Weve got the antidote

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Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00

Written by editor

We’ve got the antidote r1 The power of journalism should remain in the hands of the people — help us reach our targets and we’ll send you a limited-edition print magazine ... What if you could no longer Google The Narwhal’s investigative climate reporting in Canada?

And what if, instead, you were fed pieces from Fox News or Breitbart when you were searching for basic facts? Google said on Thursday it plans to censor Canadian news from search results in Canada, once a new federal law called the Online News Act takes effect. This comes at a time when just four in 10 people in Canada say they trust online news — an all-time low according to Reuters’ annual report on journalism.

But these lows come even as The Narwhal experiences a beautiful high: more people than ever are reading our work and making donations to support people-centered climate journalism.

Here’s how The Narwhal has been an antidote to distrust and disengagement by reporting on some of the biggest and most complicated stories in the country in just the last few months:

• Matt Simmons spent time in Kitimat, B.C., to report on life in an industry-dominated boom town at the heart of the province’s LNG ambitions
• Drew Anderson traveled with photojournalist Amber Bracken to Fort Chipewyan, Alta., north of the oilsands, to document the community’s response to a devastating tailings pond leak that was kept secret for months
• Julia-Simone Rutgers heard the stories of families who are impacted by the ‘toxic soup’ of contaminants in Point Douglas, a neighbourhood in Winnipeg — and how that’s informing their fight for the right to a healthy environment

Seeing the trust our journalists are building in communities across Canada, I know no tech giant can stop our team from doing meaningful, public-interest reporting — or the public from reading it.

But the reality is doing in-depth and investigative journalism doesn’t come cheap and as a reader-funded publication, these companies can undermine the sustainability of our non-profit organization if they actively hide our reporting from you.

Just one per cent of our readers give what they can to help us produce some of the best, high-quality journalism in the country — and keep it free for all to read. That’s basically heroic. And we truly rely on those heroes, calculating the number of members we have down to the quarter and down to the month. By the end of July we need to add 99 new members to our bustling pod to meet our targets. Will you become one of them?
I’LL BECOME A NARWHAL With the likes of Google and Meta actively planning to block news from readers in Canada, the generosity of our members is more important than ever.

The truth is the power of public-interest journalism should remain in the hands of the people, and not be subject to the whims of investors, shareholders or social media giants.

Will you join the growing pod of Narwhals today to guarantee we can keep reporting on the most pressing environment stories for years to come?

Help us secure the future of The Narwhal by giving whatever you can today.

Thanks for putting your trust in us,

Arik Ligeti
Director of audience
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

P.S. We’re starting to run low on copies of our beautiful 2023 magazine! Become one of our new 99 members today for any amount to guarantee your copy of our print edition, packed full of award-winning journalism.