We’re happy beyond measure to introduce you to Taproot Edmonton’s new managing editor, Tim Querengesser.

Tim has an extensive background in journalism, including two years as managing editor of the now departed Metro Edmonton. He left that job in 2017 “because I felt the entire legacy newspaper model was no longer working in the way I had experienced in happier days, especially those at my first reporting gig at the Yukon News, still one of my favourite papers for its values and approach,” he said.

Most recently, Tim was the senior advisor for communications and engagement at the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues. But his heart remained with journalism, and Taproot has turned out to be his path back to the newsroom.

“I feel connected to the values, the approach, the unapologetic fascination with Edmonton minutiae, and the sustainable thinking behind the business,” he said.

Tim will take over responsibility for the day-to-day operations of Taproot Edmonton’s journalism, marshalling his wealth of experience to guide our editorial team and freeing up the founders to concentrate on continuing to build a sustainable business.

We often talk about Taproot as part of the connective tissue that makes our community work better. That approach aligns with the way Tim thinks.

“I see my ultimate job in all of the many things I do as making my community a better place,” he said, noting his past involvement in the Edmonton Wayfinding Society, his efforts to bring bike-sharing to the city, and an e-bike maintenance workshop he recently hosted. “In the past, being this involved was kind of taboo for journalists. I think it’s what has opened my eyes to different audiences and communities.”

That said, Tim is hardcore when it comes to finding stuff out and telling people about it, and has been since he was very young, raised by an inveterate newspaper reader and a typewriter repairman.

“I read newspapers early, I wrote things — often on a typewriter — from a young age, and I formed ideas early,” he said. “I remember reading my first essay on world politics to my rather bewildered Grade 5 class.”

More good news! We have welcomed Stephanie Swensrude to Taproot Edmonton’s growing editorial team.

Stephanie comes to us from Corus Entertainment, where she worked as a reporter and content coordinator in the newsroom serving 630 CHED and Global News Edmonton. Before that, she was a multimedia journalist in Kamloops, B.C., a job she landed after graduating from the radio and television program at NAIT.

“I had always cared a lot about politics and social issues, but I didn’t see many of the other people my age engaging in news,” she said of the path that led her to us. “Then when the pandemic hit, people became way more involved, and it really showed me how important journalism is.”

At first, she thought she wanted to be a TV news anchor, but working at the NAIT Nugget changed her mind. “I quickly realized I would rather be talking to people out in the community.”

Stephanie will wear a few hats at Taproot. She has taken over responsibility for the items in our weekly roundups. She’ll also report and write stories, and she’ll appear now and then on Speaking Municipally, as she did in Episode 238. (Tune in not only for a geek-out on transit and zoning but also for co-host Troy Pavlek’s reaction to her pitch-perfect radio voice in the rapid-fire jokes at the end.)

Stephanie has already gathered a few bylines, covering an Edmonton Downtown Business Association luncheon on attracting retail to the core, writing up the results of the Start Alberta Tech Awards, and sharing some of the newsiest bits of Let’s Find Out’s recent live show.

Stephanie will also be writing our weekly “On the agenda” feature, as she did on Oct. 23, summarizing what’s coming up at city council and its committees for the coming week.

“I’m a huge city council nerd, and it’s my favourite thing to report on,” she said. “I love how Taproot endeavours to get people to care more about the important decisions being made at city hall.”

Welcome to the team, Stephanie!

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.

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.

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.

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.