Last summer, activity at The Narwhal was thrumming.

Having just launched a few months prior, we were experiencing rapid growth in our readership, in the number of pitches and tips we were receiving and interest from new writers, photojournalists and filmmakers.

It was an exhilarating time, made all the more exciting by the fact that during those few months we had reporters in the Arctic tundra to report on climate change, at a caribou maternity pen in northeastern B.C., trekking out of cell-range in the backcountry of Tahltan territory to learn about local Indigenous perspectives on mining and yet another on a boat witnessing changes to Canada’s largest (and most endangered) national park.

In-depth investigative journalism on energy and the environment requires witnessing the effects of policies on the real world, first-hand. But it also involves research — a lot of research.

So, we were spending plenty of time digging into spreadsheets and freedom of information requests during those early months, too: tracing the influence of corporate money from the coal industry on air-quality research at the University of Alberta, tracking the environmental liabilities taxpayers could face from mining in B.C. and surfacing documents that showed how energy giants were getting breaks from fines levied in response to environmental violations.

Our tiny staff (which, at the time, amounted to about three full-time employee equivalents) was tearing at the seams.

Which is why it felt like an outsized commitment of our resources to send two of our team members — legislative reporter Sarah Cox and our managing editor, Carol Linnitt — out to Langley, B.C., to learn about some ugly baby owls.

These ugly babies are at the centre of the world’s only captive breeding program for the critically endangered spotted owl. Working around the clock with the exhaustion and commitment of new parents, young scientists are trying to stem the tide of extinction in those meagre labs and aviaries.

All the while, a lingering, uncomfortable reality is gnawing away at the important gains being made there.

While hundreds of thousands of public dollars are being channeled into the recovery of this once-prolific species, their habitat continues to be destroyed — primarily through logging that has continued in British Columbia for as long as the province has been around.

What would happen if no reporter was there to investigate the connections between those dots?

A million species face extinction

A report released by the UN this week found the natural world is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. Up to a million species are facing extinction worldwide.

The spotted owl’s habitat extends up the western United States and ends in British Columbia, where only an estimated handful of the birds exist in the wild.

A similar fate is shared by the southern mountain caribou whose B.C. habitat extends south past the border, dipping down into Montana. In January 2019, the last caribou herds to share that cross-border habitat were declared extirpated — locally extinct — heralding the end of the last wild caribou in the contiguous United States.

Although these species are localized, the grief at their loss is not.

While creatures like spotted owls and caribou rely on specific habitat for their survival, the contributing causes of that habitat’s loss — like climate change or deforestation — are often non-specific and widely distributed.

These challenges are huge, they’re shared — and they’re inherently global.

As we step further into a future contoured by human activity and sure to be marred by further loss of animal and plant species, the underlying connections between the policy, industries, and environmental impacts that lead to these outcomes are increasingly obfuscated.

In other words: it’s more important than ever to make sure someone is there to connect the dots.

Report locally. Be read (and valued) globally

The Narwhal exists, fundamentally, to be a dot connector.

We work to report on Canadian stories in a way that investigates the connections between cause and effect, that digs deeper to understand root challenges.

Our reporting recognizes that climate change is a global concern, that watersheds cross borders and that species don’t recognize international boundaries. Reporting on the environment, we’re faced with an everyday reminder that the local is global in all sorts of surprising, ecologically reverberating ways.

The more we recognize that interconnectivity, the less we feel the impulse to recognize the boundaries that, in other frames of mind, might feel absolute.

Are we building walls? Or are we recognizing a greater integration with humanity and the creatures with which we share this planet?

It’s the latter feeling that might lead one to donate to refugee aid efforts at the United Nations, to support clean water initiatives in developing nations or to pitch in for that quirky Kickstarter for some filmmaker or boat-builder whose life is seemingly quite distant from our own.

We can understand these efforts as important, as worthy of our attention and our dollars, even if their impacts are being felt by others miles away and even if they’re on the other side of a border (or many).

Just as Canadians are connecting with meaningful endeavours all over the planet, so too are people from around the world connecting to efforts here in Canada.

The Narwhal — we’re delighted to say — is one of these efforts.

How is The Narwhal funded?

Much fuss is being made these days about Canadian non-profit organizations that receive funding from abroad.

We’ve written on that subject before, but we want to explain further what this looks like for The Narwhal, a Canadian non-profit that receives support from Canada and around the world.

For starters, let us state: transparency is one of the pillars of our news organization. In 2017, when we were operating under our old name DeSmog Canada, we instituted a donor transparency policy and were awarded a five-star rating by Transparify, an initiative that promotes financial transparency at NGOs.

In the spring of 2019, The Narwhal became the sole Canadian member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a network of more than 200 non-profit news organizations. We were accepted as a member because we meet the institute’s rigorous standards for editorial independence and financial transparency.

Our editorial independence policy outlines clearly that while we’re happy to receive support from individuals and organizations alike, we maintain all control of editorial coverage. That means no one — no funder, no imaginary billionaire, no government, no company, no potential donor — has any say in how we tell a story, who we interview or the facts we uncover.

Each year, we publish a disclosure of all donors who give more than $5,000. For the financial year that ended Sept. 30, 2018, our total budget was $423,065.

Our largest source of support, as in the previous two years, was the Seattle-based Wilburforce Foundation. Wilburforce was founded by Rose Letwin in 1991 and supports Letwin’s vision of sustaining wild places by investing in science-based solutions. This includes supporting thriving, interconnected ecosystems — ecosystems that often cross borders.

The second largest source of support for The Narwhal in 2018 was reader donations, which totalled $82,432 from 711 readers who gave either monthly or one-time donations. Our readers are our fastest-growing source of revenue and we expect (hope!) revenue from reader donations will double in 2019. (Pssst, join the party.)

Our third-largest source of support was the Oak Foundation, which got its start in the 1980s provinding funds for torture victims, single mothers and vulnerable children in Europe and Africa. Today, the Switzerland-based foundation funds issues of social and environmental concern around the world with special projects on democracy and grassroots organizing in Brazil, India and Zimbabwe.

We also received support from the Victoria-based Salal Foundation, the European Climate Foundation and funding through LUSH Cosmetics’ charity pot program.

All of these individuals and organizations value the work that we do here at The Narwhal.

It’s also important to note that, because of this support, The Narwhal doesn’t advertise diet pills or allow flashing ads for shoes or cars to flood your screen when you visit our site. We get hundreds of requests to publish paid content, written by marketers, every month — but we have never needed to lower the quality of our publication this way, thanks to the people who support our mission of providing high-quality, public interest journalism.

But how does The Narwhal use that money?

The funding we receive from these individuals and organizations directly supports our independent reporting on Canadian issues that matter.

It supports our incredible team of writers, editors, photographers and videographers who cover Canada’s natural environment in a fresh and in-depth way few traditional publications do these days.

One thing that money does not do is line shareholders’ pockets.

Our non-profit model is relatively rare in Canada, but very common south of the border, where well-established investigative journalism outlets such as ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Mother Jones and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting operate as non-profit organizations and receive philanthropic funding.

The Narwhal is a part of this new breed of news outlets that are able to put reader engagement and the public interest ahead of private interests and advertising dollars.

While some people like to cast aspersions about funding crossing borders in the non-profit world, the reality is we live in a global society with global problems and global financial systems.

We can’t help but look at the fact that many of our major corporations, public institutions and, heck, major newspapers rely on non-Canadian funds.

Just like many Canadians contribute to causes abroad, it should come as no surprise that philanthropists interested in slowing global climate change and saving wild places are contributing to work happening in Canada — where some of the world’s last contiguous tracts of wilderness persist.

Right now we need to be telling bigger and more challenging stories that draw deeper and harder connections about our place in this world. Journalists are at the frontlines of that work and yet many newspapers in Canada have eliminated the positions of their environment reporters.

We’re working to fill that void.

We’re working to provide in-depth reporting on some of the most pressing issues of our time.

We’re proud that The Narwhal’s journalism has been recognized across the country, through awards and nominations from the Canadian Association of Journalists, the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards.

And we’re incredibly grateful to our supporters both in Canada and from around the world who help make this work possible.  

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The Narwhal has earned three nods from The Canadian Association of Journalists for its in-depth reporting and photojournalism.

Launched less than a year ago, The Narwhal’s team of investigative journalists dives deep to tell stories about Canada’s natural environment. The Narwhal is ad-free, not-for-profit and has just four full-time employees. More than 1,200 people donated to support The Narwhal’s journalism in the past year.

The Narwhal’s Alberta reporter, Sharon J. Riley — hired thanks to the support of our monthly members – was named as a finalist in the labour reporting category for her feature, Life after coal, showcasing coal miners in Wabamun, Alta., as they grapple with the imminent reality of being out of work.

“It is such a privilege to have the opportunity to interview Albertans from all walks of life,” Riley said. “The day I spent with coal miners last fall will always stick with me. I’m incredibly honoured that they shared their stories with me and that the Canadian Association of Journalists has chosen to recognize this work.”

Riley travelled to Wabamun with Edmonton-based freelance photographer Amber Bracken and spent an hour or more in one-on-one conversations with each coal miner at their union hall, where she heard a wide variety of opinions on the government’s transition programs, as well as on the reasons for the coal power phase-out itself. The story seeks to convey the complexity of the perspectives of resource workers in the fossil fuel industry.

Other finalists in the labour category include CBC News, CBC Radio, Briarpatch and HuffPost Canada.

The Narwhal’s Alberta reporter, Sharon J. Riley, interviewing a farmer about oil and gas wells near his property. Photo: Theresa Tayler / The Narwhal

The Narwhal also earned two nods in the photojournalism category.

Pat Kane’s photo essay on Indigenous-led conservation in the Northwest Territories showcases how Indigenous people are reconnecting with their ancestral homelands. Kane is based in Yellowknife and covers people, life and culture in Canada’s North.

His photo essay shone a spotlight on Indigenous Guardians programs, which are increasingly being recognized as an important conservation tool that can also help advance reconciliation.

“Programs like these help Indigenous communities become stewards of their ancestral lands, as land/water monitors, park rangers and environmental advisors in addition to building capacity for community-led initiatives,” Kane wrote in his photo essay.

“People are getting back to the land as a way to create jobs, bridge the gap between elders and youth and cope with intergenerational trauma wrought by residential schools and other manifestations of colonialism.”

Kane’s work has been featured in Canadian Geographic, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC and more. He is a member of the Timiskaming First Nation in Ontario/Quebec.

Aaron Vincent Elkaim was also named a finalist in the photojournalism category for his photo essay on the Fort McKay First Nation’s fight to protect Moose Lake from rampant industrial development.

“Surrounded on three sides by oilsands operations, the Fort McKay First Nation has benefited tremendously from industrial development — while also experiencing firsthand its environmental consequences,” Elkaim wrote.

“While the nation has historically supported nearby operations, when Prosper Petroleum proposed a 10,000 barrel per day oilsands project near Moose Lake, an area of sacred cultural value for the people of Fort McKay, the community reached a tipping point.”

Elkaim’s work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, National Geographic, TIME, Telegraph Magazine, The Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail.

Other finalists in the photojournalism category include Jonathan Hayward of The Canadian Press and Larry Wong of the Postmedia Network.

As a non-profit magazine, our goal at The Narwhal isn’t to sell advertising or to please corporate bigwigs — it’s to produce award-winning journalism for all Canadians.

In November, The Narwhal won four Canadian Online Publishing Awards, including silvers for best news website and best publication and gold and silver for best photojournalism.

The Narwhal’s 583 monthly members are the lifeblood of our newsroom, providing reliable support for our factual, honest reporting. Not a member yet? Please consider becoming a monthly member of The Narwhal today. Every dollar we receive from readers like you goes straight to funding independent journalism.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The federal government announced three new tax measures to support Canadian journalism on Tuesday, including a refundable tax credit for wages paid to journalists and a plan to allow eligible journalism organizations to issue tax receipts.

The measures open the door for non-profit publications, such as The Narwhal, to start issuing charitable tax receipts in 2020.

To qualify for any of the tax incentives, news outlets will need to be recognized as “qualified Canadian journalism organizations” or QCJOs (possibly the worst acronym in today’s budget).

Who qualifies?

A yet-to-be-determined independent panel will finalize eligibility criteria, but the federal budget (fast forward to page 373) gets a headstart on outlining who’s in and who’s out. First of all, the organization must be Canadian-controlled and “engaged in the “production of original news content.”

Content must be “primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes” and “must not be primarily focused on a particular topic such as industry-specific news, sports, recreation, arts, lifestyle or entertainment.”

The latter point is troublingly vague and already raising questions for outlets that focus on specific topics — here’s hoping the independent panel clarifies that pronto.

The qualification list goes on: organizations must employ two or more journalists in the production of content “who deal at arm’s length with the organization.”

Margaret Mason, a charities lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, said that clause is in place to ensure journalists operate at arm’s length from boards of directors or other control structures.

The budget also states that qualifying organizations must not produce content to “promote the interests, or report on the activities, of an organization, an association or their members,” “for a government, Crown corporation or government agency” or “to promote goods or services.”

Phew.

Refundable labour tax credit

Ottawa is proposing to introduce a 25-per-cent refundable tax credit on wages paid to journalists at qualifying organizations, effective January 1, 2019 (as in, starting three months ago).

The rebate will max out at $13,750 per individual per year and at least initially will only apply to employees (not freelancers). Employees will need to work at least 26 hours per week and spend at least 75 per cent of their time “engaged in the production of news content.”

These criteria seem reasonable, although we hope the independent panel will consider including freelancers in future as they serve a vital role for many publications, including The Narwhal.

Charitable tax receipts

In the long term, this proposed change stands to have the largest impact.

The promise of qualified donee status for Canadian news organizations will allow eligible outlets to issue charitable tax receipts and to receive gifts from Canadian registered charities. This will bring Canada up to speed with the U.S., which is home to more than 200 non-profit news organizations, thanks in part to tax breaks supporting journalism.

Eligibility criteria to become a qualified donee — understandably — becomes more stringent.

“It’s going to have an application process similar to that of a registered charity,” Mason, who sits on the technical issues working group of the charities directorate for the Canada Revenue Agency, told The Narwhal.

Organizations will not be permitted to distribute their profits or allow income to be distributed to owners or directors.

“It has to function as a non-profit, which means individuals can be employees, can get paid, but they’re not like shareholders sitting back and taking dividends and receiving payments out of the company,” Mason said.

Organizations will be required to have a board of directors who are arm’s length from one another, must not be “factually controlled by a person” and “must generally not, in any given year, receive gifts that represent more than 20 per cent of its total revenues, including donations, from any one source.”

This is where the rubber will hit the road for many organizations, which receive a large chunk of funding from a single funder.

“If you’re an existing organization and you’ve had one primary funder, you’d basically have to say that person will be limited no more than 20 per cent,” Mason said. “How do you manage that?”

As The Narwhal continues to diversify its funding sources, especially through monthly memberships, we expect to qualify as an eligible donee when this measure comes into force on January 1, 2020.

Registered journalism organizations will be disclosed on a government website and will also be required to disclose the names of any donors who make donations of more than $5,000. (The Narwhal has been disclosing donors who give more than $5,000 since 2016.)

Tax credit for digital subscriptions

The final tax measure in Tuesday’s budget proposes a temporary 15 per cent tax credit on digital news subscriptions. This will allow individuals to claim up to $500 in costs paid toward eligible digital subscriptions for a maximum tax credit of $75 annually.

Because The Narwhal doesn’t have a paywall, this incentive won’t apply to us — but rest easy, if we qualify as an eligible donee, your contributions to The Narwhal will earn you a charitable tax receipt within a year.

Much is left to be determined by the committee, but at this stage we are optimistic about our eligibility for both the labour tax credit and eligible donee status. Stay tuned!

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A couple of summers ago I was back in Alberta for a funeral when I found myself sitting in the back of a limo with several guys from my hometown in the northwestern corner of the province.

Almost all of them work in oil and gas and some of them knew that I had become an environment reporter — so it was no surprise to me that I was the recipient of a certain amount of side-eye.

The conversation I had next, though, is one I’ve recited more times than I can count since that chance meeting.

It started with one of the guys testing the waters. “You’re not one of those anti-oil people now, are you?” he asked. “No,” I responded, promptly explaining my thinking on the future of oil (which definitely can’t be summed up in a sentence).

I can’t remember the conversation word for word, but I know I talked about extracting Alberta’s fossil fuels in a more responsible way and maximizing the benefits for all Albertans. We found we actually had quite a lot to agree on.

Next, this old friend from high school started telling me how he worried about the amount of water being withdrawn by the fracking industry from local rivers. Some of the local creeks were being sucked dry, he told me. As someone who spends a lot of time out on the land hunting and fishing, that deeply disturbed him. He asked me to come up and look into it sometime.

This man is deeply conservative. He works in the fracking industry. He cares about water. He cares that the media never seems to pay attention to the issues that impact his daily life. He cares that rural residents don’t seem to have much of a voice.

In other words, he’s complicated. Like most of us.

From reading the news and following the antics of politicians, you’d think most Canadians are full of yes-or-no positions on complex natural resource issues.

The debate is commonly split into two “sides” and then each side becomes a caricature of itself. Are you pro oil or anti oil? Are you pro Trans Mountain or anti Trans Mountain? Are you pro fracking or anti fracking? This type of thinking does a disservice to all of us by driving us further away from understanding one another — and locking us into intractable conflicts.

What about the coal miner who is concerned about global warming? Or the Indigenous people who mourn the loss of clean water, but work in the oilsands? Or the people living with the aftermath of the Mount Polley spill who want justice, but insist they aren’t against mining.

It’s all a lot more complicated than the media often likes to portray.

Recent polling by Abacus Data indicates climate change is now the most polarized subject in the country when looking at regional differences. When asked: “How much of a problem is climate change?” just 25 per cent of respondents in the Prairie provinces say it’s a “very big problem” compared to 44 per cent of respondents in Ontario and Quebec — the largest opinion gap of all the issues put before Canadians.

Battling climate change is a wicked problem, to be sure. The number of people and opinions involved, the economic changes required and the social and cultural ramifications are immense. The impacts of a shifting economy will be felt disproportionately by certain parts of the country and the impacts of a warming world will be felt disproportionately by other parts of the country (and the world).

But we’re not going to get anywhere on climate change — or any other important issue, for that matter — if we can’t find some common ground despite regional and ideological differences. And as much as you might want to say “I’m right and you’re an idiot,” that isn’t going to help us much either.

“What if journalists covered controversial issues differently  —  based on how humans actually behave when they are polarized and suspicious?”

American journalist Amanda Ripley delved into journalism’s role in an increasingly polarized world for an article published by the Solutions Journalism Network in June. She came to the realization that there is one group benefitting from the mounting tension: politicians.

“As politicians have become more polarized, we have increasingly allowed ourselves to be used by demagogues on both sides of the aisle, amplifying their insults instead of exposing their motivations,” Ripley writes. “Again and again, we have escalated the conflict and snuffed the complexity out of the conversation.”

Through months of research, Ripley set out to answer one big question: “What if journalists covered controversial issues differently  —  based on how humans actually behave when they are polarized and suspicious?”

Through interviews with conflict mediation experts and psychologists, Ripley was able to distill six key pieces of advice for journalists reporting on polarizing issues.

This is the big one:

“The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter  —  particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words.”

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining Ripley and about 25 other journalists for a conflict mediation training in New York. We collectively grappled with big questions like: how do we tell “complicated” stories that allow for contradictions and expose people to the “other side” without giving oxygen to fringe groups and opinions that aren’t based on facts?

There’s no doubt that part of what drives highly polarized news coverage is that news organizations are often rewarded with clicks for writing sensational, outrage-inducing stories — and clicks drive advertising revenues in the traditional business model. Thankfully, that’s not our business model at The Narwhal

As a non-profit, we are driven to serve the needs of our readers — who support us directly — first and foremost. This opens up the opportunity to prioritize a different set of values: how can our stories contribute to healthier public conversations? How can we portray Canadians in all of their complexity and steer away from the caricatures we so often see in the media? How do we slow down, take a step back and write about the systemic issues in a way that might lead to solutions?

Of course, we want people to read our work — but not at the expense of sowing division.

Let’s be clear: committing to portraying complexity doesn’t mean he said-she said journalism and it doesn’t mean false balance. It does mean resisting the urge to tie stories — and people — up in a bow.

More than anything, complicating the narrative is about slowing down, being less reactive, listening more and asking better questions.

“We are complex beings who wake up every day and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and characterizations that don’t reflect our fullness,” writes Brené Brown in her book Braving the Wilderness.

Canadians of all stripes deserve to see more of their fullness reflected in the media. They deserve stories that truly help to explain the world we’re living in — stories that are thought-provoking and informative in equal measure.

It’s a big challenge, but we’re committed to fostering a more complicated conversation.

We’d love to hear how you’re battling polarization and division in your own life and work. Please send your thoughts and stories to editor@thenarwhal.ca. If you grant us permission, they may be used in future reporting.

If you value journalism that complicates the narrative, please sign up as a member of The Narwhal. We are non-profit, ad-free and made-in-Canada. Join the 1,000+ readers who support The Narwhal!

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Six months after launching, The Narwhal won four Canadian Online Publishing Awards at a ceremony on Wednesday night in Toronto, including silver for best publication.

In the best news website category, The Narwhal also won silver, while Maclean’s won gold. The Narwhal’s website and brand was developed by Ictinus in Ottawa. HuffPost took the gold in the best publication category.

In the photo essay category, The Narwhal won gold for Garth Lenz’s work documenting B.C.’s mining boom along the Alaska border — which was made possible by donations from more than 100 readers.

The Narwhal also picked up silver in the photo essay category for an in-depth look at Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories by deputy editor Jimmy Thomson and photographer Matt Jacques.

Congratulations to all of the winners, but we’re saving the biggest applause of all for our readers and members who make our independent journalism possible. Thank you for reading, sharing and donating to support independent, investigative journalism.

Now more than ever we believe in the power of stories to inspire, educate and motivate us.

As traditional business models for news falter, The Narwhal is pioneering a non-profit model that puts the public interest first and relies on reader support. The Narwhal is an ad-free online news magazine with just three full-time staff.

More than 1,000 readers have donated to support The Narwhal’s independent journalism and 440 readers have become monthly members.

If you support independent, ad-free journalism please become a founding member of The Narwhal today.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government assumed office in November 2015, it came with promises of overturning Stephen Harper’s regressive, nine-year media regime which prevented many of the nation’s scientists from speaking with the press, often regarding hot-button environmental issues like climate change.

Some of the hardest hit by Harper’s policies had seemingly been Parks Canada employees.

In 2012, staff received letters warning they were not allowed to criticize the agency or the federal government amid job cuts. In 2014, a new policy forbade Parks Canada employees from speaking to the media without approval and required all requests for information to go through the national office.

And in the months leading up to the federal election, Parks Canada employees were even muzzled on operational issues, such as bear deaths, rescue operations or wolves in the townsite of Banff National Park.

On November 6, 2015, two days after the Trudeau government took office, Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science and economic development, openly stated that “government scientists and experts will be able to speak freely about their work to the media and the public.”

But nearly three years later, Parks Canada staff and scientists report significant freedom of information issues remain under Trudeau’s government.

Journalists say they continue to experience absurdly long wait times for media requests; are required to e-mail interview questions ahead of time for prior approval; and are frequently denied access to accompany employees on field operations. Many of these factors have ultimately led to media outlets killing stories about Parks Canada due to their non-compliance.

After Harper, Parks Canada staff thought things could only get better. But “if anything, it’s gotten worse,” one Banff National Park employee told me.

The Narwhal spoke with 10 environmental journalists across Canada for this investigation. Every journalist reported facing significant challenges with Parks Canada since Trudeau’s Liberal government came to power.

Requests for field access denied

Last summer, I arrived at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity to work on a feature regarding grizzly bear deaths on the railroad, and the efforts of Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway to address the issue. This was meant to be a follow-up to some reporting I had done back in fall 2014, under the Harper government, when Banff and Lake Louise-Yoho-Kootenay media relations staff facilitated the opportunity to shadow scientists, engineers and human-wildlife conflict specialists on how they were addressing issues with bears in the parks. But this time, my requests for field access were denied.

First, media relations responded that staff were too busy. When I pressed further, I received another reason. “Thanks for your interest in bear/human management in Banff National Park. Unfortunately, at this time we are unable to accommodate shadowing of our resource conservation staff for the safety of wildlife, staff and media,” wrote Christie Thomson, the public relations officer for Banff Field Unit, after several e-mails in which I explained the work I had done prior and what I was looking for.

This was in marked contrast to my previous experience. Something felt off.

As a science and environmental journalist, I routinely report on environmental issues in the United States and Canada. This requires dealing with several federal agencies on both sides of the border, including the U.S. Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency. In Canada, I report on the work done by Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Department of Ocean and Fisheries. It’s fair to say that Parks Canada has been far and above the most difficult agency to access.

After my own troubling experience, I began asking around the town of Banff where I heard the same thing again and again from local reporters. It quickly became clear that this was now the status-quo for the mountain parks of Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay.

Colette Derworiz, who spent four years working as the environment reporter for the Calgary Herald, departed the paper a year into Trudeau’s administration, but recalled still facing issues as of November 2016.

“[Press access] has improved on some fronts, but there are still challenges with speaking to Parks Canada scientists in a timely manner,” Derworiz said.

“I can’t do my job. It’s really frustrating.”

“Journalists mostly work on daily deadlines and it’s never helpful to wait several weeks to speak with someone who knows the subject area. Parks Canada scientists are often experts in their field, and they have to wait weeks to speak. If a new study is published, the news value is instantly diminished.”

A reporter who asked to remain anonymous cited repeated issues since the Trudeau government moved in.

“Interviews are highly scripted and can take a lot of time to organize,” she said. “We often have to go to sources outside of Parks Canada, so we don’t actually have the full picture.”

“I can’t do my job,” she said. “It’s really frustrating.”

Lack of access a ‘terrible disservice to the public’

After my field access requests were turned down by Parks Canada, I was directed to speak with Colleen Cassady St. Clair, an unaffiliated University of Alberta researcher who had worked with Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway on their five-year joint action plan to investigate why grizzly bears were dying on the rail corridor between Banff and Yoho. St. Clair was one of three representatives at a press conference in January 2017, accompanied by Rick Kubian, acting superintendent of Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay, and Joe Van Humbeck of CP Rail.

Since then, St. Clair had been doing the majority of media relations on behalf of muzzled Parks Canada scientists, picking up the slack. When I met her on a June day in Tunnel Mountain Campground, our visit was sandwiched between two press trips with CBC.

“We have so many great stories to tell — hopeful and inspiring stories…It’s tragic.”

“No one can speak more knowledgeably and effectively about many of the things that matter to Canadians than their own publicly funded scientists,” she said. “That’s especially true of the Parks Canada agency ecologists, who have been tremendously tightly managed, even sanctioned for speaking out. Muzzling those voices and replacing them with generic statements by upper managers is a terrible disservice to the public, as well as science. Sometimes, it also causes lasting harm to the very resources those scientists were hired to steward and protect.”

And, she added, Parks Canada scientists and media relations staff in the field units are frustrated, too.

A Parks Canada biologist who spoke to The Narwhal on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals said he’s “painfully aware” of Parks Canada’s restrictive treatment of media, which he called “embarrassing.”

“There is often a pretty big disconnect between the managers I deal with and what the minister actually wants to happen,” he said. If scientists speak out of turn, he says it could be a “career-limiting move” and they’d be stripped of their ability to speak with the media in the future.

“We have so many great stories to tell — hopeful and inspiring stories — but the risk management prevents us from sharing many of them. It’s tragic.”

Eventually, I began to wonder, was this issue only happening with Parks Canada staff working in the mountain parks? Or was it bigger than that?

“Banff was always a highly political park,” former Banff superintendent Kevin Van Tighem told The Narwhal. “Anything that happens in Banff can make national headlines.”

It stands to reason, then, that staff might be under tighter control here. But as I would uncover in the months to come, the issue was hardly limited to the Rocky Mountains.

‘This shouldn’t happen in a democracy’

Ed Struzik is a Canadian environmental journalist who has been writing on the Arctic for more than three decades. He’s the author of Future Arctic: Field Notes from a World on the Edge and the 2017 non-fiction book Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future.

While flipping through an advanced copy of Firestorm last year, one paragraph regarding Struzik’s experience in Yukon’s Kluane National Park stuck out to me:

“We didn’t stop to see how the spruce bark beetle had ravaged the park’s forests because the Parks Canada fire and vegetation specialist wasn’t allowed to take us on a tour. (I had made the request six weeks beforehand.) The muzzling of Canadian scientists that occurred in the years when Stephen Harper’s climate-change denying Conservative government was in power still lingered in the first year of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration.”

And into his third, apparently.

I called up Struzik to talk more about his experience with Parks Canada.

“In spite of what the Trudeau government has said about liberating scientists from the gag orders they had under the Harper administration, Parks Canada, in particular, seems to be stuck in that mentality. It’s not entirely clear to me why, but it’s absolutely clear to me that Parks Canada scientists are not free to speak to the press.”

His story about Kluane, he noted, was not particularly incendiary (the same thing I had said about my human-bear conflict reporting) and yet he was told he would not be able to go out into the field, though could get an office interview.

“I’ve had this problem in other cases — I was working on a story for Arctic Deeply a couple years ago right at the beginning of the Trudeau government about the future of tourism in the Arctic. I wanted to go to one of the western Arctic parks — I’ve already been to all of them and written many stories with the cooperation of Parks Canada prior to Harper — and could not get them to talk at all about what they were doing for tourism. They did absolutely nothing to encourage me on that story.”

Eventually, even with funding secured, Struzik gave up and didn’t write the story.

“It’s absolutely clear to me that Parks Canada scientists are not free to speak to the press.”

“This business of writing down all the questions beforehand — they treat every enquiry from a journalist as though it’s a bomb that’s about to blow up.”

Though Struzik noted he did get some cooperation from the mountain parks on the book, where he had previously built up relationships, he thinks it’s still a nationwide issue.

“I kind of stay away from Parks Canada now. It’s a crazy mentality. This just shouldn’t happen in a democracy.”

Judith Lavoie told me she had a similar chilling experience when working on a feature story on Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories for The Narwhal.

During the Harper years, Lavoie worked on the environment beat at Victoria’s local newspaper, the Times Colonist, frequently reporting on Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve.

“I dealt with Parks Canada on a routine basis. They were always great. Every time you phoned, they usually persuaded you to come out on a trip. I never anticipated this,” Lavoie said.

Lavoie hadn’t covered Parks Canada since she semi-retired, up until The Narwhal sent her on assignment to cover diminishing water flows and pollution in the Peace-Athabasca Delta this June. UNESCO is considering adding Wood Buffalo to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger because of threats such as oilsands development and hydro dams.

The experience left her flabbergasted.

Lavoie had intended to hitch a ride in an empty airplane seat with Sierra Club B.C., which was visiting the area. (The entirety of Lavoie’s trip was paid for by The Narwhal.) But when Parks Canada found out that Sierra Club would be bringing a journalist with them to report independently on Wood Buffalo, their tone swiftly changed.

“We can’t speak to you as a journalist without knowing the topic and without going through our process. We want to be open and helpful but we cannot take shortcuts with that process. We can talk further when you arrive in town,” wrote Parks Canada Southwest NWT Field Unit media relations officer Tim Gauthier in an e-mail on May 31. The trip was still five days out — ample time to receive such unnecessary press permissions from Ottawa. Gauthier indicated this would be impossible.

When Lavoie arrived with Sierra Club at the Parks Canada office in Fort Smith on June 1 she was immediately separated from the Sierra Club representative and taken to a separate room. “Divide and conquer,” she surmised. “They sat us down and said, ‘You know, we’re not going to be able to talk to you.’ ” The park’s resource conservation manager, Stuart Macmillan, she recalled, stood there looking sheepish.

Over the next two days in Fort Smith, while Lavoie visited sites with Parks Canada and Sierra Club, Parks Canada staff stayed entirely silent. After the trip, she was told if she e-mailed her questions — a subversive tactic for the government to be able to review questions from the media before responding — she could get a response that way. The final results were, expectedly, generic.

Eventually Lavoie was able to cobble the story together using about 10 sources besides Parks Canada. But the experience left her angry. “Parks Canada, which is supposed to be in control, is not giving us any useful information at all.”

Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Who is responsible for muzzling Parks Canada?

So where is this Parks Canada gag order coming from?

Kevin Van Tighem, who retired as Banff National Park superintendent in 2011, thinks it ties closely to a bureaucratic problem within the agency. (It’s worth noting that Van Tighem also writes books and articles about nature, and the parks. He says he has had similar challenges with lengthy wait times as a writer).

“The philosophy during most of my years at Parks Canada was that media relations was about managing the relationship and facilitating communication. Now it’s moved very much into gatekeeping and risk management and that persists to this day.”

This, he says, is bizarre and controlling given Parks Canada’s strong mandate for public education. “There’s a million stories to be told and they’re sitting on them. They’re surrounding them with firewalls instead of enabling people to be informed by it.”

“You’re not respecting the media for what the media is.”

At the start of July 2018, I  reached out to Parks Canada’s national communications office. I wrote:  

“It’s become apparent that this is not a hearsay problem, and that journalists around the country are struggling to adequately report on Parks Canada issues (….)

I think it would be appropriate that Parks Canada issue a response to these concerns, and the public’s right to know about PC operations. If your policy does indeed state that ‘Parks Canada is wholeheartedly committed to working proactively with the media to promote public awareness and understanding of government policies, programs, services and initiatives’ then how are you going to improve upon access and relations with Canadian media given the number of complaints from working journalists?”

After nearly a month, a Parks Canada spokesperson responded:

Parks Canada is committed to providing Canadians with timely, accurate and clear information. The Agency adheres to the principles of open and transparent communications of the Government of Canada. As it relates to media relations, Parks Canada follows the Government of Canada’s Directive on the Management of Communications to ensure that communications activities are effectively managed, well coordinated and responsive to the diverse information needs of the public.

Parks Canada researchers and experts are available to share their research and speak freely about their work with the media and the public. The Agency regularly communicates the work of Parks Canada researchers through media interviews as well as speaking engagements and other activities, including open houses and public forums as well as through the Parks Canada website or other digital channels. Parks Canada also delivers large media events and announcements, some of these relating to science and conservation. Due to the high volume of media requests following these events and announcements, written responses are often provided to media to enable more rapid handling of requests for general information and to help media outlets meet their publication deadlines.

As an Agency that directly serves the Canadian public, Parks Canada actively seeks opportunities to share information and engage Canadians on the research happening at national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas. Parks Canada promotes scientific research and conservation through proactive media outreach, on the Agency website, over social media, and on other digital channels, such as the Agency’s Youtube presence. Parks Canada’s commitment to open and transparent communications is evidenced by the high rate of responses to media requests in the chart below, which includes details on the number of media interviews provided on subjects related to science and conservation. Information for all of Parks Canada and for the Mountain National Parks are provided below.

Suffice to say, this was not the response I had hoped for, but one I was definitely expecting.

Attached were the numbers of press enquiries and responses received nationally and by the mountain parks division in 2017. Parks Canada received 482 media enquiries on science and conservation last year, 78 per cent of which resulted in interviews. However, such raw numbers don’t reveal the timeliness or quality of information, whether it was delivered in person, via telephone or e-mail, nor the number of journalists, who like Struzik, Lavoie and I, were requesting field access and offered e-mail or phone interviews instead.

“I’m aghast. All of this is very disquieting.”

For example, while wrapping up this story, The Narwhal contacted Parks Canada media relations staff for a separate story, asking for usage of stock photos from the Banff bison reintroduction. One week later, we received a nine-question “proposal form” to fill out. Most notably, Parks Canada asked how this project would benefit Parks Canada and the bison reintroduction program. (It is not the media’s job to benefit the government nor the topics we cover.)

Canadian restrictions worse than those under Trump administration in many cases

Finally, I spoke with Nikita Lopoukhine, who served as director general of national parks from 2000 to 2005 and continues to be involved with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. He also serves on Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s national advisory panel on Canada’s Conservation 2020 initiative.

“It’s really fascinating to hear this,” he told me after I filled him in on my experience and those of others. “I’ve had some contact with [Environment and Climate Change Canada] Minister Catherine McKenna who adamantly says there is no concern about scientists talking about science. I’m aghast. All of this is very disquieting.”

Though Parks Canada scientists aren’t under a topic-wide gag order, problems with response times, reviewing of questions and field access pose a long-term and more insidious problem.

In a June 2017 poll by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which was sent to more than 15,000 federal scientists, 53 per cent of respondents disagreed that they were able to speak freely and without constraints to the media about their work. How many of those scientists, I wondered, work at Parks Canada?

“Canadians are generally complacent,” said author Ed Struzik. “We haven’t cared that the government hasn’t responded to the media as they have in the past. But look south of the border, at the Trump Administration, and you can see where that leads you. You can end up having an autocratic regime because they know they can get away with it.”

Indeed, many Canadians are quick to criticize press freedoms in the United States with little inward reflection. I serve on the board of directors of the U.S.-based Society of Environmental Journalists, including their Freedom of Information task force. Over the past year, we’ve written several letters to the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency condemning new restrictions on the press in the United States. But, it occurred to me as I contemplated the Canadian side, that many of these restrictions were exactly how Parks Canada has been operating for years under Trudeau and Harper, unchallenged.

“You can end up having an autocratic regime because they know they can get away with it.”

“There’s this assumption that the Trudeau government have changed things, and no doubt they have, but we still have this hangover from a bureaucracy that got its start with the Harper administration,” said Struzik. “Don’t think big. Don’t get into the newspapers. Don’t promote your agenda. Just maintain the status quo and we’ll get along. That’s not what we need to build a country.”

— With files from Emma Gilchrist

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As a new year gets underway, we’ve been taking some time to reflect.

2017 was a breakthrough year for DeSmog Canada’s independent journalism and we really mean it when we say: none of this could have happened without our dedicated readers.

In the past year, our people-powered journalism reached four million people and our reporting informed coverage by the New York Times, Globe and Mail and CBC.

Thank you for reading, sharing and donating what you can to make this work possible.

The stories we cover don’t always have happy endings. But as journalists, we have a unique opportunity to shine a spotlight on abuses of power and increase public scrutiny of important issues. This can, and often does, change history.

As we look at the year ahead, we are incredibly excited to continue to expand and improve the way we tell energy and environment stories in Canada. These are our five key commitments to you in 2018.

1) We’ll strive to re-ignite a shared sense of common good.

Environmental debates around the world have become marked by polarization and dogma. At DeSmog Canada, we are committed to telling energy and environment stories in a way that breaks down walls and brings Canadians together to solve the biggest challenges of our time. This is a tall order, but given Canadians’ overwhelming love of nature, we are optimistic about the potential to advance this conversation in 2018.

2) We’ll showcase solutions.

Being environmental journalists at this point in history means telling a lot of bad news stories. But there are plenty of good news stories out there as well. And we are committed to telling these stories as much as possible to spark hope and light the way for others.

3) We’ll give a voice to the underdog.

DeSmog Canada exists to tell stories that aren’t being told anywhere else. Part of our mission is to give voice to people and communities who often don’t have a voice, from indigenous communities to landowners to workers. Look for us to put the stories of real people at the centre of our reporting even more in 2018.

4) We’ll hold the powerful accountable.

At its heart, good journalism challenges the powerful and stands up for ordinary people. That takes grit. And it takes caring deeply about the public interest. We promise to keep this principle at the core of all of our work.

5) We’ll be bold.

Our goal is to be bold not just in our reporting, but also in our vision for building a new kind of media in Canada. At the beginning of 2017 we counted just 22 monthly members. Now we can count more than 150 monthly members, who together contribute nearly $2,000 a month. Our goal is to reach 400 members by the end of 2018.

Monthly members provide the stability we need to dig deep into stories that aren’t being told anywhere else. If you support our vision for independent journalism in Canada, please become a member today.

Thanks again for all you do to make non-profit media a reality every day. We look forward to serving you in 2018.

P.S. If you haven’t done so yet, make sure to sign up for our (pretty awesome) free weekly newsletter.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

“Some newspapers dig. Some newspapers are a constant embarrassment to the powerful. Some manage to be entertaining, provocative, and fair at the same time. There are a few such newspapers in Canada.”

That statement probably doesn’t come as a shock to many Canadians in 2017.

What may come as a surprise is that the quote is actually drawn from a report published in 1970 by the Special Senate Committee on Mass Media. If Canada’s media landscape was stifled by mediocrity nearly 50 years, it’s positively suffocated by it now.

Canada has one of the most monopolized media landscape in the world. And since 2008, the Canadian Media Guild reports that more than 10,000 media jobs have been lost. There are now four public relations people for every journalist in this country — a figured that has doubled since 1990.

Sparks of Hope From Around the World

Yet, while there’s much doom and gloom about the state of the news industry worldwide, there are reasons to be hopeful as well.

In the UK, The Guardian just reported a 15 per cent boost in digital revenues, with more people paying for its journalism than ever before. That includes 230,000 paying “members,” who choose to pay $6.99 a month to support quality, independent journalism.

In The Netherlands, De Correspondent raised $1.7 million in 30 days to launch in 2013 and boasts 56,000 members who pay 60 euros a year in a country of just 17 million people. Its mission is to be the “antidote to the daily news grind.”

“We have a different perspective on what is newsworthy. It’s not sensational but foundational. To uncover the foundation, though, you have to work with the people who read you and who are members,” publisher Ernst-Jan Pfauth said in an interview with NiemanLab.

De Correspondent has its eyes on a U.S. expansion next. There, it’ll join the digital frontier with the likes of ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest — and which has won several Pulitzer Prizes in the process.

Meantime, here in Canada a handful of plucky start-ups concentrated in British Columbia are at the forefront of the new digital frontier. DeSmog Canada is one of them.

Imagine if there was an ‘Environment’ section of your newspaper — we’re that, but fully digital. Our goal is to make complex energy and environment news accessible to Canadians and to shine a light on critical, under-reported stories.

Part Newsroom, Part Non-Profit, Part Tech Start-Up

Like De Correspondent, we strive to go beyond the headlines and help people make sense of the world by looking at the foundational issues.

For instance, instead of reporting on the twists and turn of every pipeline controversy, we look closely at the environmental assessment process and how reforms would decrease the dysfunction. While reporting on a controversial hydro dam in B.C., we zoomed out and spoke to experts in Labrador and Newfoundland about their experience with a similar project. Long after most media have moved on from B.C.’s Mount Polley mine disaster, one of the largest environmental disasters in Canadian history, we continue to shine a spotlight on the need for reform of B.C.’s mining regulations.

The success of DeSmog Canada relies upon a willingness to take risks and experiment. We think of our culture as part newsroom, part non-profit and part tech start-up.

While completing my journalism degree at Mount Royal University, I spent a year working at a newspaper in England. I was inspired by the fearless journalism I saw there by the likes of The Independent, The Guardian, the BBC and Which? Magazine. If an energy company was found to be overcharging customers, the media would go on a full-out campaign to right the wrong. They didn’t feign objectivity where the public interest was concerned.

Back in Canada, I find all too often that journalists lean on a sanguine notion of “objectivity” to excuse a blasé approach to matters of the public interest.

At DeSmog Canada, like De Correspondent, we reject conventional journalism’s ideal of objectivity. We serve the public interest fiercely and put the needs of our readers at the forefront of our newsgathering decisions. Our journalists are fair and independent and operate according to the highest journalistic standards, yet they’re also explicitly subjective.

Can Reader-Funded #News Save Canadian #Journalism? Via @reporteremma & @DeSmogCanada https://t.co/lzmdYRuJZa #cdnpoli #media @TheTyee @jsource pic.twitter.com/IL7F23fKsG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 10, 2017

Proving the Non-Profit Journalism Model In Canada

While there are plenty of people who say non-profit media can’t be successful in Canada, we work every day to prove them wrong.

In 2015, we were named as a finalist for a Canadian Online Publishing Award for “Best News Coverage” alongside the CBC, Globe and Mail and Maclean’s Magazine. And this year Canada’s Clean50 called DeSmog Canada a “powerhouse investigative environmental journalism outlet” while naming me as an “Emerging Leader.”

Our reporting has sparked coverage by virtually every major news outlet in the country, including the New York Times, the Globe and Mail and CBC and has been cited several times in the House of Commons and the B.C. Legislature.

In 2015, we uncovered a secrecy scandal regarding Canada’s oil spill response plans, which created so much public outrage it resulted in regulatory changes. In British Columbia, we’ve spent years doggedly covering the issue of the Site C hydroelectric dam, because it skipped a review of costs and demand by the B.C. Utilities Commission. We tracked down high-profile critics of the project, like the former CEO of BC Hydro, and spent time on the ground with those facing its biggest impacts.

We’ve launched multi-year Freedom of Information research projects to track fossil fuel funding of university research and political interference by energy companies. We’ve also acted as a watchdog for Canada’s track record on climate change and covered environmental appeals cases in remote communities — all at a time that few journalists have been willing or, more importantly, able to track such issues.

Filling Canada’s Void for Public Interest Journalism

For all of this, we are sometimes called “advocacy journalism” or worse, but looking around the world, it’s clear we are filling a void in Canada for hard-hitting public interest journalism.

Many people wonder how we fund our operation. The answer is three-fold:
1) We’re incredibly lean with just two full-time staff and a handful of key freelancers.
2) We’ve been lucky to receive core support from two foundations concerned about the environment and climate change. (We disclose our donors on our website in line with the Institute for Non-Profit News’ policy on donor transparency.)
3) Small donations from readers comprise an increasing portion of our revenue.

This year, our readers really stepped up and we doubled the amount of revenue we received in small individual donations. Our readers have funded photo essays of remote resource projects, independent polling and, increasingly, they are becoming members and giving $10 or $20 a month to support independent journalism. Our readers make us who we are.

As we look to the future, we see this ad-free, member-funded model as the way to sustain in-depth journalism.

Membership Allows Readers To Become Part of Community

While non-profit news outlets have proliferated south of the border, the same trend hasn’t been repeated in Canada.

Why not? It’s largely a matter of charitable law. In the U.S., journalism qualifies as a charitable activity, but in Canada it currently does not. That makes earning foundation grants harder and further points to reader-funded models being the way of the future in Canada.

Times of crisis represent an opportunity for quality journalism. This year, U.S. news outlets have benefitted from what’s being called the “Trump bump.”

In January, ProPublica received $104,000 in donations, up from just $4,500 in October. Meanwhile, Slate generated 1,000 new members per week, passing the 30,000-member mark — a 66 per cent increase from pre-election.

“We believe people don’t become members for ‘access to the content,’ ” De Correspondent’s Pfauth told NiemanLab. “They become members because they want to be part of a movement/community.”

That sentiment bodes well for specialized websites like DeSmog Canada, which give citizens a meaningful way to make a difference and be part of a community.

How to Join DeSmog Canada

While traditional outlets are blurring the line between editorial and advertising more each day, we’ve turned away from an ad-driven model and toward focusing on the reader. Because we don’t have to chase clicks, we can focus on in-depth, sense-making journalism that helps readers be better citizens.

At a time that beat reporters are on the decline, our team works the environment beat with an in-depth knowledge and commitment to investigative reporting not found in most traditional publications.

Times like these require new efforts to build trust and community in an increasingly unstable, fractured world. And the role media plays in shaping and informing public conversations has never been more apparent.

We built DeSmog Canada to jump into the fray, to re-engage Canadians in an increasingly noisy, urgent conversation about energy and the environment. What we’ve learned is that not only do Canadians want and deserve better news — it’s something they’re willing to step in and support.

We are currently on a membership drive. Please become a member today.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Why has B.C. become home to Canada’s most vibrant news ecosystem? Credit the wellspring of creativity here — the province’s beauty and potential has long attracted change-makers.

Hidden amid gloomy tales of the decline of Canada’s news media is a success story in southwestern British Columbia.

Here, a cluster of digital outlets have flowered by paying for top-notch investigative and solutions-focused reporting. They are forging new business models and training the next wave of journalists.

Taken together, they form a news media ecosystem in which surviving means competing yet also collaborating. Yes, each vies to break stories and attract money. But they also sometimes republish each other’s pieces, pool resources or team up.

“Coopetition” is one way to describe this ecology. Some day we may look back and see this was the beginning of Canada’s media landscape shifting from being dominated by a few giants – CBC, Postmedia, Bell – to one dotted with hundreds of smaller, diverse outlets more responsive to their audiences.

I founded one of these “coopetitors,” The Tyee, and I still advise and occasionally write for the publication. As an adjunct professor in communication at Simon Fraser University, and in journalism at the University of British Columbia, I’m also co-organizing Vancouver Media Democracy Day 2017.

Consider this a memo, then, to the federal government as it ponders whether to cut that big cheque to save Postmedia or pour $200 million more into the CBC. As someone with a long history in independent media, read this first!

The ‘Coopetitors’

Who are B.C.’s coopetition creatures?

They include: The Tyee, founded in 2003 in Vancouver; Megaphone Magazine, Vancouver’s street paper and website founded in 2006; DeSmog Canada, founded in 2013 in Victoria; Discourse Media, founded in 2013 in Vancouver; Hakai Magazine founded in 2015 in Victoria; the National Observer, founded in 2015 as an arm of the 2006 Vancouver Observer; The Global Reporting Centre, founded in 2016, a non-profit growing out of the International Reporting Program at UBC’s Graduate School of Journalism.

It’s a remarkable list, representing millions of dollars in journalism budgets, a combined staff larger than the Vancouver Sun-Province reporter pool, numerous major awards, a steady stream of high-impact work and millions of page views per month.

Some of the big ground broken in this little region:

The Tyee launched the 100-Mile Diet, helping spark the local food movement, and has reported early and continuously on fixing the housing affordability crisis. With no paywall, it’s supported almost entirely by readers, with some philanthropic funding plus investment from a labour-tied fund.

The National Observer’s energy sector investigations have rocked Ottawa and forced resignations. It mixes revenues from paywall subscribers, philanthropies and other sources.

A Good News Story About the News in British Columbia https://t.co/ytgFIwsIdD #bcpoli #bcmedia #journalism #mediademocracydays

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 9, 2017

Crowd-sourcing Storytellers

Discourse Media, which specializes in deeply reported projects it terms “collaborative,” is now offering its readers a chance to co-own the company as it aggressively pursues growth.

The non-profit Global Reporting Centre, with its mission to innovate how global journalism is practised and to cover neglected issues worldwide, has crowd-sourced storytellers to document the rise of xenophobia.

Hakai Magazine, backed by the Tula Foundation and tied to the Hakai Institute, covers coastal science, ecology and communities. It pays top rates for stories from around the world, and has an in-house team producing frequently viral videos.

A single video interview about Site C Dam published by non-profit DeSmog Canada drew 1.6 million views. It mixes funding from readers and philanthropies.

While these organizations aren’t muscling aside B.C. megafauna like the CBC, the Globe and Mail, Postmedia and Huffington Post, they serve as “tip sheets” for those newsrooms, which often pick up their stories and run their own versions. In this way, the smaller fry contribute to the public conversation by means rarely highlighted.

Collaboration With Traditional Media

Increasingly, too, B.C.’s small independents are collaborating directly with traditional media.

The Tyee has partnered with the CBC on a series about Indigenous education best practices and affordable homes.

The National Observer is producing a major project with the Toronto Star, Global News and others — tracking oil industry influence in partnership with investigative journalism students from across the country.

Discourse Media helped research a Maclean’s magazine feature on Indigenous over-representation in prisons.

DeSmog Canada worked closely with the Aboriginal People’s Television Network Investigates on a Site C piece, and Megaphone is joining with the CBC on a series about preventing overdoses.

What is emerging here is a good news story about the future of news, one worth paying attention to across Canada and beyond.

Less Clickbait Means a Healthier Democracy

As the collapse of advertising revenues is threatening to kill Canada’s major newspaper chains, B.C.’s indies are far less dependent on ad dollars for their survival. And at a moment when trivial click-bait is said to rule, experiments in B.C. are instead pumping out in-depth, public interest journalism.

The net result is a more fully informed citizenry and a healthier democracy.

Why did B.C. become home to Canada’s most vibrant news ecosystem? Credit the wellspring of creativity here — the province’s beauty and potential has long attracted change-makers.

Credit, as well, a backlash empowered by digital tech. For decades, corporations headquartered in central Canada have owned this province’s news giants and their content reflected it. The pent-up appetite for home-grown media spawned upstarts rooted in B.C. culture and interests.

That can irritate some outsiders. Alberta Oil magazine fretted that the so-called “Vancouver School” of journalism was too effectively making the case against pipelines connecting the oilsands to B.C.’s coast.

But feds pondering how to “save” journalism in Canada ignore at their peril the sentiment that motivates thousands of people to not just read but financially support “Vancouver School” media. Their readers are demonstrating real loyalty to media rooted in their place and their values. They distrust big media run from boardrooms half a continent away.

So don’t confuse saving journalism with rescuing dinosaurs that thrived during a different era, when survival sometimes meant ruthlessly assembling a national chain of media outlets sharing the same content and advertisers regardless of local sensibilities.

Those days are gone.

Image: Vancouver. Photo: Omer Wazir via Flickr

Interested in better understanding B.C.’s news ecosystem? Attend Vancouver Media Democracy Day on Nov. 18 at the public library’s central branch downtown.

Most of the entities mentioned above, and more, will showcase their work. There will also be workshops, roundtables, networking and something rarely found these days at news media get togethers — reasons for optimism.

David Beers, Adjunct professor, School of Communications, Simon Fraser University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s media industries are in a tailspin. As many as 10,000 journalists have lost their jobs in the past decade and newsroom closures or contractions are an almost weekly fact of life across the country. In a new book, No News Is Bad News: Canada’s Media Collapse — And What Comes Next, veteran reporter Ian Gill chronicles a decline that is bad for democracy. Then again, the collapse of mainstream media is making room for new, mostly online journalism to flourish. Gill generously counts DeSmog Canada among the bright lights of Canada’s new journalism. Here are a few telling excerpts from his book:

Journalists aren’t easy to love. They are less trusted than police, schools, banks, and the justice system, and only marginally more trusted than federal Parliament and corporations. But what journalists do is important, and it isn’t just the business of rooting out liars, holding policy-makers accountable, probing the public accounts, championing the underdogs, or hounding the overlords. It is all of those things, but it is more importantly the practice of using stories as a way to help people make sense of their world…

Yes, debates happen in this country’s legislatures, our rules of conduct are enforced in our courts, and our commerce is carried out, sometimes in public, often in private, and most of the system works for most of the people most of the time. But not always, and not for everybody — which is why our public square needs to include spaces where we can challenge the status quo, encourage dissent, listen at the margins, and champion new ideas, new ways of doing things, new ways of seeing the world, new ways of understanding our place in it. We need new places to share those stories in multiple and evolving ways.

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(What upstart on-line media) do much better than mainstream media … is irritate the hell out of people, especially those in government and industry who are bent on maintaining the status quo. Out west, a particular target of the Observer and the Tyee is the oil and gas sector. So concerned is this industry about the influence of these relatively small players that Alberta Oil magazine ran a lengthy feature in early 2016 in which it characterized their work as constituting a “Vancouver School” of activist journalism that industry ignores at its peril.

 “Together with lesser known and more dubious websites like the Commonsense Canadian and West Coast Native News, the Observer and the Tyee are part of an emerging Vancouver School of media that is challenging traditional journalism and finding a ready audience among eco-activist readers. More importantly, their influence is starting to spread beyond the borders of the Lower Mainland, and rallying Canadians against energy infrastructure projects outside B.C., such as the $15.7-billion Energy East pipeline.” The notion of a “Vancouver School” of journalism disrupting Canada’s polluters-in-chief has an ironic ring to it, coming from an oil patch that has been crafted more along the lines of the Chicago School of economics.

But if the Vancouver School has been good at questioning the business practices of some of the biggest companies in the land, it has done less well at monetizing that work. Even less successful in Canada have been commercial attempts to launch new web entities that make a virtue of well-reported public-interest journalism. Flame-outs in that category include the Mark News and OpenFile. One survivor is iPolitics — backed by private investors and still afloat after several years. The Tyee, meanwhile, is hardly robustly funded but has seen success in diversifying its revenue sources and becoming less reliant over time on initial investors.

The Tyee was singled out in “Survival Strategies for Local Journalism,” a 2015 story in the New Yorker, for its “model of diversification” as a route to sustainability. The Vancouver Observer has also had some success with crowd-funding, as has a terrific online terrier focused on climate policy, the BC-based DeSmog.

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Robust, independent, and fearless journalism is essential to the proper, engaged, pluralistic, accountable, and transparent functioning of our democracy. Or, to quote from the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, news and information are “as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools, and public health.” 


Canadian philanthropy is delinquent in its almost total absence of support for good journalism, abdicating what should be a leadership role in enabling widespread and effective dissemination of progressive thought in a country that spent a decade being beaten black and Tory blue by Stephen Harper. 


Progressive organizations and forces have been losing the battle for narrative, and the lack of diverse and independent media constricts the passages through which it is possible to argue for positive social change and policy reform. 


While one would like to think that all journalism is, by definition, public-interest journalism, the fact is that most of it is not, and public-interest journalism has suffered most of all from a combination of spending cuts and the ensuing declines in content and competence in our mainstream media. 


Our ability to help shape a culture of innovation, and to advance transformative change in Canada, is hobbled by the narrowness of a national conversation that is constantly circumscribed by economic and political forces that are the antithesis of a transparent, engaged and fully functioning democracy. 


It is especially urgent for Canadians to continue and indeed to expand upon the conversation with Aboriginal communities that was started — but by no means finished — by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 


With the accelerating urbanization of Canada, rural communities — and especially Aboriginal reserve communities — are hardest hit by the service declines in our media. 


A new, Reconciliation-centric narrative for Canada is unlikely to emerge with anything like the moral and intellectual force that the times demand without a media landscape that reflects the diversity, creativity, and cultural complexity of the country, and the many demands of and on its citizenry. 


Existing media tools for disseminating knowledge and practice — particularly in areas of policy reform, and even more when spotlighting social complexity, poor service delivery, and outright dysfunction — are mostly ill suited to the task. 


Our major newspapers, in particular, are in thrall to big business — energy industries most of all, but also developers, finance industries, and other natural-resource players — sectors that, ironically, are becoming less and less reliable as sources of revenue for media.

Ian Gill, who founded Ecotrust Canada in the 1990s, recently returned full-time to journalism as president of Discourse Media, a Vancouver-based digital startup: http://discoursemedia.org/ Follow him on Twitter @Gillwave

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By Megan Devlin for J-Source, the Canadian Journalism Project.

Eric Plummer, editor of the Alberni Valley Times, remembers the day last September when two representatives from Black Press told him his paper was closing.
 
“They came in, I think it was like 4:00 or 4:30,” he said. “I don’t think that we’d even finished the paper yet, actually.”
 
The daily paper, which served the 25,000 people of Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island from 1967 to 2015, was one of 11 British Columbia community newspapers that Black Press bought from Glacier Media in 2014.
 
“I won’t contend that the paper wasn’t losing money,” Plummer said. “I think at that point I was just so hellbent on keeping the paper going that I refused to believe that we were going to be dying just yet.”
 
On Oct. 9, 2015, Plummer published the paper’s last edition.

Three months later, the Nanaimo Daily News — also part of Black Press’s package of papers bought from Glacier — was closed as well. 

The buying and subsequent closing of newspapers is a story that repeats over and over again in small B.C. communities.
 
Since 2010, Black Press has eliminated 10 papers and Glacier Media has shuttered seven. Several others have had their publication schedules reduced.
 
Buying and Closing the Competitor
 
Black Press said no more immediate closures are planned. But according to president and CEO Rick O’Connor, operating two papers in a small market is becoming increasingly unfeasible.
 
The 2014 purchase from Glacier meant Black Press owned both papers in three different towns. It also meant Black Press now owns all newspapers on Vancouver Island except for the Times Colonist in Victoria.
 
In Nanaimo and Port Alberni, Black Press shut down its new acquisitions and chose to focus on the papers it already operated — the Nanaimo News Bulletin and the Alberni Valley News.
 
“Collectively, [the two closed papers] lost $800,000 over the past 12 months and were not economically sustainable…. Unfortunately, this was the condition they were in when we purchased them from Glacier,” O’Connor said.
 
This year’s closures echoed the shuttering of the Nelson Daily News and Prince Rupert Daily News in 2010.
 
Black Press bought those two dailies as part of another 11-paper acquisition from Glacier and closed them in favour of operating its established weeklies in both communities.
 
“In the situation where you have two community newspapers…competing in a marketplace, typically, one paper or both end up losing money,” O’Connor said.
 
When Black Press acquired its most recent batch of 11 Glacier papers in 2014, O’Connor said only one — the Duncan Citizen — was making money.
 
He said the competition between Black Press and Glacier papers in their respective communities was driving down advertising rates to unsustainable levels.
 
“In many cases the rates were below cost…that’s how crazy it was,” he said, adding that his rates were 40 per cent lower than the average for the rest of Canada.
 
Buying the competing paper was a way of stopping the unsustainable advertising rate race to the bottom.
 
He also said Black Press and Glacier papers had massive duplication — covering the same stories and getting published on the same day.
 
“What we tried to do in all of the restructuring with Glacier was to eliminate that duplication,” he said. “At no point along the way did we ever reduce the editorial content of any of the projects.”
 
A Single Paper Remains
 
Since the restructuring with Glacier, O’Connor said his remaining papers are doing well — particularly in communities that went from two papers to one.
 
“Island markets like Campbell River and Duncan and Port Alberni and also Nanaimo…the existing papers are seeing revenue increases north of 25 per cent,” O’Connor said.

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He noted that web traffic has also increased. But some journalists warn creating media monopolies can be dangerous. “It’s concentration of media,” said Don Genova, president of the Canadian Media Guild’s freelance branch.
 
“It leaves communities without that double voice. It means there’s less competition for stories. It means there’s actually less reporting.”
 
O’Connor argued that reporters were stretched already because competition for ad revenue made finances tight.
 
The Glacier papers he bought, he said, weren’t covering things like city council because they didn’t have the staff. He believes a single, better-financed paper in a community could do a better job.
 
Unions Too Expensive

Plummer thinks part of the reason Black Press couldn’t stomach his paper financially was because Alberni Valley Times workers were unionized. “Reporters were paid $25 an hour according to the union contract,” he said. “But it's actually become very, very unusual in journalism.”
 
Reporters went on strike in 2014 at the Cowichan News Leader over a proposed two-tier pay system to prevent new hires from reaching the same maximum pay.
 
“Eventually [older staff are] going to leave and that would leave the paper with a much cheaper operation,” Genova explained. In April 2015, while workers were still on strike, the paper closed.
 
“It seems to be all about the money and not about caring at all about their employees,” Genova said.
 
O’Connor said union contracts negotiated at a time when print was “the only game in town” don’t work in the current media landscape. “Nobody wants to lose benefits or take a pay cut or get laid off or lose another member of their editorial team,” he said. “
 
But they just don't understand that the impact of these two things — the recession and also products like Craigslist…[that] siphoned away the classified business — have been devastating toward the revenue stream of newspapers.”
 
Plummer said he’s too passionate about his craft to be happy with the way things ended at the Alberni Valley Times, but he acknowledges that getting money behind quality journalism is a conundrum the whole industry — not just community papers — is facing.
 
“I've found other work that uses some of my skills, but it's not journalism because it just doesn't pay right now.
 
I hope to god that, somehow, the industry will re-adjust so that a person can afford to have a family and be a journalist.” 

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