Thrilled and kind of astounded to learn my feature on the peculiar world of the Ontario bait worm industry made it to Bloomberg's 2025 Jealousy List. Nightcrawlers forever 🪱 www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Looking back a massive year with this wonderful team! 2025 has been good to The Local.

This year we felt the love from readers, from donating their $200 tax rebate cheques for our 7 Years of Doug Ford issue fundraiser, to reaching nearly a million reads for our stories. Look back on this and other 2025 highlights in The Local's Year in Review!

I adore this team.

Great to see our investigation into investigation into "Victoria Goldiee," the freelancer who was not what she seemed, make it into this New Yorker roundup of five things that changed the media in 2025. www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...

Only now getting around to posting about this— photojournalist Duane Cole and I rode the new Finch West LRT on its opening day Sunday to learn what locals think of the new line. Take a visually immersive trip with us, across the northwest Toronto neighbourhoods waiting decades for rapid transit:

Great piece from @curiouslana.bsky.social: when vulnerable, unhoused people fall through the cracks of the city's straining social infrastructure, they often end up on transit. It's not good for them, nor for the transit staff who are then tasked with the role of social worker.

This principle remains at the heart of our work at The Walrus as well. The more media orgs that can take the right side in this stand, the better chance we have of avoiding the worst consequences of AI.

The harm that generative AI has and will continue to cause to the environment, democracy, media literacy, and people's ability to connect with one another is one of the most urgent issues of our time. And care for people and communities is the beating heart of our work at The Local.

Since publishing our investigation into "Victoria Goldiee" at @thelocal.to, I've heard from editors from around the world who've had their own run-ins. A quick follow-up, plus a conversation with @cstarnino.bsky.social about journalism in a world of AI fakery. thelocal.to/fallout-from...

In the wake of our AI freelancer investigation, The Walrus editor-in-chief @cstarnino.bsky.social got the Local’s @nickhunebrown.bsky.social on Zoom to talk about the future of journalism in a world of “Victoria Goldiees.”

As MPPs vote on Bill 33, check out @royinori.bsky.social's analysis of what it would mean for colleges and universities thelocal.to/bill-33-onta...

“If Stephen Glass and the other late 20th century fakers were looking for the prestige and power that came with journalism in that moment, then this generation’s internet scammers are scavenging in the wreckage of a degraded media environment” #longreads thelocal.to/investigatin...

"Every media era gets the fabulists it deserves." You will want to read this investigation on how The Local's Nick HUne-Brown uncovered what seems to be an ambitious AI journalism scam that's hit major publications worldwide.

A few months ago @thelocal.to got a promising pitch from a writer with bylines in whole bunch of reputable publications—The Cut, The Guardian, Dwell, Architectural Digest, etc. Then I started investigating. Here's a story about fabulists in journalism's AI slop era. thelocal.to/investigatin...

Have you read the final story in The Local's Higher Education issue? Olivia Bowden digs deep on how U of T handles sexual violence allegations eight years on from the Me Too movement.

"Today, we are all witnesses. But the assumption that once gave value to the act of witnessing has proven to be completely untrue when it comes to Palestine."

“The people who were removed today are our friends and our community...They are people who have already suffered a tremendous amount of trauma and displacement, and who have now been subjected to the same again.” Essential reporting from Eric on one of the most morally urgent crises of our time.

Applications for our Early-Career Journalism Fellowship are now open! The fellowship, a joint undertaking with @thephilanthropist.ca, provides one Black and/or Indigenous journalist an opportunity to write about issues that matter to their community and civil society. thelocal.to/early-career...

Looking forward to this Sunday's Cover to Cover magazine mini-conference, hosted by Issues Magazine Shop! I'll be talking about assigning with care with Stacy Lee Kong, Jalani Morgan, and Nichole Jankowski. Tickets at the link! www.eventbrite.ca/e/cover-to-c...

In reading about the murder of fifty-nine-year-old Kenneth Lee, journalist @royinori.bsky.social sometimes found the use of the term “swarm” melodramatic. Then she saw the footage of the girls who attacked him. thewalrus.ca/why-did-a-group-...

Alberta’s education system has become the latest front in a growing political and ideological struggle. Journalist @melwoods.me investigates how far-right movements mirroring those found in the US have made their way into classrooms north of the border: thewalrus.ca/the-battle-brewi...

Despite being a huge fan of pulp, hardboiled, gritty crime fiction and noir films, books, comics and games, I’m not usually into true crime stories but once in a while an event like this comes along that fascinates me thewalrus.ca/why-did-a-gr...

This is a story in which the vulnerable hurt the vulnerable. It's about power, attention, and group violence. It's also a story of race, girlhood, substance use, and growing up during COVID. I wrote about the killing of Kenneth Lee by eight teenage girls in downtown Toronto. A thread:

@nickhunebrown.bsky.social's feature epic about Woodbine racetrack is about so much more than just the storied establishment. It's a comprehensive look at the past & future of gambling, the romance of the races, how bettors get their thrills now, and changing perceptions around animals as assets.

In light of the encampment clearings at Dufferin Grove Park, it's worth revising this stellar piece by @brendoherty.bsky.social and Nick Kozak in @thelocal.to thelocal.to/toronto-enca...

Love to see my @thelocal.to story on Ontario horse racing make the @longreads.com weekly Top 5!

I admire all of @thelocal.to reporting, and this piece on Woodbine racetrack is a banger. I love horse racing, even though it's a pretty dark sport. @nickhunebrown.bsky.social confronts the darkness, the economics, and the doomy shadow over the backstretch. Great writing too!

A quick 🧵 on my @thelocal.to feature on Woodbine Racetrack, the economics of horse racing, and how to think about racehorses as ideas about animal-human relations shift. #longreads 1/ thelocal.to/breakdown-at...

Local fellow Moyo Lawuyi went looking for a temperature check on the class of 2026's outlook for the future. What she found was unexpected optimism, and resilience: thelocal.to/the-future-a...

On Canadian campuses, Chinese students are offered new opportunities to protest or openly criticize the Chinese government - but they also fear the fallout back home. Local fellow Vikram Nijhawan has put years of thought into this story about the risks facing a new generation finding their voice:

The Toronto Lands Corporation, the TDSB subsidiary that manages the school board’s $20 billion-worth of land, had ambitious plans for Toronto’s new communities. What will happen to that real estate, now that the province has taken over? thelocal.to/tdsb-takeove...

This report on Chinese students in Canada fearing transnational reprisal for their activism here was so interesting, @thelocal.to does absolutely fantastic reporting thelocal.to/chinese-inte...

Wrote about the dire straits of York University, which like many in Ontario is cutting its programming and employee ranks down to the bone. For decades, York has brought higher education to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the GTA -- the loss of this would be incalculable.

Questionable spending choices, a repair backlog, layoffs and buyouts, shuttered programs. An incisive view from the inside at the fraught state of affairs at York University:

This is a really interesting and thorough article. A lot of what I’ve heard from people who work at and consult for York is made clear here. Great reporting.

Interrupting my social media hiatus to shout out @thelocal.to's continued fall issue on higher education in Ontario. Most recently, this amazing deep dive on conditions facing boarder tenants living at one U of T frat house, by Ella MacCormack & @wencyleung.bsky.social: thelocal.to/fraternities...

"...the section on post-secondary institutions is vague enough that it grants the provincial government unprecedented leeway to dictate admission policies in higher education, and student fee management," writes @royinori.bsky.social on Bill 33 for @thelocal.to thelocal.to/bill-33-onta...

So, @thelocal.to is rolling out its Higher Education issue today. I wrote an essay about the supposed death of the humanities. Are the humanities really dying, though? In my own classroom at the University of Toronto, I see surprising signs of life. thelocal.to/humanities-i...

This is an excellent analysis of what has been happening to post-secondary education in Ontario. It succinctly describes how the tuition cut and freeze by Ford directly lead to the explosion of international students, and how under funded ON universities are. thelocal.to/ontario-post...

The humanities have been in crisis for the entirety of @simonlewsen.bsky.social's career. But despite apocalyptic declarations about the death of the liberal arts, in his own classroom he sees signs of life. thelocal.to/humanities-i...

Stagnant provincial funding, a domestic tuition freeze, cuts to international students, and expensive capital projects—@kunalchaudhary.bsky.social on the numbers behind the crisis in higher education. thelocal.to/ontario-post...

Announcing the Higher Education Issue! Launching today, and continuing throughout the fall, we dive into the world of post-secondary education in Ontario at a moment of profound change. thelocal.to/fall-2025/

Around 250 media outlets from 50 countries, plus journalists and press freedom orgs, are uniting today to demand that Israel abides by international laws to protect journalists as civilians, and that Israel allows foreign journalists into Gaza. #protectjournalistsingaza #letreportersintogaza

I won't forget the anger, sadness, stillness that hung in the room after the screening I attended in February. Documentaries like this need to be seen. A fantastic, insightful, complex story from Filipa on all that stands in the way of No Other Land and its rightful audience.

"Canada issued a welcomed condemnation of the Al Jazeera killings...[but] stopped short of naming Israel...How can we protect journalists when we can’t even name who is killing them? Now is not a moment for diplomatic hedging. It is a moment for moral clarity" institute.aljazeera.net/en/ajr/artic...

Our Top 5: • Mapping the scars (@slate.com) • A parent, twice met (@newyorker.com) • Paradise in peril (@thedialmag.bsky.social) • Hallucinating war @thepointmag.bsky.social) • Wriggly business (@thelocal.to) longreads.com/2025/08/15/t...

Delighted and grateful that this feature has wormed it's way into the hearts of the editors at Longreads, and to be in such good company in this week's top 5.

Great to see @royinori.bsky.social's feature on the surreal world of Ontario worm picking make it to @longreads.com's Top 5 Longreads of the Week! longreads.com/2025/08/15/t...

At @thelocal.to, we knew schools were relying on non-teachers–parents, grandparents, lunch monitors, aspiring educators–to fill in for staff absences. Data we obtained through an FOI request revealed a staggering 1,100% spike in their use since pre- #COVID at #TDSB #OntEd thelocal.to/tdsb-emergen...