About Me
I’m Joey Coleman, a Hamiltonian who works as an independent crowdfunded journalist, is engaged with open data, involved in my neighbourhood association, a pinball player, and am blamed by City Hall for increasing civic engagement with my work over at www.thepublicrecord.ca.
Journalism matters because it helps create the informed citizenry for a functional democracy. This is something I strongly believe and I practice journalism in pursuit of creating a more informed society.
Biographies, they have a set format I’m not comfortable with. Writing about myself in the third-party, making myself some prestigious award-winning best in the world in my field person, that's not the style of a East Hamiltonian.
Convention is for journalists to write their biography pages in third-person to make it sound more authoritative.
I’m the writer of my website (just in case the domain didn't tip you to this) and of my biography. I present it in first person to ensure you can see my bias – I tend to like myself.
Who am I?
I’m a human being with interests, flaws, strengths, weakness, who believes in taking the opportunities life offers, while acknowledging my good fortune to be able to overcome the challenges life provides as exercises in character building.
I’m a nerd with a curiosity for information, a preference for process, a compassion for the weak, a believer in the need to check power, an unapologetic civil libertarian, with a strong belief in service to others.
I’m a Crown Ward who moved out on my own at age 17, worked full-time for a couple of years after high school, took a year of study at the University of Manitoba in my mid-20s, started a blog, was elected to the student union, wrote about student politics, and became a journalist when journalism found me.
This is my personal website, which does include archives of my pre-2014 journalistic activities, and personal blog posts going back to November 2004. (I lost my April to November 2004 posts in a transition in 2005)
In 2005, my blog became focused on student politics and expanded outwards to university affairs. By late 2006, my blog was receiving thousands of unique readers each day, I was producing original stories, and in early 2007, I was offered a a position with a mainstream publication and became a professional journalist.
The Journalist
Why an accidental journalist? I didn’t plan to become a journalist. I was actually working on being a coder and that’s why this blog started in 2004 – I was playing with the new concept of blogging content management systems. To do this, I needed to write. My writing gained a national following, I started covering university affairs (with a focus on student politics) across Canada.
Next thing I knew, I was a journalist recruited by Maclean’s Magazine in March 2007. I remained with them until August 2009. I followed this was some time on contract with The Globe and Mail writing about post-secondary education for 18 months.
By 2010, I was looking for a change, but I didn’t know what that was. I had been in talks with The Hamilton Spectator – my hometown paper – to become a columnist prior to the 2009 recession. The recession meant talks came to an end as news organization budgets plunged. In 2010, I decided to test the waters of local journalism by taking an paid 4-month intern at the newspaper.
This ignited my passion for local journalism. Being an online journalism who is not interested in creating “interesting” news stories to drive traffic for advertisers, I needed to create my own news outlet. Today, I operate ThePublicRecord.ca – Canada’s first crowdfunded local news site.
The Formal Thinker
I've been a paid guest lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University since 2014, was published in the Journal of Professional Communication in 2014, and have guest lectured at various institutions on open source culture, professional communications, journalism, municipal government, public policy, and municipal infrastructure.
In 2019, I was appointed as a Fellow-at-Large at the University of Toronto for the academic year. I took up residency on campus during my Fellowship.
My research during the Fellowship focused on public transit infrastructure and planning, and municipal engineering both in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Indigenous Law in the Faculty of Law, and independently I researched the history of the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal, which until recently was known as the Ontario Municipal Board.
I delivered a lunch lecture at McLaughlin College in York University, and look forward to delivering further lectures at McLaughlin after COVID.
The Human Being
I’m a Crown Ward. I had a good experience in foster care and was very fortunate to be in the same home from age 15 to 17. I moved out on my own at 17.
At age 18, I ran for Public School Trustee in Hamilton’s Ward 5 garnering 23% of the vote. I joined the Canadian Forces Reserve at age 19, becoming a full-time “Class B” soldier at 20 and remained in army until age 22.
When I left the military, I started this site.
At age 22, I went off to university at the University of Manitoba. Living in Winnipeg was a great experience, I had many experiences there that were positive and character building. I was involved in student politics – chairing a sub-committee on food service reform which started me down the path of covering national student politics. I was a founding member of the University of Manitoba’s Circle K Club and lived in St. Andrew’s College’s dorm. During my time in Winnipeg, I was fortunate to volunteer with the Winnipeg Boys and Girls Clubs whose staff were a great support for a university student away from home as a first generation student.
My website became my release as I struggled with deep bouts of depression as I continue to work to overcome the psychological trauma of my past. Over the years, it grew until I was recruited to work professionally as a journalist.
After returning to Hamilton, I joined the Toronto Ontario Pinball League. Pinball is my favourite game, with playing Civilization on the computer a close second.
Interestingly, I have a writing disability - dysgraphia.
Open Data
I’m an open data activist, a member of Open Hamilton, a part of the Creative Commons Canada movement, and a strong proponent of open information.
I create open data as part of my work at ThePublicRecord.ca and license all my work under a Creative Commons By Attribution-ShareAlike license.