“If you talk about what used to be, we’re going to be what used to be.”

That’s what Martin Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, tells his staff.

Last week, the Canadian Journalism Foundation held its last talk of the year at Ryerson University, where the National Post’s Anne Marie Owens interviewed Baron about the Washington Post’s digital transformation. So far, Baron’s plans seemed to have worked. More people accessed the Washington Post’s website in October than The New York Times—and that’s saying something.

Baron’s arrival isn’t the only thing that sparked a move towards digital, though. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, giving the paper time and money to experiment with digital products, sparking a series of changes in the Washington Post’s daily operations.

1. Change in the newsroom:

Baron says the Washington Post took a lot of steps to create a digital culture in the newsroom. Some of those were physical, like trying out new seating arrangements in the newsroom; others had a lot more to do with mindset. “Everyone is our competition,” Baron said. That means anything on the web, not just news organizations. Baron says he only spends 10 minutes talking about the newspaper in his daily afternoon meetings; the rest is spent on online content.

But where does all this online content come from?

2. What happens at night:

A group of young journalists spend their nights at the Post every day. From 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., they’re looking for stories in the nooks and crannies of the internet. By the time morning comes, these stories have already been posted, and they often become the basis for a bigger story.

Often, the staff will have found someone who wants to tell their story, but instead of sending a reporter out to cover that story, they’ll work with the writer to edit and vet the story until it’s ready for publication. Then, they’ll slap on a headline like “This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps.” Sometimes, those stories lead to deeper investigations. A story from a Bill Cosby accuser, for example, led a team at the Post into a 10-day investigation.

3. Wheels on luggage:

To Baron, none of this is salvation. “I remember when the tablet was supposed to save the industry,” he said. “We need to get past the idea that this one thing is going to save the industry.”

Instead, Baron wants to focus on the “wheels on luggage”. Yes, we’ve put a man on the moon, he says, but we put wheels on luggage—and only one of those things affected people’s experiences. That’s what he wants to do: he wants to focus on the smaller details like the video or graphic that adds a little more to the story. But there’s always resistance and mourning in the newsroom. Resistance to the new stuff and mourning for what’s gone or what could soon be lost.

What’s missing? “Customer or readers?” Owens asks. Baron says he’s gotten flak for using “customers,” but to him, they’re the same.

Throughout the talk, Baron seemed more like a businessman than anything. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just something to think about.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers entered Vice Canada’s offices in Toronto and Montreal in February. The officers served Vice with a production order–similar to a search warrant–demanding “any notes and all records of communication” between Vice reporter Ben Makuch and an ISIL militant.

Makuch interviewed the Canadian ISIL militant, Farah Mohamed Shirdon, through Kik Messenger to get a better sense of ISIL’s inner workings. Shane Smith, a Vice co-founder, also had an exclusive Skype interview with Shirdon.

After the interview was published, the RCMP charged Shirdon with the “commission of an indictable offence for a terrorist group,” as well as five other charges. The raid on Vice offices was part of the “process to collect evidence in support of this criminal investigation,” according to RCMP Const. Annie Delisle.

Vice was unable to report on the incident until this week due to a sealing order from court, where the media organization is fighting for their right to avoid turning over documents to the RCMP. An article from Vice head of content Patrick McGuire states that “Vice is contesting the production and sealing orders in court, on the principles of protecting any and all sources, protecting freedom of the press and to avoid the situation wherein the Canadian news media becomes a veritable investigative arm of the law.”

The executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Tom Henheffer, defended Vice’s decision to fight the RCMP’s production order. “Journalists are not lackies for the police,” Henheffer said, “and to use us that way is a totally unjustifiable violation of free expression and privacy rights.” He added that “this sets a dangerous precedent for the free press in Canada that must not be repeated.”

McGuire and Henheffer are right: this is a blatant example of police forces unjustifiably throwing around their weight, damaging Canada’s autonomous journalism in the process. Despite this threat to Canadian journalism, which is now heightened since Bill C-51 was passed in June, there has been little response from traditional Canadian media outlets. No statements of support, editorials or even any opinion columns. The most that has come out of the event so far are articles rehashing the original Vice article announcing the ordeal.

This is a shame. An attack on Vice’s right to freedom of the press is an attack on the right to freedom of the press for all, and journalists must unite to oppose this governmental encroachment. Journalists can’t do journalism if they can’t protect their sources. Vice will be going to court on January 11 next year to fight the RCMP orders. In the meantime, journalists must raise their voice to defend Vice and, by extension, defend Canadian journalism.

Mohamed Fahmy has been toeing the line between being a journalist and being a story for over a year now.

As the former Al Jazeera bureau chief in Cairo, Fahmy, 41, was arrested in Egypt in 2013 with two colleagues and convicted of terror-related charges. The case, the court trials, the journalist and his family have since then gone viral, nowhere more so than in Canada, his home country.

In an earlier news conference, Fahmy spoke at great lengths about feeling “betrayed and abandoned by Prime Minister Harper” and about the need to address the relationship between journalists who work abroad and their governments.

Speaking to the RRJ, Fahmy says that he is grateful for the many platforms he has received to use his voice to further the discussion about journalists who work abroad and how to protect them from situations like his.

So how does a journalist deal with becoming the story? We asked Fahmy in an exclusive interview with the RRJ.

The small cooperative work space for journalism students at Ryerson was crowded with professors, working journalists, community members and the few j-schoolers who could squeeze in. Suddenly, U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared on a large screen—the moment we were waiting for. I was prepared to live blog the event, but being a journalist, a thought occupied me the moment Snowden spoke: Is it in the public interest to live blog every word he says? Instead, I chose to live tweet, which in my opinion gave me a chance to filter what’s in the public interest.

Snowden was telecasting into Ryerson for the launch of the Snowden Archive by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The archive includes 400 documents already published by media outlets around the world—a small portion of the 50,000 turned over by Snowden to his original collaborators. It’s now live, with more documents to be made available as they are published by media outlets around the world. As CJFE mentions on its website, the archive does not include documents that have not already been published by other sources.

I have tested the archive and found it easy to navigate. It’s something that I found marvellous: being able to read and write about documents with crucial information that matters to lives of people in Canada and abroad. Mass surveillance affects everyone and journalists are not the only ones able to read these documents. Unless I have a story with a different angle, I will end up writing something that another journalist have written about. Documents on the archive are already published. Therefore, other journalists made the decision for us on what to be available to the public, other reporters and researchers like me. That’s something I will keep in mind if I plan to pitch any story that might involve any information from the published documents that appeared on major news outlets.

During the Q & A, Snowden talked about the importance of determining what’s in the public interest. “This matters to people, when we talk about mass surveillance,” he said. However, he believes that journalists must use their “public interest judgment” to determine which documents or information should be made available to people through media outlets. Snowden further added that he is not at a position to decide what’s in the public interest. He also told the audience that journalists have the duty to determine what information might cause “harm to particular individuals,” including those who work at governments’ intelligences. The assumption is that responsible journalists will make the right decision that’s in the benefit of the society.

I agree that the archive is a useful tool—mainly for research. Making certain documents available to people raises their awareness about issues that matter to them. As Snowden said, matters linked to mass surveillance and policies related to that “need to be debated.” And they won’t be debated if information is not made available to the public. However, I doubt that the archive will be of great use to journalists. The documents in the archive have been published by media such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Mundo and The Intercept. Would their “public interest judgment” be the same as of other journalists if documents were leaked to them?

Image courtesy of Frederic BISSON.