I had an opportunity this week to attend a dinner hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. The day before, the CJF held an excellent online event – Bill C-18: What’s at Stake for Journalism and Democracy? – moderated by Mary Lynn Young of the University of British Columbia, who is also a co-founder of The Conversation Canada. (Click here if you’d like to watch a recording of the event.)

The dinner brought together a group of people from both traditional and new media outlets. While this was mostly a social event, those of us around the table continued to debate some of the issues that were raised during the online event: Should governments be offering financial assistance to media outlets? What are the ethical issues of media organizations accepting funding from companies like Meta and Google? What happens to communities and the country if news outlets continue to disappear and/or go into bankruptcy – as happened earlier this month with the Ontario chain of newspapers owned by Metroland and the Métro Média newspapers in Québec.

Since the pandemic, opportunities to meet colleagues from other news organizations have been few and far between. It was good to talk out some of the issues we all face on a daily basis and for me to brag a bit about the great work we’re doing at The Conversation Canada. While traditional media outlets are primarily responsible for telling the public what happened on any given day, we offer complementary coverage to help readers understand the context of issues in the news. Our team has worked very hard over the last week to provide some excellent analyses and explainers on stories that dominated the headlines – the explosive allegation that India was responsible for assassinating a Canadian citizen in British Columbia; the sudden reversal of the Ontario government on a controversial land-use policy and, just yesterday, the appearance by Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before Parliament.

For your weekend reading, I’ve assembled these stories and a few other explainers published by our colleagues across the global network of The Conversation. The news cycle spins quickly. We’re here to help you understand the stories behind the headlines.

Have a great weekend and we’ll be back in your Inbox on Monday.