Community News

WE'RE HIRING INDIGENOUS REPORTERS, STORYTELLERS

WE'RE SEEKING WRITERS IN NIAGARA, WRITES MELINDA CHEEVERS

Melinda Cheevers is the managing editor of Metroland Community Brands in Niagara, Orangeville and Erin. Reach her at mcheevers@metroland.com. We welcome your questions and value your comments. Email our trust committee at trust@metroland.com.

It's about trust. Our relationship with our readers is built on transparency, honesty and integrity. As such, we have launched a trust initiative to tell you who we are and how and why we do what we do. This column is part of that project.

Readers will no doubt have noticed we've been talking quite a lot these days about the introspection that has been happening at Metroland, which has seen our newsrooms re-examining their processes, staffing and the role they play in society's pursuit of social justice.

We've shared with you before that, back in 2020, Metroland created a diversity and inclusion committee to assist in guiding editorial content and focus. And as part of this initiative, we formed a subcommittee tasked with shaping how we cover Indigenous communities and issues.

Now we're taking the next step. We are committed to covering our neighbours, their news and culture in a respectful and genuine manner. And we recognize the best people to

tell these stories are Indigenous people.

This year, we are looking for freelance Indigenous journalists, Storytellers, Truth Keepers and Teachers to tell the local stories that matter, that educate, inform and celebrate. These stories will be

shared across Metroland on websites that see millions of page views a month, so their words would reach a large audience we know is keen to be informed by writers with authentic knowledge.

How do we know? We asked.

We had help from Indigenous Link, a company that reached out to Indigenous people from many communities and brought their concerns and insight back to us. We also asked our readers, who told us they have a keen interest in learning more and becoming better educated about the history, culture and concerns of their Indigenous neighbours. Finding people to tell authentic stories is part of our commitment to addressing a deficiency in news coverage of and for Indigenous people and to making meaningful connections in Indigenous communities.

If you are an Indigenous writer interested in learning more about these paid freelance positions, please contact our managing editor at the email address below.

OPINION

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2023-01-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://communitynews.pressreader.com/article/281543705056013

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