JoeyColeman.ca

You Better Be Local to Cover Local

Entitled "Want to cover local? Then you'd better BE local!", Niles explains why non-local journalists leave communities less informed, less engaged, and with fewer reasons to support journalism.

CJR: In Justin Amash, a litmus test for partisan media’s influence

Justin Amash is the fifth-term representative for Michigan’s Third Congressional District, elected five times as a Republican, Amash is now an independent. He wrote about why he left the Republican Party in a July op-ed published by the Washington Post. He, like all members of the House of Representatives, faces votes in 2020. Lauren Harris of the Columbia Journalism

Notepad: Conservatives, Media Credibility, and Journalistic Norms

During the next nine months, my blog will become a notepad of sorts for my research at the University of Toronto as a Journalism Fellow. Tonight's reading, is "A Multilevel Examination of Local Newspaper Credibility" from the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 95, no. 1 (March 2018): 76–95. (Free access article) The study sent out 4,000 survey questionnaires,

A Nice Invite from the Winnipeg Boys and Girls Clubs

I lived in Winnipeg for one year, during which time I did so volunteering with the Boys and Girls Clubs there. In reality, not much volunteering, maybe 75, maybe 100 at most, hours of involvement. I learned a lot in those short hours. One of the moments that challenged my lived experiences, at age 22, the most was a conversation

On Pressed Black Pants

I was that guy in high school, pressed black pants every day. What some may call dressing for success; but at its root there was a practicality to this - I found that Moore's sold good pants at a fair price, and eventually they became my entire pant wardrope. "Boring" as my closest friend often remarked. Black shoes (running shoes,

God Isn't Giving You That Choice Coleman

Sunday, July 8, 2001 - Land Forces Central Area Training Centre Meaford The call is made, who among us recruits wishes to attend Church Parade. I declare that I will be attending services. We form up alphabetically, my last name happens to place me first. The Sergeant asks me "So Coleman, what are you?" "Baptist Sergeant!" "Coleman, God isn't giving

Why Did I Exclude Ice Cream From the Story?

The other day I was telling a story, one of my favourite stories. The time people thought I was gambling on the Pope. It's April 2005, Pope John Paul II has died. I'm living in St. Andrew's College at the University of Manitoba. It is the seminary of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada. I'm the student union representative for

Should Office Hours Be Renamed Open Hours?

My path to university is unconventional, I'm a bit of a unicorn, not many Crown Wards of my age went onto post-secondary education, as there were not the supports needed. I went to the University of Manitoba, they gave me a good offer, and I believed that as they had access supports available for Crown Wards, it was a wise

UCalifornia Takes Big Step Towards Open Access: Cuts Subscription to Elsevier

The University of California was paying Elsevier $10-million per year to access academic journals filled with publicly funded research that Elsevier paid nothing towards the cost of researching. The academic journal publishing racket has had a good run blocking public access to knowledge, and charging institutions billions of dollars in rent to access academic journals. University of California released the

The Crushing Feeling of Disappointing Others

Sunday evening began the latest young adults conversation & learning session at my parish, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Downtown Hamilton. It is the first group activity I've done in the Church since RCIA when I converted so many years ago. I tend to practice my faith in solitude, not hidden, just not in group discussions within the parish.

Snow Storms and Perfect Attendance

There are two tough winters that I can instantly recall the year of, 1992 and 2004. 2004 was cold, very cold, Hamilton's modern record low temperature of -30C was recorded at Hamilton Airport on January 16, 2004. I remember day-after-day of cold, layering my uniform jackets, and still being cold. 1992, I remember it for the number of storms, the

The Moon Missions as a Child of the 80s

The 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 occurred when I was age seven; only three years after the Challenger Disaster. I didn't grasp the significance, only recently starting to read full non-fiction books and National Geographic magazines. Sometime shortly after the anniversary, I got my hands on a National Geographic about the mission, which included an audio record recording of the

Words for Journalists - like me - to Live By

From Gary Abernathy, as published by The Washington Post: Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” The biggest danger to Jefferson’s preference is not Donald Trump. It is the self-destructive habits of

How Do I Respond to Radical "Populism" Which Exploits Social Angst

The rise of extremist is distressing. Good people, people I know have lost their way, are vacuumed into extremist. Why? It promises a relief valve to the angst of precarity which inflicts the working class and marginalized people in our society. The purity and simplicity of extreme ideologies fulfilling a need for purpose, a need to feel empowered, the need

Have You Not Driven in Snow Before?

I finally did it, I finally had a complete uncontrolled wipe-out on a Sobi Bike. The wipeout was entirely of my own fault and doing. It was a light steady snow today, the kind that makes roads slippery and covered in slush. There's just enough snow on the ground to shovel, and not a flake more. Saturday late morning, I