Researchers from the Global Journalism Innovation Lab presented two papers at Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Mary Lynn Young and Alfred Hermida shared their research into nonprofit journalism at the annual conference of the Canadian Communication Association (CCA), held in June 2019 as part of Congress.
One paper, entitled “The potential and promise of nonprofit journalism: A case study of The Conversation Canada,” by Young and Hermida tackled two pressing gaps in the journalism studies literature on the business of news: analysis of digital born journalism organizations and early implications of nonprofit and foundation funded journalism. It used The Conversation Canada as a case study to assess the business case of a nonprofit startup in Canada.
The other, “A breath of fresh air: How nonprofit journalism is exposing the gaps in elite audience models of news,” by Hermida and Young explored the role of peripheral actors in the production and circulation of journalism through the case study of The Conversation Canada.
The talk considered how traditional models of elite news organizations and audiences are increasingly uncertain and open to contestation in a context of digitalization and models of nonprofit news