This newsletter is your window into what’s happening across the Documenters Canada network, and beyond. Every six weeks, we’ll land in your inbox with updates from the field: new Documenters site launches, blog posts, funding opportunities, experiments, and stories about how citizens are documenting and democratizing public meetings in their communities. Whether you’re a Documenter, partner, or close observer of civic journalism, this is your way to stay connected to the work, the people, and the ideas shaping participatory local news in Canada. // Cette infolettre vous permet de découvrir ce qui se passe au sein du réseau Documentalistes Canada et au-delà. Toutes les six semaines, nous vous enverrons les dernières nouvelles du terrain : lancement de nouveaux sites Documenters, articles de blog, possibilités de financement, expériences et récits sur la manière dont les citoyens documentent et démocratisent les réunions publiques dans leurs communautés. Que vous soyez documentaliste, partenaire ou observateur attentif du journalisme civique, c'est le moyen idéal pour rester en contact avec le travail, les personnes et les idées qui façonnent l'actualité locale participative au Canada.
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The Documenters Circle #1: A Newsletter by Documenters Canada
Published about 1 month ago • 7 min read
The Documenters Circle
This newsletter is your window into what’s happening across the Documenters Canada network, and beyond.
Every six weeks, we’ll land in your inbox with updates from the field: new Documenters site launches, blog posts, funding opportunities, experiments, and stories about how citizens are documenting and democratizing public meetings in their communities.
Whether you’re a Documenter, partner, or close observer of civic journalism, this is your way to stay connected to the work, the people, and the ideas shaping participatory local news in Canada.
The added support of $50,000 will boost the launch of Documenters Canada in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, and strengthen community partnerships in Montreal, bringing Inspirit’s total contribution to $100,000 since 2025.
“Documenters Canada is a unique, community-rooted model that ensures vital information about hyperlocal communities doesn’t fall through the cracks. It pairs citizens’ energy and perspectives with rigorous reporting to produce journalism people can use in their everyday lives. Inspirit Foundation is proud to support the project’s growth and to help journalists and individuals across regions take ownership of the model and adapt it locally. We look forward to witnessing the project's evolution!”
Ana Sofía Hibon - Senior Program Manager, Inspirit Foundation
We are Joining the First-Ever NextGen Creator-Journalists Program
Spearheaded by the Canadian Journalism Foundation, with the support of the Google News Initiative, the 12-month program includes lectures, workshops and personalized mentorship aimed at reinforcing participating organizations’ long-term sustainability.
Documenters Canada is part of the 20 organizations selected among 57 applications from across the country.
Co-director Magda Konieczna is undertaking the program and will share outcomes at an in-person presentation in Toronto in the fall of 2026.
Our media partner organizations The Green Line and Pivot are also part of this inaugural cohort.
By Aia Jaber, Community Engagement Lead, The Green Line.
Documenters Toronto is ramping up its content production with more notes, more Documenters and more fun. Through social media, meeting recaps and interactive videos, we've noticed Torontonians are eager to join our project.
Videos showcasing our trainees, as well as posts mentioning incentive, have garnered the most engagement and inquiries.
Over the last few months, Documenters Toronto has welcomed three new, fully-trained Documenters, with eleven joining us for the next round of training. At The Green Line, our Documenters will be contributing two notes a month, rather than just one.
At Documenters Toronto, we value organic, steady growth and are more than excited to continue with that in the coming months. We hope that we continue to grow our following, create engaging content while encouraging our Documenters to be in photos and videos.
Documenting is more than a project, it's a lifestyle we want shared. Our followers should stay tuned for civic, how-to guides, fun Q&As and more. This quarter is all about venturing into new forms of social and civic engagement.
A Documenters training session took place last fall. Pictured from left to right are trainees Rushil Malik, Rouaida Nassif, Janice Miyagi, Aria Ipe, The Green Line Managing Editor Yara El Murr and former Community Engagement Lead Mary Newman
From our Sites: Documenters Toronto
The way The Green Line is experimenting with TikTok summaries of documenters’ public meeting notes is in the spotlight. An interview explaining this approach was among the top-read stories of the Reynolds Journalism Institute in 2025.
Our partner's innovative Action Journey model was also recognized as a tool for youth participation and leadership in a report by the School of Cities at Toronto Metropolitan University.
The Documenters training session on December 3, 2025. Picture: Jonathan Caballero
FEEJAD is a community organization based at the Habitations Jeanne-Mance that supports youth and families in the neighbourhood. Its executive director, Perpétue Mukarugwiza, has made a habit of inviting members to attend the Ville-Marie borough council together to learn about local democratic life.
More training sessions are planned in Montreal this winter with our community partners L’Itinéraire, Solidarité Mercier-Est, and la Table de concertation du faubourg Saint-Laurent.
Welcome to Nicolas Tremblay
The Documenters Montreal team is welcoming a new member. Nicolas Tremblay, a journalism undergraduate at Concordia University, will work alongside Pivot to fact-check the information reported in Documenters’ notes before they are published.
Picture: Nicolas Tremblay
“Fact-checking is an essential part of publishing the notes produced by these engaged citizens, at a time when municipal transparency is sometimes called into question,” says Nicolas.
“It’s a source of pride for me to contribute to this young initiative, which I hope will help inform the public about municipal politics and fill a media gap in some neighbourhoods.”
Young Documenters from Mercier-Est, Annabelle and Erika, are in the spotlight in a recent blog post! Their training, held in September 2025, and the ones to come, are part of six initiatives supported by See Different, a program from the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion that highlights the engagement and leadership of young changemakers across Canada.
Screenshot: Nouvelles d'Ici
Documenter Agathe Melançon was featured by local outlet Nouvelles d’Ici. Since August 2025, Agathe has documented six public meetings, including several in her borough, le Sud-Ouest, where she is highly involved. In addition to being a Documenter, Agathe also collaborates with L'Itinéraire and publishes in its magazine.
From our Sites: Crowsnest Pass Documenters
Public Meetings are Public for a Reason
“It is a privilege to have the media as an integral part of council meetings. We need them to be an effective part of our communication plan. They, in turn, have the privilege of serving the community by covering council discussions and decisions made.”
That statement, published in the Crowsnest Pass Herald, came from a member of the municipal council in the community the paper serves. For our partner Lisa Sygutek, the owner and publisher, this opinion raises a red flag.
Her response, shared on LinkedIn, is unequivocal: freedom of the press is a constitutional right, and public meetings are public by default.
Lisa then published an editorial titled Why open meetings matter in Alberta, diving deeper into the issue.
“
Public meetings are public for a reason. Whether it is a council meeting, a committee meeting, a public hearing or a press conference, these forums exist so decisions can be explained, debated and justified on behalf of the people. While reasonable limits may apply in narrow circumstances, access to observe and report on those proceedings cannot be restricted arbitrarily or because coverage is uncomfortable or critical.
— Lisa Sygutek, Owner and Publisher, Crowsnest Pass Herald
With the upcoming launch of Documenters Canada in Crowsnest Pass, there will soon be more eyes in the room and more note-takers tracking local decision-making and adding to the scope of the Herald’s coverage. The project is led by Lisa Sygutek in Crowsnest Pass and Tyler Nagel of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). Sarah B. Groot was recently hired as the research assistant for the project and has been working on the training materials for the first cohort. There has been good interest from the community, with several applications from those interested in being trained.
Global Documenters
Historic Impact in the United States
Documenters Canada is still in its earliest days. Since launching in September 2024, we have learnt so much from the experience of the Documenters.org network in the United States. In 2025 alone, the 31 US sites accomplished an extraordinary amount:
Nina Kelly, a member of the research committee convened by Documenters Canada, successfully defended her PhD dissertation, which includes interviews with staff and community members at the Documenters site in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nina Kelly is now a postdoctoral research fellow at Temple University in Philadelphia, collaborating with the Center for Community-Engaged Media, and is eager to continue contributing to research on Documenters.
Dr. Joshua P. Darr’s recent work argues that AI in local journalism should prioritize civic empowerment above automating old newsroom routines. The study compares ChatGPT with “DocGPT,” a chatbot he trained on Documenters’ notes, and finds that DocGPT produces more actionable, contextual and policy-relevant information by drawing on community members’ observations from public meetings.
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This newsletter is your window into what’s happening across the Documenters Canada network, and beyond. Every six weeks, we’ll land in your inbox with updates from the field: new Documenters site launches, blog posts, funding opportunities, experiments, and stories about how citizens are documenting and democratizing public meetings in their communities. Whether you’re a Documenter, partner, or close observer of civic journalism, this is your way to stay connected to the work, the people, and the ideas shaping participatory local news in Canada. // Cette infolettre vous permet de découvrir ce qui se passe au sein du réseau Documentalistes Canada et au-delà. Toutes les six semaines, nous vous enverrons les dernières nouvelles du terrain : lancement de nouveaux sites Documenters, articles de blog, possibilités de financement, expériences et récits sur la manière dont les citoyens documentent et démocratisent les réunions publiques dans leurs communautés. Que vous soyez documentaliste, partenaire ou observateur attentif du journalisme civique, c'est le moyen idéal pour rester en contact avec le travail, les personnes et les idées qui façonnent l'actualité locale participative au Canada.
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