Why we love our jobs

The Conversation Canada celebrates its fifth anniversary. From a team of five in 2017, we now have 11 full-time editors and publish in English and French.

Our editorial team wanted to share their thoughts on our first five years.

Hannah Hoag, Associate Editor | Editor Energy + Environment

I joined The Conversation Canada shortly after its launch in 2017, at the head of the Energy and Environment desk. It was the year climate change hit the world hard. Devastating wildfires swept through British Columbia, floodwaters swamped Ontario and Quebec, record heat settled in the West and severe storms pounded the East. Five years ago, scientists wouldn’t attribute a single bout of wild weather or a new record high to human-caused climate change. Today they began to calculate the probability of a disaster with and without its pressure. The unprecedented and tenacious heat dome that settled over British Columbia a year ago has melted asphalt, baked the fruit crop and killed hundreds of people. A forest fire destroyed the town of Lytton. Countless dairy cows, poultry and wild animals perished in the heat.

Within weeks, scientists declared that extreme heat and its consequences were virtually impossible to have without climate change. While the state of the planet has been particularly troubling lately, I am happy to be able to find the experts who can explain the what, why and how of the changing world, and the solutions, that they are in politics or technology. , it will help change things.

Nehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor

I became a science and environmental journalist because I was curious about how the world worked. Every day at The Conversation Canada, I encounter new ideas, research and knowledge. Every day, I exchange messages and thoughts with an eclectic array of scholars: geographers, paleobotanists, veterinarians, criminologists, theoretical physicists, sociologists, disaster management specialists, astronomers, neurobiologists, archaeologists, bioethicists, environmental anthropologists. evolution… and the list goes on. . The articles I’m working on run the gamut — right now I’m working on an article on prehistoric social hierarchies and another on the possibilities of time travel.

These are important stories because as we better understand the world around us, we become more aware of our place in it and how we affect and influence it. And working at The conversation, I have developed extraordinary personal conversational skills. When the dinners come back, I’m now chock-full of “Did you know?” and “You’ll never believe!”

Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don’t Call Me Resilient | Editor-in-Chief, Culture + Society

When I started as editor-in-chief of Culture + Society at The Conversation Canada, we were approaching the government celebration of the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. We were sitting in our newsroom wondering if we should recognize the celebration or rather talk about the history of genocide in Canada.

Finally, we decided to publish stories about Canada 150 years in the future. Because it was something we could agree on. We are only five years away from this conversation. And I know that, at least in our little editorial corner, things have really changed. As a team, we have learned to collectively challenge this 155-year-old colonial project with rigorous analysis. We understand our responsibility and we have the best experts on our side to help us do it.

Martine Turenne, Editor-in-Chief, The Conversation Canada

When we launched The Conversation Canada, in December 2018, we were fortunate to be able to benefit from all the support, both editorial and logistical, of “big brother”, The Conversation Canada. This support has turned into everyday collaboration: we exchange ideas, we share our content, we form one and the same team.

The result, very concrete, is the presence on our respective sites of articles by our editors and translated into French or English. We are building bridges, we are circulating knowledge between the country’s two linguistic communities. We have produced or exchanged the content of several series, such as those on the oceans or vaccines and, most recently, the St. Lawrence River. Our two editions are great places for exchange. Happy birthday — and very long life — to The Conversation Canada!

Haley Lewis, Culture + Society Editor

There is a lot of work being done by researchers and scholars across Canada that is so fascinating, groundbreaking and sometimes even groundbreaking that people just don’t hear about it – whether it’s because it lives behind a wall paid or in a 40-page document, the average person simply doesn’t have the time or knowledge to decipher.

So it’s really exciting to be able to help edit interesting research into an accessible news article, and it’s even better to work with researchers who are excited about this knowledge translation-type work. What’s really interesting about our template is how it’s all written by experts who research the area, eat it, sleep it and breathe it – what’s better than being able to browse a website that’s guaranteed to have that perspective when something interesting happens?

Patricia Nicholson, Health + Medicine Writer

Nothing like a global pandemic to reaffirm the importance of health research and specialized knowledge. At best, health reports provide people with the information they need to make health decisions for themselves and their families.

After spending the pandemic at the health office in The Conversation CanadaI like to think that providing stories directly from researchers and medical professionals – who often wrote about emerging knowledge or explained complex biology in accessible terms – helped a few people better understand one of the news arcs the most significant in recent years.

Lee-Anne Goodman Political, Business and Economics Writer

In my five years of editing politics and business for The Conversation Canada, I have developed a trait that sometimes bothers my loved ones. But it’s directly related to what I love most about the job: I learn something new every time I edit a story.

I frequently ask out loud, sometimes even when no one is listening, a question that always begins with: “Did you know that…?” I certainly popped the question in the summer of 2019 after editing one of our most prescient stories: “Did you know there’s a good chance that Donald Trump won’t accept the US election results s ‘he loses ?

At a time when public confidence in mainstream journalism is low, it has been an honor to bring stories to the world that educate, inform and surprise based on facts, historical knowledge, expertise and know-how. do science. The stories Canadian scholars produce for us are stories you won’t read anywhere else. So here are many more birthdays for The Conversation Canada.

Susannah Schmidt, Education and Arts Editor

As The Conversation Canada turns five, I think of all the time spent discussing stories from the readers’ perspective. But who are the readers? What do they know and what are they looking for? For me, these are some of the journalistic, political and existential issues that a small, innovative news organization like The Conversation Canada speaks to contributors in an engaging and critical way.

That’s why I love our work together and I’m proud and grateful to be a part of it. Thanks in particular to the readers, writers and colleagues with whom I have shared long discussions – from specific words in titles to the search for simple language for the curious subjects and raw challenges of our times. Your dedication and your quest are magnificent to me.

Mélissa Khadra, Section Head of Science, Health and Environment, La Conversation Canada

“The more we focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less we will have a taste for destruction.” This quote, which is taken from the book Silent Spring, published in 1962 by the American biologist and ecologist Rachel Carson, reflected, even at the time, the importance of instructing and informing. Ensuring universal access to reliable information and scientific evidence is essential, especially in a context where misinformation is raging. Whether in the face of the climate emergency or the emergence of infectious diseases, it is essential to increase public confidence in science.

This is the purpose of the global network The conversation, whose mission is to provide a better understanding of current events and the most complex subjects. I have the invaluable chance of being able to contribute to this objective, while surrounding myself with enlightened humans who have things to teach me.

Lisa Varano, Audience Development Editor

As The Conversation Canada has grown over the past five years, and so have the ways we connect with you. We started by launching our English website in June 2017, followed by The Conversation Canada in French in December 2018, and have since expanded to many platforms: audio, video and social networks. You can listen to 19 episodes of don’t call me resilientour podcast on race and racism, and hundreds of commented articles.

You can also watch and participate in live-streamed events with academic experts, most recently “In Conversation With” SSHRC-funded researchers. Stay connected with us on social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, instagram and ICT Tac) and via our daily newsletter. Drop us a line anytime with your thoughts or story ideas. There would be no conversation without you. Thanks.