Taproot harvests curiosity about housing at well-attended event

Roughly 18 months ago, Taproot started work on a project to examine the complexity of Edmonton’s housing ecosystem. The idea was to speak to multiple people within the system to identify some of the entanglements we can feel within it. Consider someone realizing their beneficial location on housing comes partly at the expense of others, or someone living with those negative consequences, or someone living without stable housing at all.

Writer and researcher Eric Rice, photographer Jordon Hon, and reporter Stephanie Swensrude discussed Taproot’s Housing Complex series with moderator Karen Unland in front of a crowd of about 70 people at CKUA on Nov. 27. (Mack Male/Flickr)

On Nov. 27, Taproot brought the resulting Housing Complex project to the public by hosting an event that was part panel discussion, part question-gathering, and part mind-mapping exercise. While we discussed our editorial series, we also turned the mic (or in this case, markers) over to participants. We asked the more than 70 people in the room what questions people hope city council candidates can address on housing during the coming 2025 election campaign, what people are curious about, and where they locate themselves within the broader housing ecosystem.

Here’s some of the input we collected during the event:

What do municipal candidates need to know about housing in Edmonton?

Attendees had plenty of questions and exhortations for the candidates who will be seeking office in the municipal election in October 2025.

“How can we incentivize builders to build more affordable housing?”
“How can we create a housing culture that’s unique to Edmonton, that is also ‘positive’ — and doesn’t leave people behind?”
“Work with (other) governments to reduce regulatory and attitude barriers!”
“Why has so much money been invested in shelters when we know they don’t house people?”
“How do we continue removing barriers for hard-to-house people and build more wraparound support directly into our communities?”
“Why subsidize suburban ‘infill’ with poor transit and terrible connectivity?”

An attendee at “Taproot presents: A conversation about housing” on Nov. 27, 2024, offers a thought at one of the activity stations. (Mack Male/Flickr)

What are you curious about on housing?

Taproot is built on the value of curiosity, and we bring this to every event we hold. Event attendees had plenty to offer.

One person asked for more stories on how people who have avoided homelessness have done so, and how someone who has transitioned into housing did so.

Others told us they are keen to know more about “innovative partnerships” to develop and operate affordable housing.

Still others identified the often fractured relationships between governments and asked how this might change. “How can the municipal, provincial, and federal governments work better together to provide affordable housing,” one wrote.

Another captured what many feel but struggle to say: “How have things seemingly changed so much in the past decade?”

Where are you in the housing ecosystem?

Taproot lastly asked people to locate themselves within the city’s housing ecosystem, how they felt about that position, and anything that made it complex. We put their written answers up on the wall as a bit of a mind map.

Mayor Amarjeet Sohi participates in one of the activities at Taproot’s housing event while managing editor Tim Querengesser looks on. (Mack Male/Flickr)

Many told us they own their homes, though a sizeable chunk told us they rent, and still others said they had complex arrangements that don’t easily fit in these categorizations.

How people felt about their position in the ecosystem ranged from “Love it!” and “Lucky!” to “Relief” and “Difficult to picture the future.”

One person wrote they feel “guilty” about how much space, or affluence, or comfort they have.

“I feel isolated,” another wrote.

“I feel under cost pressure and mortgage rate pressure,” yet another wrote.

Another wrote they are stuck with a condo they can’t sell and are forced to be a landlord.

“Hard to balance feeling guilty, grateful, and stressed,” another person summarized. “All of the above.”

When offered a chance to explain what made their housing situation complex, more interesting details emerged:

“Not enough affordable housing options available for students.”
“The house has multiple owners and figuring out who pays for what can be complex.”
“I want to buy a home close to the core but increasingly feel I’ll never be able to afford to get into home ownership.”
“My property value skyrocketed recently and while that’s great for me I know it will cause issues for others.”
“Things are expensive.”
“Landlord relationships are crucial.”
“My home is not accessible and I can’t have my grandparents over.”
“We have so much room but are not close to transit.”
“Why is CMHC subsidizing suburban housing?”

Conclusion

The input Taproot received at the event will help inform the questions we ask candidates in the lead-up to the 2025 election and could lead to future stories as well.

Election day is Oct. 20, 2025. During the last municipal election, in 2021, Taproot created the People’s Agenda, which used extensive surveys to find out what Edmonton residents cared about and how candidates aligned with those goals. Taproot also offered plenty of news you could use in 2021, from where to vote to where to watch results roll in.

Our election coverage may differ slightly in 2025, but Taproot will work to equip our city with facts, context, ways to engage, and news people can use.

For more from the Taproot team on what Edmonton’s city council can and can’t do about housing, and what that will mean for the coming campaign, listen to Episode 289 of Speaking Municipally.

Taproot is now a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization

We’re pleased to share that Taproot Publishing Inc. has officially been designated as a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO), effective Feb. 7, 2024. This milestone reflects the growth we’ve achieved over the past few years. It also brings a tangible benefit for our members: access to the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit.

When tax time rolls around in 2025, you can now claim a credit for your Taproot membership. (Mack Male/Flickr)

What does this mean for Taproot Edmonton members?

If you’ve been an active member of Taproot Edmonton at any point in 2024 — whether by joining this year or by making one or more membership payments in 2024 — you are eligible to claim the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit on your 2024 tax return. This means:

Annual members can claim the full $100 membership fee.
Monthly members can claim the total amount they paid for their membership in 2024.

To claim this credit, simply include the amount on Line 31350 of your tax return. For more details, visit the CRA’s guide on how to claim the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit.

The Digital News Subscription Tax Credit is “a non-refundable tax credit for amounts paid by individuals to a QCJO for qualifying subscription expenses.” As a result, it does not apply to business memberships.

Why did Taproot seek QCJO designation?

Designation enables us to provide this tax benefit to our members, which has long been requested by some of those who support our work. It is a recognition of our commitment to produce high-quality, original journalism for the Edmonton region, and it highlights how far we have come since our early days.

Being a QCJO also opens up new opportunities for Taproot to access additional funding and support. For example, we intend to claim the Canadian Journalism Labour tax credit. The designation also simplifies applying for other funds, such as the funding available under the Online News Act, which the Canadian Journalism Collective is responsible for distributing.

However, we still have reservations about the QCJO program. As we noted in 2021, the system risks delegitimizing valuable journalism organizations that don’t meet its criteria for reasons unrelated to the quality of their work. While we’re gratified to offer the tax credit benefit to members, we acknowledge the broader challenges the program presents within the media landscape.

Why does Taproot now qualify as a QCJO?

Achieving QCJO status is no small feat for small, independent news organizations like ours. The eligibility criteria include several straightforward requirements, such as producing original news content, focusing on general interest topics, and operating in Canada. While we’ve long met most of these requirements, one particular criterion stood out as a significant barrier: employing two or more journalists who are not freelancers and who work at arm’s length from the organization (i.e. are not the founders).

For many startups, this requirement is difficult to achieve. Small, independent news organizations often rely on freelance journalists or part-time contributors in their early stages. Building the capacity to hire multiple full-time staff takes time, growth, and money. Yet, these small organizations are often doing vital journalism that fills critical gaps in the media ecosystem. They cover stories that larger outlets overlook, provide context and nuance for local communities, and innovate with new ways of delivering news.

This criterion kept Taproot Edmonton from being eligible for QCJO status for years. But, thanks to the support of our members, other customers, and the growth we’ve achieved together, we’ve built a strong team that not only meets the QCJO requirement, but also exemplifies the kind of impactful, community-driven journalism we set out to provide.

Next steps

We’re in the process of being added to the federal government’s list of qualifying digital news subscriptions, so you’ll soon see Taproot Edmonton officially listed there. In the meantime, members can confidently claim the credit for their 2024 membership payments.

Join by Dec. 31 to claim the credit

If you’re not yet a member, now is the perfect time to join. Become a member before Dec. 31, and not only will you help make our work free for everyone in the Edmonton region, but you will also qualify for this tax credit on your 2024 return.

Taproot joins Press Forward, a voice for indie media

Taproot Edmonton is now a proud member of Press Forward, an organization “dedicated to ensuring people in Canada have strong, independent and community-focused journalism.”

We’ve long been aligned with Press Forward’s goals, but we finally made time to apply. (Part of that process involved posting and/or updating our policies on corrections, ethics, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and privacy). We find ourselves among two dozen organizations of various shapes and sizes, which serve their communities and fund their work in a wide variety of ways. What we have in common is a deep connection to readers and members, as well as an interest in innovation.

Press Forward board member Brent Jolly addresses the crowd at the Future of Independent Media Summit in Toronto on Oct. 26, 2024. (Karen Unland)

On Oct. 26, Press Forward hosted the first Future of Independent Media Summit, convening journalists, news entrepreneurs, and others interested in independent media to explore what’s working, what’s been challenging, and what can be done to ensure sustainability. The gathering sparked a lot more ideas than I have room to list, but here are some takeaways:

There is a desire to shift the narrative from doom-and-gloom to optimism, and lots of reason to do so.
Philanthropic organizations in Canada are increasingly interested in bolstering community-based journalism, but we’re a long way from an ecosystem as robust as that in the U.S. (in which the very different American organization called Press Forward is a player).
Philanthropic institutions and others who can help care about strengthening community — that’s what the pitch needs to be, not “Help us save journalism.”
Reader support is vital, not only as a revenue source but to demonstrate to other potential funders that our work is valued and makes a difference.
In order to carry out this work and look after the people who do it, independent media organizations need to be financially stable, which requires multiple revenue streams.

The summit was a chance to meet new people and reconnect with old friends, including Trish Audette-Longo, who instigated the event at which Taproot co-founder Mack Male and I first announced our intention to start Taproot in May 2016. A very nice full-circle moment!

An update on Google funding

A huge topic of discussion at the summit and the subsequent Press Forward strategy session was the fate of the annual payment of $100 million that Google had committed to make to a collective of news publishers in response to Bill C-18, which became the Online News Act. All we knew on the weekend was that distribution of the funds was awaiting a CRTC decision on whether to exempt Google from the Online News Act’s requirement for tech platforms to pay for content shared on them.

On Oct. 28, the CRTC granted Google a five-year exemption and ordered the first $100 million to be released to the Canadian Journalism Collective to distribute the funds to eligible news outlets. Taproot is in line for some money from this, based on the number of full-time journalists we had in 2023 (which is fewer than we have now). Unfortunately, the CRTC ruled that freelancers’ hours will not be included, which potentially cuts into the amount we’ll get and is even more detrimental for some of our Press Forward colleagues.

News Media Canada, which represents legacy media such as Postmedia and other newspaper chains, lobbied hard to exclude freelancers. This demonstrates the importance of a voice for those who are trying to forge a new path rather than clinging to the old ways, and we clearly have some work to do to on this front.

On the other hand, Taproot has long preferred to seek revenue from places where we have more control — selling memberships, sponsorship, advertising, and related services — rather than relying on grants. Based on what we heard at the summit, this continues to seem wise, particularly given the federal Conservatives’ opposition to subsidies for journalism and the strong possibility of a change in government when Canadians next go to the polls.

This is a good time to remind you that the other result of the passage of the Online News Act was Meta’s decision to ban Canadian news links from Facebook and Instagram. Most of our distribution is by email, so this wasn’t a deadly blow for Taproot, but it is bothersome that we can’t share great work like our Housing Complex project in the places where a lot of Edmontonians spend their time. And it’s frustrating to see news-esque posts from sites without any of the hallmarks of responsible journalism.

Your contributions make a big difference

If you value Taproot and can afford to support it, we need you to do so. Membership fees not only provide capital to invest in the people who do the work, but they’re also a powerful signal to other funders that we are fulfilling a need. Individual memberships are $100 a year or $10 a month. We also now have business memberships.

If you’re not in a position to pay, please recommend Taproot to others. More readership is also a signal, and it helps us make the case to advertisers and sponsors that their money is well-spent.

Introducing Housing Complex, a special project from Taproot Edmonton

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Housing Complex, a multi-part project exploring what works, what doesn’t, and what can be done to improve Edmonton’s housing system.

Starting on Oct. 23, you can read our effort to better understand the complexity of a system that touches all of us and raises issues that candidates will have to grapple with heading into the 2025 municipal election. More stories will be published over the coming weeks, continuing the conversation through National Housing Day and beyond.

Eric Rice interviewed a variety of people about their experiences with the housing system as the starting point of Housing Complex, Taproot’s project on what works, what doesn’t, and what can be done about housing in Edmonton. (Jordon Hon)

For more on what to expect from the series, managing editor Tim Querengesser sets it up well in his introductory piece. I want to take you behind the curtain to explain how this project came about in the first place and why we approached it the way we did.

Our team has working on this series for months, but the seed that grew into Housing Complex was planted even further back in May of 2023. A valued member of our community reached out in advance of the annual homeless memorial service that the Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness hosts every year in June to honour those who have died from not having access to adequate housing. Could Taproot do something, he asked, to better tell the story of those who had passed? Could we find a way to go beyond the typical coverage of the event, which tends to share a number — a sadly growing number in recent years — but not much about the actual people?

I didn’t know. But it felt like an idea worth exploring. An obituary is a way of saying, “This person mattered.” Perhaps that was a service we could provide and a way to raise awareness of the tragedy happening on our streets. But at a meeting to discuss the idea further, Jim Gurnett of ECOHH gently suggested it could be very difficult to tell a full and dignified story about someone whose life had ended on the street. It would perhaps be more meaningful and useful to focus on those who were still alive.

That idea resonated, but it brought with it other challenges. How could we sensitively gather and tell those stories without engaging in the kind of extractive journalism that exploits people without making their lives better and sometimes makes things worse? I thought of someone who might be able to help: Eric Rice, a writer whose project This is Where We Live was the subject of a Taproot story in November 2022.

Eric interviewed eight people who were homeless or had experienced homelessness. He turned those interviews into monologues that were then performed by professional actors whose age, gender, and ethnicity matched that of the interviewees. He took pains to get his interviewees’ approval of the way their stories would be told. “Each interview transcript was reviewed and highlighted by third parties, their input was used to create scripts, and the scripts were read back to the interviewees before taping,” he wrote of the project, which was originally intended to be a piece of theatre but became a film due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I sat down with Eric to see if he had any advice on how we might be able to approach a similar project as respectfully as he did. But as we talked, we realized that focusing on the individual stories of people who had fallen on hard times ignored or even erased that the homelessness crisis is the result of a system we are all involved in. I might even have used the word “complicit,” as I was about to put my house up for sale and hoped to get significantly more than what we paid for it when we bought it in 1999. The market helps some and hurts others. To truly tell the story, we needed to widen the scope.

While all of this was happening, Taproot co-founder Mack Male and I were heads-down in the build-the-airplane-while-you-fly-it mode of a media startup. Even if it was a good idea to try to apply Eric’s approach to a broader cross-section of Edmontonians involved in the housing system, Taproot didn’t have the resources to pull it off alone, and it was vital to us that the people engaging in acts of journalism get paid. The good news was that Eric wanted to not only offer advice but get involved, and he was willing to look for the money to help make it possible.

Working with Jim at ECOHH, Eric put together a proposal for funding from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, a grant-making organization that supports projects that help people better understand issues related to the real estate industry. With ECOHH as the fiscal agent, Taproot as the publisher, and Eric as the project lead, we made a successful case for a $10,000 grant. Then the real work began.

Guided in part by a survey sent to the partners’ communities, Eric came up with a list of the kinds of people he would seek to interview. As was the case with This is Where We Live, he sought his subjects’ approval of the edited interview before publication. This departs from standard journalistic practice and is not something we typically do at Taproot. But we decided it was justifiable, with the disclosure you are reading now, in order to set vulnerable subjects’ minds at ease. We offered the same to interview subjects who we would not describe as vulnerable, as the ethos of the project has been to put everyone on the same level.

The grant also allowed Eric to pay a small honorarium to some of his interview subjects to recognize the value of their time. This was at his discretion. Those whose participation could be seen as part of their job were not compensated; those whose connection to the system was mostly through lived experience typically were. Again, this is not standard practice in journalism, and Taproot does not pay sources. But we were willing in this case to let Eric put part of the grant towards this in a way that mirrored his practice with the previous project.

Eric conducted his first interview on Feb. 28 and his last one on Sept. 25. While that was happening, Taproot’s team grew, and we saw an opportunity to zoom out a bit on the larger issues connected to the experiences of our 12 interviewees. In May of 2024, our civic affairs podcast Speaking Municipally recorded a live show in conjunction with the summer institute of the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative. That acted as a bit of a preview for Housing Complex and gave our audience a chance to hear more from both Eric and Josh Evans, associate professor of human geography at the University of Alberta and director of the Affordable Housing Solutions Lab. Some of the questions posed by attendees inspired the explanatory pieces that our editorial team will share with you in the coming weeks — watch for a new story every Wednesday through October and November.

You can find all of the stories that this series led to at Housing Complex, Taproot’s series on what works about Edmonton’s housing ecosystem, what doesn’t, and what can be done to improve it. Many thanks to housing advocate Nadine Chalifoux for welcoming Eric Rice and Jordon Hon into her home, where this doormat greets visitors. (Jordon Hon)

The final piece of the puzzle was how to present all of these words in an attractive and respectful way. Once again, someone Taproot has written about before was able to help: photographer Jordon Hon, whose docuseries about Chinatown was the subject of a December 2022 story. Jordon accompanied Eric to capture portraits of his interview subjects and the ways they live, adding another layer to the storytelling. We’re grateful that the grant allowed us to pair Eric’s careful and perceptive work with Jordon’s beautiful and telling images.

Based on what Tim heard at his listening session earlier this year, Taproot members want us to deliver more original journalism that goes deep, and they want to engage with each other in real life. We hope you’ll consider Housing Complex an example of the former. As for the latter, we’re planning to convene our collaborators, our participants, and the wider Taproot community at an event in November; that will also be an opportunity to learn more about the Affordable Housing Maintenance Fund, an endowment fund that Eric created through the Edmonton Community Foundation to create a stable, ongoing source of funding for the maintenance and repair of low-income housing in Edmonton. Stay tuned for your invitation to join us!

We’re grateful for the Alberta Real Estate Foundation’s support, which allowed us to pay for Eric’s time, Jordon’s photos, and some ancillary expenses. The grant did not cover the explanatory work, the development of the microsite displaying the project, or the coordination of many moving parts — Taproot relies on members, sponsors, and other paying customers to fund all of that.

You can help us continue to do the kind of work that informs and connects our community by becoming a Taproot member. If you’re already a member, please invite a friend to join you. We make all of our work free to read, but it is by no means free to make, and your support makes a big difference.

Taproot members speak: ‘Keep it up but also go deep’

We convened some of Taproot’s most committed supporters for the first in a series of listening sessions to understand why they value Taproot, where we can grow, shift, or improve, and how we might organize more community conversations focused on Edmonton.

This invitation to gather online on Sept. 13 was extended to paying members, partly to thank them for supporting the journalism we practice and publish, and partly to tap into the insights of our most committed supporters. Some are so dedicated, in fact, that their Taproot consumption sometimes overlaps. “I actually interrupted my listening to this week’s Speaking Municipally to come to this event,” joked one participant, noting they’ve never missed an episode of our weekly civic affairs podcast.

An analog version of Taproot’s dearly departed story garden, an early experiment in gathering our community’s curiosity. (Mack Male/Flickr)

We promised anonymity to encourage candour. Here is a condensed and edited report on what participants told me:

‘Why are you a Taproot member?’

“It’s valuable to have some little nods to things happening in the city that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise since I don’t have social media and I’m very happy about that,” one member said in response to an opening question about why they belong to Taproot.

The social media-free point resonated with others, too. “I left Twitter when it got sold, and I’m done with Facebook as well,” said another member. “I like the focus on local stuff. I like the in-detail descriptions and, again, I like the lack of the trauma and the drama. It is a source of a lot of ideas, and I think that exchange is healthy.”

It’s about values, said a member who has supported Taproot since the beginning back in 2016. “I just really loved the idea of having a community-driven and curiosity-driven news source,” they said. That same member valued Taproot’s “story garden,” an early experiment in curiosity-harvesting that allowed members to seed ideas for stories to pursue.

“I’m really fed up with the ‘mainstream media’ and its lack of impartiality,” another member told me, dropping that business and hockey interests seem to dictate editorial decisions at some legacy news outlets. “I also am very interested in municipal activities.”

Another amplified this point. “It’s important to have those local voices and, you know, we’re just getting fewer and fewer of these media entities.”

Some members said they are active in other communities that foreground connection and positive engagement with the city, such as Coffee Outside. And several said they joined Taproot thanks to their respect and connections with co-founders Karen Unland and Mack Male.

‘What are you curious about?’

I learned that Taproot’s members are quick with praise but also candid with feedback, which I deeply value.

Several suggested that Taproot has paid too little attention to what’s happening at school boards in Edmonton as we head into the next municipal elections in 2025.

“There’s a lot of partisanship in the school board already, so I’d like to hear more about that,” one member said. “One of the things that I’m interested in is that there is a deliberate attempt by Take Back Alberta to infiltrate the school boards across the province.”

Other members agreed. “I’ve got serious concerns about what will come in (at school boards), especially with Take Back Alberta,” one said. “They follow exactly the same model that has been followed in the United States — so, your Moms for Liberty kind of people. That’ll be traipsing in here, and they have pots of money.”

A theme of the conversation was the balance between breadth and depth. Some members said Taproot does breadth well but can improve on depth.

“Is there a role for investigative journalism in the future of Taproot Edmonton?” one member asked. “Because I think there’s a timidity about much of the reporting now. It’s being very safe. It’s not wanting to irritate people.”

Another added: “I’m going to cast my vote on depth versus breadth and say maybe don’t take on new topics but just go a little bit deeper into the things that you’re already doing. And I know with the election, that just seems like a natural (thing). You know you did great coverage last time, and we need that this time.”

Yet another member said critical perspectives should be present in as much of Taproot’s reporting and coverage as possible. “For me, it’s not even the need to do deep-dive investigative (journalism), but just maybe present another perspective,” they said, pointing to the introductory pieces that top our seven weekly roundups in particular.

Members say they want community

A sentiment that resonated with most members who participated in the listening session was enthusiasm for Speaking Municipally’s live recording on housing challenges, organized with the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative in May. The event brought people together in real life to connect and ask deep questions about complex issues.

Members told me they want Taproot’s listening sessions to edge closer to that model.

“I’d like to encourage Taproot to do that same thing again … there’s so many issues that we could link into,” they said. “So that might be a good thing to explore in the immediate future. Let’s bring people together. There is virtue in having a face-to-face conversation about these things as opposed to doing it virtually.”

I deeply value the chance to talk to people who read what we work on daily. Many thanks to all who participated. I agree that meeting in person would be valuable, and I’m now considering how that might happen. Whether the next listening session is in person or online, I aim to run the next one in November. I hope to see you there.

Readers offer guidance on how to grow membership

“Don’t ask, don’t get.” We often cite those four words from Amanda Wagner, delivered during an accelerator that Taproot co-founder Mack Male and I attended in 2019. This month, that mantra led us to ask for information from the people who read Taproot but are not paying members. Their answers were revealing.

Why did we ask?

Taproot’s journalism has always been freely accessible. We believe a paywall would stand in the way of our mission to inform and connect the Edmonton region. But we have also always made it possible to buy memberships for $10 per month or $100 per year. This was our first revenue stream, and it remains an important source of funding to pay the people who carry out our mission.

About 6% of the people on our current mailing list pay for Taproot memberships. We wanted to better understand what has stopped the 94% from becoming paying members.

What did we ask?

On Sept. 4, we sent them a survey asking them to indicate what has stopped them from becoming paying members of Taproot. We gave them the opportunity to choose up to three responses from a list of reasons:

I didn’t know paid membership was an option
I don’t know how to become a paying member
I don’t get enough value from what Taproot publishes to pay for it
Taproot doesn’t offer enough extra benefits to members
I can’t afford the current price
I reserve my media budget for news outlets with paywalls
I am already a paying member under a different email address
Someone else in my household is already a paying members
I want to know what Taproot publishes but I don’t want to support it
Other

We also invited them to tell us more about their answer.

What have we learned so far?

The email containing the survey was opened by about half of the recipients, and of those, about 8% answered it. So this is based on a small sample of our total readership. Still, the responses offered some useful guidance.

We need to improve our communications about membership

The answer with the most responses was “I didn’t know paid membership was an option.” Coupled with a few more responses indicating people knew membership was possible but didn’t know how to buy it, it’s clear that we need to make that option clearer and the path more obvious.

It didn’t take much of a nudge for some of the survey recipients to take the next step and start paying — at least a dozen upgraded to paid memberships shortly after the email went out. We asked and we got!

The Tyee has a message from the publisher at the bottom of every article encouraging readers to become paying members and explaining how they are contributing to free access for all. CKUA makes a similar pitch — you don’t have to pay to enjoy it, but if you do, you contribute to the station’s sustainability. We’ll be taking inspiration from these and other sources as we make our pitch more explicit on the Taproot Edmonton website.

We’ll also update our signup page and integrate information about our new Business Membership, which allows companies to sign up all of their staff, ensuring a well-informed workforce while supporting our efforts to continue to provide that information.

Some might pay if membership cost less

We heard from some people that $100 a year or $10 a month is a heavy lift, especially with so many other subscriptions pulling on the pocketbook.

Membership prices have stayed the same since we launched the first version of Taproot in 2016, aside from an increase when we got big enough to have to charge GST. There wasn’t a lot of science behind the price points we chose. We needed to see if people believed in the idea enough to join; $100 a year or $10 a month was memorable and made for easy math.

Perhaps different membership tiers would make it possible for more people to support us monetarily. A one-time donation option may appeal to some. Or maybe we should take a page from some of our friends in the arts community and institute a pay-what-you-can system. We’ll take it all under advisement.

Also, we know there’s interest in being able to claim the digital news subscription tax credit. Taproot hasn’t been eligible in the past, but we’re getting closer to qualifying, and we hope to have some good news to share before the end of the year.

Some might pay if benefits were beefed up

We don’t do tote bags at Taproot (at least not yet). So what do you get if you’re a member?

Initially, paid members had exclusive access to our “story garden,” a place to plant seeds of curiosity, some of which would grow into full-fledged stories that we would pay freelancers to write. It was an innovative concept, but it was hard to respond to all of the ideas in a timely way, even with a small minority of our members engaging. As our business model and editorial practices evolved, we closed the story garden.

For a while, free readers were limited to two weekly roundups, while paying members had access to as many as they wanted. In 2023, we lifted that restriction (but didn’t ballyhoo the change — if you’re a free reader, go ahead and update your preferences to get as many newsletters as you want, including the new Events Roundup).

Right now, the main benefit of paying for Taproot is the warm feeling you get from knowing you are supporting independent local journalism and making it possible for everyone to consume it. That is valuable, as the Membership Puzzle found in a study of news sites around the world. “(Many) supporters of open access news sites say they’re aware that they’re paying for the site’s work as a voluntary act that subsidizes journalism for others,” it noted. “But this is a point of pride, not frustration, for most of them.”

And yet, it’s understandable to expect membership to have its privileges.

Our managing editor, Tim Querengesser, is experimenting with members-only listening sessions as a way to tap into the curiosity of our biggest supporters. In the inaugural session held online on Sept. 13, participants said they wanted not only to interact with Taproot staff but also with each other, preferably in person. (We’ll share more about what we learned in the coming days.) Based on previous experiences with the recent Speaking Municipally live show and other collaborations with Let’s Find Out, we know the power of real-life interaction with our community. One of our survey respondents went further, suggesting that members-only networking events could be particularly enticing if they provided “an inside track to meet the movers and shakers in Edmonton that you’re writing about.” There’s definitely something to explore there.

In the absence of defined benefits, it’s hard for readers to imagine what else we could do that might persuade them to become paying members. Our plan is to follow up this survey with another one that asks about various potential perks to see what would be the most enticing.

Some might pay if we published more of our own journalism

Taproot publishes at least one original story based on our own reporting every weekday, and Speaking Municipally rounds out the week with original commentary on what went on at city hall. Much of the rest of our output is curated from other sources, whether it be the Headlines that summarize recent news in The Pulse, or the items collected in our weekly roundups on Tech, Food, Health, the Region, Arts, and Business. The Taproot Edmonton Calendar, which feeds the “Happenings” files in our newsletters, is also a product of curation.

Much of this is by design. We subscribe to Jeff Jarvis’s credo: “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.” We happily point to the work of “the competition,” which is a service to our readers, while reserving our resources for stories that no one else is doing. Curation also allows us to bring our readers much more information than a small newsroom could otherwise provide. In a given week, Taproot publishes about 20,000 finely crafted words — that’s a lot for this many people, and it’s only possible because of a methodology we’ve honed over many years, assisted by technology that Mack has developed from scratch. That “pay-attention engine,” as we’ve sometimes called it, is not flashy, but it provides sustained value, and maybe the lesson here is that we should tell that story more often.

We certainly want to publish more and deeper work. Taproot was born because of the erosion of local journalism that was evident in 2016 and has only worsened since. We are driven to replace what has been lost with something better. So it’s good to know that some would pay if we did more of what we already aspire to do.

Some won’t pay, no matter what

We did hear some variations on the idea that information wants to be free. In a way, we agree. That’s why we don’t have a paywall. We refuse to contribute to a situation where only those who have the means can access reliable information, especially about the place where they live.

However, that which is free to read is not free to make. Someone has to pay.

One of the strengths of our company is its diverse revenue streams. We sell advertising and sponsorship, as well as a business-to-business information service called Spotlight, and we manage to get a few grants and subsidies here and there. Those sources and our small but mighty base of paying members combine to make everything we do possible. It wouldn’t be prudent to rely on just one of those streams and, to be frank, it hasn’t been prudent to neglect growing our membership revenue. We’re grateful for the feedback to guide us toward rectifying that.

Taproot launches an Events Roundup

If you’re looking for something to do, for business or for fun, you’ll find thousands of events to choose from in the Taproot Edmonton Calendar. You can filter that gigantic list by category or other parameters, but we’ll be the first to admit that it’s a lot. Plus, you have to go to the Calendar to see what’s there — what if a curated list of suggestions came to you instead?

A screenshot from the Aug. 22 edition of Taproot’s new Events Roundup.

That’s the idea behind the new Events Roundup, which you can now sign up to receive every Thursday afternoon. It’s somewhat similar to our other weekly roundups, but the focus is on listings rather than news items. Every edition kicks off with a recommendation, followed by upcoming events on a certain theme, some listings for the week ahead, and a few suggestions that are further ahead in the calendar.

Social media platforms ate up the advertising that used to support listings in the mainstream and alternative media, and they took away a lot of our attention, too. But the algorithms are increasingly unfriendly to both event organizers and event-goers. So let’s bypass all of that with a local, vetted, comprehensive listing that’s free to use and free to peruse. And let’s make it easy for you to know what’s going on with a tight, informative roundup of listings delivered directly to your inbox.

“I would have gone if I had known!” is a common lament. The Events Roundup is one more way to we can help you prevent those blues.

If you’re new to Taproot, subscribe for free today! If you’re already a subscriber, click the “update preferences” link in any email from us to add the Events Roundup to your selections.

It’s time for Taproot’s summer break

As is our custom twice a year, Taproot Edmonton is taking a break from our regular publishing schedule. This is to give our team a chance to catch their breath and make some room for the important but not urgent work that is vital for our long-term sustainability. A regular publishing cadence is a beautiful and necessary thing, but it’s also a hamster wheel, and every now and then, we step off.

Our 2024 summer break will overlap with the August long weekend, which is a little earlier than in previous years. The last edition of The Pulse before the break is on July 26, and it will be back in your inbox on Aug. 12. Our weekly roundups will resume in mid-August as well. Speaking Municipally will return around the time that Edmonton city council gets back to work.

A little girl walking toward a bicycle through water fountains with the Alberta Legislature in the background

While you won’t see any fresh stories on our site during the break, the Taproot Edmonton Calendar will continue to offer a huge variety of event listings throughout the summer and beyond. Our own Debbi Serafinchon has made sure there’s a rich selection of things to do, and she’ll keep adding events as she learns of them. (Feel free to submit yours.)

Pausing our publications has a lot of benefits, but it does cost us some revenue, as we don’t deliver ads in our newsletters or podcasts during that time. We also lose some visibility because we disappear from social media. Here are a few ways you can help us fill that gap:

Become a paying member if you aren’t already one. Taproot is free to read, but it’s not free to make. If you have the means to pay $10 a month or $100 a year, you’ll be helping us inform and connect everyone in the Edmonton area.
Ask your employer to buy a Business Membership. This is a great way to get everyone in your organization on the same page while helping us continue to pay attention to our community.
Refer a friend. At the bottom of every email you receive from Taproot, there’s a unique referral link — share it and you’ll earn points you can redeem for rewards.
Tell us why you love Taproot so we can share your testimonial with others.

Enjoy these midsummer weeks, and we’ll see you again on Aug. 12!

Introducing Taproot Edmonton’s Business Membership

The Edmonton region is facing a significant challenge: a lack of coverage of the people and organizations shaping our community’s future. With fewer resources dedicated to telling these important stories, everyone is missing out on vital information.

At Taproot Edmonton, we are committed to informing and connecting people across the Edmonton region through original reporting, newsletters, podcasts, and our recently launched events calendar.

Today, we are excited to introduce our new Business Membership program, designed to enlist the business community’s help to fill the knowledge gap and thus build a more informed and connected community.

Why is there a lack of business coverage?

Since 2008, nine local news publications in Edmonton have closed and another seven have decreased their coverage, according to the Local News Research Project. Just four local news publications have launched during the same period, including Taproot Edmonton.

The situation across the region is even more dire, where existing publications were much smaller to begin with. In addition to local news, we’ve also lost business-focused publications such as Alberta Venture.

These were the headlines in March 2017 — things have only gotten worse since then. (Mack Male/Flickr)

In the past, local news outlets published more stories about what businesses and other organizations were up to. But as their resources have shrunk, business coverage has tended to fall by the wayside as assignment editors focus on what they consider core subjects: crime, politics, and sports. As a result, there are few if any local beat reporters in our region focused solely on business.

We need a more intentional approach to ensure that local stories of innovators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers are told.

What is Taproot doing to address this gap?

We have been working to build the infrastructure required for impactful local beat reporting since we started.

For example, we already pay more attention to local business than anyone else. We publish dozens of original stories about business every month, and we publish the Business Roundup every Friday morning. News about local business and economic development is also a key part of several other roundups, including the Tech Roundup and the Regional Roundup.

Business is often discussed on our weekly municipal affairs podcast, Speaking Municipally, and in the past we have published an entire podcast focused on local innovation businesses (and we’re interested in reviving that).

We also curate hundreds of business-related events on the Taproot Edmonton Calendar.

We reach thousands of people every day through The Pulse and our other publications. Every time another local publication follows our story with their own version (which happens with increasing frequency), more people learn about the Edmonton region.

But imagine the impact we could have with more resources to boost local news coverage and grow our audience.

What is the Business Membership program?

We want to enlist members of the business community as partners in our effort to enhance local news coverage and broaden our reach. By purchasing a business membership, you help ensure ongoing, smart, comprehensive coverage of the local community and support the infrastructure needed for continuous storytelling.

We offer four membership tiers:

Starter (up to 15 employees): $100/person per year
Small (up to 49 employees): $1,500 per year
Medium (50-199 employees): $3,500 per year
Large (200+ employees): $7,500 per year

Each tier allows you to add your team members to Taproot’s mailing list. That means they’ll be better informed and connected, and it helps us grow our audience.

The financial support and increased readership will help a great deal, but we also want to hear from you about what you’re seeing in the local news ecosystem. We plan to host a quarterly summit for business members to discuss gaps, challenges, and ideas.

What are the benefits of joining the Business Membership program?

As a business member, you will:

Support local journalism and ensure that important local stories are told.
Equip your team with the latest news and events in the Edmonton region.
Enhance your brand’s visibility through recognition in our newsletters and on our website.
Receive advertising credits for use in Taproot Edmonton’s publications.
Optionally participate in quarterly summits to discuss gaps and challenges in the local news ecosystem.

In short, you’ll be making a significant contribution to a more informed and connected Edmonton region.

How can my business sign up as a member?

To join, simply fill out this form with your business name, contact information, and preferred membership tier. Then we’ll follow up to activate your membership.

How will you use my membership fees?

We’re a business too, so we understand you expect value for your investment.

We will invest membership fees primarily in marketing and product development to grow our audience and enhance our offerings. This will in turn broaden our reach and impact, which will help us attract more members, sponsors, and advertisers. That’s the flywheel we’re trying to get spinning to support local journalism in the Edmonton region.

Does this mean Taproot will only write positive things about business?

No, our allegiance remains to the reader, regardless of where our revenue comes from. We will continue to cover all aspects of the business community, including challenges and opportunities for improvement. We adhere to the ethics guidelines published by the Canadian Association of Journalists and believe that transparency is key to building and maintaining trust with our readers, members, and other stakeholders.

What if I don’t have a business?

We invite you to join Taproot Edmonton as an individual member. For just $100 per year, you can support local journalism for the Edmonton region. Learn more and sign up here.

Who can I contact for more information?

For more details or to discuss further opportunities, please reach out to Mack Male and Karen Unland:

Mack Male — mack@taprootpublishing.ca — 780-619-3864
Karen Unland — karen@taprootpublishing.ca — 587-986-5442

Supporting local journalism is crucial for maintaining a vibrant, informed, and connected community. We encourage you to become a business member today to help us boost local storytelling in the Edmonton region.

Thank you for your support!

The Taproot Edmonton Calendar will transform how Edmontonians discover local events

We created the Taproot Edmonton Calendar to tackle a significant challenge within our community: the fragmentation and inaccessibility of local event information.

We have heard repeatedly that people struggle to know where to look for information about upcoming events. And when they do find out about events, it is often too late to participate. That’s a problem because events are a vital part of our community, bringing people together, fostering connections, and supporting local businesses and organizations.

We set out to address this challenge by creating a high-quality, comprehensive, and easy-to-navigate calendar of events taking place across the Edmonton region.

Taproot picks at the Taproot Edmonton Calendar on May 7, 2024.

Is it really that hard to find local events?

Despite the wealth of events taking place in Edmonton, many people do indeed struggle to discover and participate in them.

Last year, we surveyed 350 people in our community and found that 65% of respondents rated the current experience of discovering events to be either poor or fair. Just 9% told us the experience was very good or excellent. Additionally, 53% of respondents said they frequently or always discover interesting events too late.

Here are just a few of the responses we received:

“It’s difficult finding out what is happening in the city. Sometimes I find out the day it starts, and it’s too late to attend.”
“When I am looking for something specific, I can find things, but when trying to browse casually it can be hard to find anything.”
“I usually know about big events and events in my direct community, but often miss out on finding new things.”
“You have to search numerous websites and be very curious and have the time to do both.”
“It often feels like my knowledge of upcoming events is limited by whether I see it on social media or not.”

Our research revealed several other insights, too. Aside from friends and family, the most common way that respondents told us they discover events is through email newsletters. But email newsletters have their own discovery challenges, and the more you subscribe to, the harder it is to keep up. Facebook and other social media platforms were not far behind as a source, but with those tools, you’re at the mercy of the algorithm to surface events that might interest you in a timely fashion.

When asked about existing event calendars and listings, respondents told us they are often incomplete, difficult to navigate, and lack accurate information. Many people also expressed frustration with quality, noting that many sources are “noisy” and filled with irrelevant or uninteresting events.

How does the Taproot Edmonton Calendar fix this?

Our goal is for the Taproot Edmonton Calendar to be that single, curated, and accessible service that helps people discover and participate in local events.

We took an important step toward that goal by launching the calendar in beta in December 2023. We focused on building a solid foundation with a clean, user-friendly design, and some initial tools for categorizing and filtering events. The calendar builds upon our existing web platform to help ensure it is accessible and responsive, which means it works well on any device.

Here are a few of the features we’ve built into the calendar so far:

Rich event details: Every listing includes the essential information you need to know, such as the date, time, location, a brief description, and a link to learn more. Where possible we also include images, links to tickets and livestreams, pricing information, and more.
Categories and tags: We established nine top-level categories to help you find events that match your interests. We’ve also added tags to help you filter by more specific topics.
Related events: Most event listings also include a list of related events, so you can easily discover other events that might interest you.
Taproot picks: Our team curates a list of events we think are particularly interesting or relevant. These Taproot picks are featured prominently on the calendar.
Basic filtering: You can filter events by category, date range (such as “today” or “next week”), city, and whether the event is in-person or online. You can also see all events taking place at a specific location, or organized by a specific organization.
Flag for review: Despite our best efforts, we know that mistakes happen. If you spot an error or have a concern about an event listing, you can flag it for review by our team.
Event submission: We’ve made it easy for event organizers to submit their events to the calendar. All we need is a URL and our system and team do the rest. It’s free, quick, and easy.

We have lots of ideas for how to improve the calendar further. Based on feedback from early adopters, we’re already working on new layout options, search, more robust filtering, and personalization features, among other things.

One of the first improvements we made this year was to integrate the Taproot Edmonton Calendar into The Pulse and our weekly roundups. Now you can find a curated selection of upcoming events in each newsletter, and you can click through to the calendar to see more.

But most of our effort over the past few months has been focused on growing the number of events in the calendar. We now have thousands of events listed, and we’re adding more every day. About 20% to 25% of our listings are for events that will take place at least 30 days from now, to help you plan ahead.

Why Taproot?

We believe Taproot is uniquely well-positioned to tackle this challenge. Our mission to help people understand their community better perfectly aligns with the goal of the calendar. Over the past few years, we have developed sophisticated systems and processes to support the curation of local information, including events. And we have a growing team of talented individuals who are passionate about informing and connecting Edmontonians, including Debbi Serafinchon who is our point person for the calendar.

But perhaps most importantly, this is a challenge that we have experienced ourselves. We know how frustrating it can be to miss out on an event because you didn’t hear about it in time, and we know how hard it can be to find events that match your interests.

Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote last year that “if you’re making something for people, make sure it’s something they actually want.” The best way to do that? “Make something you yourself want,” he wrote.

That’s what we’re doing. We’re building the Taproot Edmonton Calendar because it’s something we want, and we believe it’s something our community wants too (and our research backs that up).

We’re excited by the opportunity to boost our impact as part of the connective tissue that makes the city work. The calendar reflects our ongoing commitment to not only inform the city but to be an active participant in its story, weaving together the many threads that make Edmonton a great place to live, work, and play.

How can I help?

We encourage you to check out the Taproot Edmonton Calendar and start using it to discover local events. If you like what you see, please help us spread the word by sharing the calendar with your friends and family.

We are committed to keeping the calendar free for everyone to use, but there are real costs associated with building and maintaining it. If you’re in a position to support our work, we would love to have you as a Taproot Edmonton member. Your membership helps fund the calendar and our broader mission of supporting local journalism in Edmonton.

If you’re an event organizer, we encourage you to submit your events to the calendar. It’s free, quick, and easy, and it helps ensure that your event reaches a broader audience.

If you’re a business or organization that wants to work with us to support the calendar, we would love to hear from you. We offer a range of sponsorship opportunities that can help you increase your visibility while supporting a vital community resource. Please reach out to us to discuss how we can collaborate to keep Edmonton vibrant and well-informed.

Lastly, we welcome your feedback and ideas for how we can make the calendar even better. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your thoughts.