeling refreshed and energized for the rest of the year. The Pulse will return to inboxes on that day, and our weekly roundups will resume their usual schedule that week.

We have been busy bees this year, and it’s time to take a pause, so we’re ready to inform you in the fall. (Karen Unland)

We have put together a few things to keep you informed in the meantime:

If you have any news to share with us, be sure to send it to hello@taprootedmonton.ca. Just know that we won’t be able to publish anything about it until we return.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Speaking Municipally shortlisted for Canadian Podcast Award

Vote for Speaking Municipally in the Canadian Podcast Awards before Aug. 10, 2022!

We’re proud to see Speaking Municipally once again nominated for a Canadian Podcast Award.

Mack Male and Troy Pavlek have been paying close attention to city council on Edmontonians’ behalf since August 2018. It’s wonderful to see all of their hours of watching meetings and combing through agendas rewarded with this recognition, as it was when the show was nominated last year.

The Canadian Podcast Awards are voted on by other Canadian podcasters. If you happen to be one of those, you could cast your vote for Speaking Municipally in this category: “Outstanding News & Current Affairs Series.” Voting closes on Aug. 10, 2022.

While you’re there, consider voting for fellow Alberta Podcast Network members Putting It Together, Makeshift Stories, Quantum Kickflip, and 2 and Out.

There’s strong Edmonton-area representation among the other nominees, including The Smile Syndicate and Water We Doing, as well as a couple of podcasts we’ve written about before: Canadian History Ehx and Super Awesome Science Show.

By the way, Taproot has another show you might want to check out: Bloom, a podcast about innovation in Edmonton. We’re up to 25 episodes now, featuring interesting conversations with folks such as Jalene Anderson-Baron of Future Fields, Brian Heath of Drivewyze, Chris Kallal of Wild + Pine, and Tiffany Linke-Boyko of Flying Fish Partners.

Canada’s Online News Act must be transparent, fair, and include news innovators

Without amendments, Bill C-18 risks disproportionately benefitting large news organizations and shutting out digital startups and independent media.

A block reading "100+ Canadian news outlets are being shut out of the Online News Act. Support the fight to #FixBillC18." It is surrounded by the logos of participating organizations.

When the Liberal government announced its intention to support Canada’s news industry, the reasons given were to sustain local journalism, support innovation in news, and ensure diversity in the news industry. Bill C-18, the Online News Act currently before Parliament, guarantees none of these things.

Four key changes are needed if Canada is to have the vibrant journalism citizens need for a healthy democracy. 

We are a coalition of independent Canadian news publishers, pushing for amendments to C-18 to ensure the bill lives up to its promise to strengthen Canadian journalism. We represent over 100 outlets serving communities coast to coast to coast and employing over one thousand journalists. Taken together, our readers and listeners number in the many millions. Many of us have risked personal capital, fundraised from our communities, and built newsrooms from scratch to reach underserved audiences, many at the local level. 

Collectively, we represent Canada’s most innovative digital news media, local news outlets, both French and English language media, and BIPOC-led news media — we are the innovative news organizations that are rebuilding the local news ecosystem. The Online News Act represents an opportunity to accelerate this innovation and progress.

We have come together to ask for basic fairness in Bill C-18.

The centrepiece of Bill C-18 is a funding model aimed at mandating large web platforms like Facebook and Google to compensate Canadian news organizations for posting content on their platforms. Unfortunately, as it is currently structured, Bill C-18 does not specifically direct funding towards supporting the critical work of journalists. The bill also lacks robust transparency mechanisms and, most importantly, it risks leaving out small, medium size and independent publishers.

Even before it was tabled, Bill C-18 has resulted in winners and losers in the news industry. There have been a series of secret, backroom deals between Big Tech and the largest newspapers in Canada, along with a handful of small- to medium-sized publishers. An unintended but likely consequence of Bill C-18 as currently structured may be to cement these inequities and this secrecy, which threatens the public’s already-frayed trust in journalism.

To be clear, we support the goal of creating a sustainable news industry. It is not too late for the current legislation to address the needs of the Canadian news media ecosystem. We want it to be amended to ensure the following: 

  • A transparent, fair funding formula

A universal funding formula should be applied consistently to all qualifying news organizations. This funding formula should be disclosed, and the public must know which news organizations are receiving money from tech companies.

  • Support for journalists

Compensation from tech platforms should be based on a percentage of editorial expenditures or the number of journalists that work for an organization, inclusive of freelancers.

  • Inclusion

Bill C-18 may exclude dozens of important news innovators by demanding employee thresholds that news startups often don’t reach until their 3rd or 4th year of operation. 

  • No loopholes

Bill C-18 currently includes vague and poorly-defined criteria allowing for “Exemption Orders” that could let Big Tech off the hook, benefitting a few large news organizations and shutting out hundreds of legitimate small to medium size newsrooms. 

While we recognize the reality of the wider news crisis, our organizations represent rays of hope, and are proving that there is a future for a dynamic, inclusive news ecosystem in Canada.

Bill C-18 is modeled after Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code. It must not repeat the mistakes of that legislation. In Australia, an estimated 90 per cent of negotiated revenues flowed to the three largest media companies.

We encourage the government to revisit and improve Bill C-18.

As small, medium size, and independent news publishers, this new legislation is too big, and too important, to fumble. Bill C-18 will have a massive impact on the future of journalism and news in Canada.

Let’s make sure we get it right.

UNDERSIGNED

Arsenal Media

Canadaland

Canada’s National Observer

Constellation Media Society

Discourse Community Publishing

Indiegraf

Metro Media

Narcity Media

Neomedia

Overstory Media Group

Politics Today

Village Media

Alberta Today

BarrieToday

BayToday

BC Today

BradfordToday

Burnaby Beacon

Calgary Citizen

CambridgeToday

Canada’s National Observer

Capital Daily

ChrisD.ca

CollingwoodToday

ElliotLakeToday

EloraFergusToday

Enbeauce.com

EnergeticCity.ca

francoischarron.com

Fraser Valley Current

Guelph Politico

GuelphToday

Harbinger Media 

IndigiNews

InnisfilToday

insideWaterloo

Journal Metro

La Converse

Mabeauce.com

Macotenord.com

Magaspesie.ca

Metro Ahuntsic-Cartierville

Metro Beauport

Metro Charlesbourg

Metro Cote des Neiges & NDG

Metro Hochelaga Maisonneuve

Metro IDS-Verdun

Metro L’Actuel

Metro L’Appel

Metro L’Autre Voix

Metro Lachine & Dorval

Metro Lasalle

Metro Le Jacques Cartier

Metro Le Plateau Mont-Royal

Metro Mercier & Anjou

Metro Montreal-Nord

Metro Ouest-de-L’ile

Metro Outremont & Mont-Royal

Metro Pointe-aux-Trembles et Montreal-est

Metro Quebec

Metro Riviere-des-Prairies

Metro Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie

Metro Saint-Laurent

Metro Saint-Leonard

Metro Sud-Ouest

Metro Ville Marie

Metro Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension

MidlandToday

Monjoliette.com

Monlatuque.com

Monmatane.com

Montemiscouata.com

Monthetford.com

Monvicto.com

MTL Blog

MuslimLink.ca

Narcity

Neomedia Chambly

Neomedia Joliette

Neomedia Laval

Neo

media Rimouski

Neomedia Rive-Nord

Neomedia Saguenay

Neomedia Sorel-Tracy

Neomedia Trois-Rivières

Neomedia Vallée du Richelieu

Neomedia Valleyfield

Neomedia Vaudreuil

New West Anchor

NewmarketToday

Northern Ontario Business

Nouvelles d’Ici

Oak Bay Local

OakvilleNews.org

OrilliaMatters

Ottawa Sports Pages

Parliament Today

Peterborough Currents

PressProgress

Queen’s Park Today

rabble.ca

Ricochet Media

SooToday

StratfordToday

Sun Peaks Independent News

Taproot Edmonton

The Breach

The Coast

The Discourse Cowichan

The Discourse Nanaimo

The Flatlander

The Green Line

The Home Pitch

The Hoser

The Independent

The Line

The Local

The Peak

The Resolve

The Ridge

The Rover

The Sprawl

The Tyee

The Westshore

The Wren

Tri-Cities Dispatch

Tribe Magazine

Vancouver Tech Journal

Vocal Fry Studios

Women’s eNews

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