Update: Linda Solomon Wood, editor of the National Observer, disputes the characterization of the Observer as “anti-corporate” and “green.” It is the Review writer’s own analysis and does not necessarily reflect the mandate of the publication. The Observer would rather describe itself as “anti-corruption.” Also, while the Observer did indeed win a CJF award for Excellence in Journalism in 2012, it also won the award in 2014.

Bruce Livesey has been working for 30 years, putting time in with CBC’s the fifth estate, Al Jazeera English’s People and Power and Global TV’s 16×9—all investigative shows. His beat is corporate affairs. In late 2014, when he was researching a story about the Koch brothers, owners of the second-largest private business in America, and their Canadian connections, he uncovered what was only to be expected: big money, American influence and pipeline politics. 16×9 commissioned and approved the story and published a teaser on its website, but in late January 2015, two days before the air date, the show pulled the piece from its broadcast schedule without explanation. Soon, a Canadaland post blamed the documentary’s removal on Global TV’s associations with the oil industry. Rishma Govani, a spokesperson for the network, says the story was “set aside solely for editorial reasons.”

Livesey says that he was later fired because of the Canadaland article, though he maintains he wasn’t the one who leaked the story of his documentary’s removal. He took the Koch brothers story with him when he left. Three months later, the National Observer published the piece as part of the independent publication’s launch.

The National Observer, which debuted in April and markets itself as Canada’s national news source for both environment and politics, has a mandate that’s resolutely green and anti-corporate. Energy journalism in Canada has generally been split—on one side, corporate coverage from energy business reporters in national publications, and on the other, green bloggers and activists. The Observer delivers the attitude of the activists with the quality reporting of national publications. “This is what I like about the Observer,” says Livesey. “It’s a journalistic enterprise, but it definitely has a point of view.”

The news site is the second founded by Linda Solomon Wood. The Vancouver Observer, a local daily she launched in 2006, won the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2012. Following that success, Solomon Wood took the concept of a grassroots, crowdfunded news site and made it national and green.

As a Vancouver-based site, the National Observer has an advantage over publications that have their heads wrapped up in Toronto and Ottawa, says Solomon Wood. Readership quadrupled to 1.2 million unique readers from across North America between April and November 2015. Still, a lack of funds means the Observer, despite its energy focus, doesn’t have an Alberta correspondent. “It’s always been hard,” says Solomon Wood.

A link on the website asks visitors to “support our reporting” with a monthly donation or one-time contribution. A series last May about the April earthquake in Nepal includes sponsored content—a reported multimedia article that promotes Kina, a non-profit organization that educates Nepalese girls. The Observer also asks for donations via letters to its readers, and it relies on advertising, subscriptions, crowdfunding and fundraising to pay for everything—from daily journalism to the salaries of its 10 staff members to its investigative projects. The Tar Sands Reporting Project produced by the Vancouver Observer raised $53,040 by January 2016 with the promise to explore the relationships involved in the tar sands industry—local workers to green activists to First Nations leaders—on the West Coast.

The National Observer focuses on the type of stories Livesey produces and uses grabby headlines to lure people in (and, once they’ve read the article, to donate). When Livesey produced his story on the Koch brothers for 16×9, it was called “The Koch Connection.” For the Observer, it became “How Canada made the Koch Brothers rich.” Other stories he’s written for the site have a similar tone.

The website is a mix of the social activism of Rabble and the headlines of BuzzFeed. But Solomon Wood says that instead of producing clickbait, which drags people in only to disappoint them, she tries to publish stories that only get better once on the page. The investigative team has completed 11 special reports on topics ranging from the global refugee crisis to animals in the face of climate change.

An energy beat reporter might call the website biased toward environmentalists in the same way the Observer might call mainstream newspapers biased toward the industry, says Shawn McCarthy, global energy business reporter for The Globe and Mail. But he simply covers a “different side of things.” Energy reporters at other publications watched the website’s launch with enthusiasm. Most are impressed, says McCarthy. “The Observer is filling an important niche here.”

Rebecca Penty, energy industry reporter at Bloomberg News, agrees. But she says she can’t see a clearly defined strategy from the Observer. Within the jumbled array of stories, from the Nepalese earthquake to senate scandals, it’s hard to define the site’s mission. The website covers the environment and energy industry, she says, but it seems to still be in the process of determining its priorities as a national publication.

Perhaps that’s why, for Livesey, working at the Observer offers freedom. He can write stories about corporations and corruption from his home office, and Solomon Wood gives him the time to follow wherever his research may lead. Livesey adds that he doesn’t have to worry about his stories getting cut because of corporate influence. “When you work in the private sector media, they’re generally not interested in going after big companies,” he says. “With the Observer, that’s never an issue.” Quite the opposite: going after corporations is part of the mandate.

Stephen Leahy is passionate about the environment. So passionate, in fact, that the 61-year-old Canadian journalist is willing to live below the poverty line in his in-laws’ basement apartment so he can continue reporting on environmental injustices.

Those sacrifices seem worth it when Inter Press Service agrees to publish his story about the Ninth World Wilderness Congress in Mexico. It’s November 6, 2009, and Leahy has a huge scoop—a group of scientists has concluded that in order to preserve the earth’s wildlife, more than half the planet will need protection from the effects of climate change.

But Leahy soon learns that four fellow journalists tried, and failed, to sell the same story to mainstream news outlets. Never mind environmental sustainability—what about the journalistic ecosystem? As his colleagues consider careers in public relations, Leahy hatches a plan. He jots down the facts: Canadians want to stay informed about the environment, and he’s a qualified journalist with a loyal following. If traditional publishers won’t pay, then he’ll go directly to the public. Leahy calls his brainstorm “community-supported environmental journalism.”

The crowdfunding website Kickstarter launched in April 2009, about seven months before Leahy attaches a PayPal account to his website. The timing for crowdfunding appears fortunate, as journalists in this country have had to endure a string of massive budget cuts—the Canadian Media Guild reported that roughly 2,000 industry jobs were cut from January to May in 2009. At the same time, environmental reporting had started to lose its permanent home at traditional news organizations.

Some newspapers, such as the Guelph Mercury, have seldom maintained an environmental beat, while others, including The Hamilton Spectator, have seen such coverage decrease. Many newspapers publish sporadic stories from freelance writers and general assignment reporters that tend to focus on political conflicts instead of environmental consequences.

Today, almost six years after it launched, Kickstarter is no longer just a niche option for quirky indie musicians trying to record an EP; it’s a powerful method of innovation. Crowdfunding success stories include the Pebble smartwatch, which raised millions of dollars, and the Coolest, a high-tech portable cooler with more than 60,000 backers. Meanwhile, user-supported environmental reporting is still waiting for its Pebble or Coolest.

Crowdfunded journalism offers the public an opportunity to engage with the material they’re funding and make suggestions before it’s published. But the risks and challenges of journalism by donation are numerous. Can it reach the same number of people as mainstream media? Will its content remain engaging enough to sustain funding? And, finally, can it prevent longform journalism—including quality environmental stories—from getting stuck on the outskirts of the internet?

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Staff environmental reporters were also not afraid to make bold linkages. When smog began to cloud B.C.’s horizon in April 1995, Ross Howard wrote in the Globe that ozone, one of smog’s ingredients, was “the second-greatest cause of lung disease after smoking.” While Howard and Keating were two of Canada’s leading environment reporters, neither had environmental sciences degrees. But their articles conveyed heft and knowledge because they had access to leading scientists and the time they needed to craft compelling narratives.

While Howard and Keating chased acid rain woes, Peter Calamai, a science reporter for the Toronto Star, had his eye on another prize. He wrote with three prominent parts of the paper in mind: front page, page three and a section front in the weekend editions of the paper. “If I got anywhere else other than that,” he says, “I considered it a failure.”

Even before he started at the Star in 1998, he realized that the only way the majority of the population would read his stories was if he “shoved it down their throats.” He believes that it’s even harder for journalists today, because editors no longer push for science-related stories.

What was, until recently, considered mainstream environmental coverage may now be scorned as activism by some critics and politicians. On December 24, 2012, Mike De Souza, then a national political correspondent for Postmedia, wrote a story about the high price of the government’s new fuel efficiency standards. After combing through the fine print of the report, De Souza found that stricter fuel economy standards on new cars could increase road congestion and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Ten days later, in a letter published in The Windsor Star, then-environment minister Peter Kent dismissed De Souza as an activist.

Being called an activist generally doesn’t bother the reporter, but it may have bothered his bosses at Postmedia. De Souza called out the federal government’s relationship with oil companies, and held the Conservatives accountable for casting doubt on climate change and allegedly muzzling scientists. Although De Souza didn’t let what he calls the “intimidation tactics” distract him from his investigations, Postmedia laid him off along with two full-time political reporters at its Ottawa bureau in February 2014. “It wasn’t explained to me,” De Souza says after a long pause. “I was told there were budget cuts, but I wasn’t ever given any official reasoning why I would be picked as opposed to other people who remained in the bureau.”

While De Souza had to deal with the pressures of the government and advertisers, not all environmental journalism is like this. So what does that look like? During question period on December 9, 2014, the Conservatives withdrew support for a carbon tax and pointed out that no other countries have regulations on their oil and gas sector. The next day, DeSmog Canada countered the prime minister’s claims with a colourful infographic titled “Carbon Regulations Around the World.”

DeSmog found that more than half of the world’s population live in countries with some form of regulation on carbon consumption and production. The piece linked to news articles and official government websites from countries such as New Zealand, India, Switzerland and Japan. Harper’s denunciation of a carbon tax came shortly after the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru, where the majority of nations agreed to eliminate the wholesale use of fossil fuel energy by 2050.

Mainstream news outlets did cover that story. Ottawa Citizen reporters Jordan Press and Jason Fekete held the government accountable for failing to regulate the gas industry. Using several quotes from Liberal and NDP opponents, they revealed that Canada is unlikely to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

While the crowdfunded version lacked access to government sources, the Citizen story omitted the connection between government inaction and the consequences it might have on the environment. But neither DeSmog nor the Ottawa paper offered a full picture of cause and effect.

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The launch of the Tyee Solutions Society (TSS) in 2009 offered a new approach to journalism. “Solutions journalism” refers to rigorous reporting that tackles both issue and response. Using this framework, reporters such as Geoff Dembicki interview sources from oil companies, government representatives, environmentalists and academics to bring together different perspectives, opening a dialogue so opposing groups can work toward a consensus. “One of the most surprising things I found was that many of Canada’s largest oil companies actually support a price on carbon dioxide,” he says. Effective solutions journalism employs the same techniques as investigative journalism. When big companies claim they want a price on carbon, Dembicki scours through internal documents to find proof. “The result was I was able to present a story that wasn’t just taking these companies at their word,” he says, “but really looking into how they were preparing for climate change.”

Following the success of TSS, co-founder David Beers is willing to experiment with both journalism and how it’s funded. He employed this successful model when he launched the campaign to take sister site The Tyee national. By creating an in-house crowdfunding campaign called the “builder program,” the goal is to ensure that The Tyee can continue producing quality journalism. The program crowdfunded over $120,000 in 2013 and used that money to successfully establish a model that accounts for 20 percent of the site’s earnings.

In part, this crowdfunding success stems from using it as a tool for expansion, instead of simply as a means of survival. “It has made our relationship with readers that much closer,” explains Dembicki. “They can see now that by reading The Tyee, and by contributing a small amount of money, they were really able to improve the reach of a small independent publication.”

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From artists looking for investors to finance their next work, to teachers seeking classroom materials, to journalists looking to fund investigative projects they believe are in the public interest, crowdfunding has helped many entrepreneurs around the world realize their visions. The global crowdfunding economy grew to over $5.1 billion in 2013. But one of the biggest problems with using this technique for journalism is that in an age of free information, readers are no longer accustomed to paying for unpleasant news.

Although Leahy asks the general public for money, his regular donors are journalists, scientists and environmentalists. But when reporters fund other reporters, there’s a concern that the work will not reach the broader public. And if journalists must spend more and more of their time on crowdfunding campaigns, they have less time to devote to researching and writing.

Crowdfunded journalists must juggle their passion for environmental journalism with the dreaded task of fundraising and hope their stories don’t get labelled as activism or pushed to the fringes of the internet. Peter Fairley, a freelance environmental reporter based in Victoria, B.C., has experience with crowdfunding through the Society of Environmental Journalists. As a volunteer board member, he watched fellow journalists rush to assist their peers when the SEJ struggled to stay afloat. But he insists crowdfunded journalism doesn’t always reach a mass audience. “It’s preaching to the choir. It’s being financed by the choir. It’s the choir financing itself.”

Howard doesn’t think the specialized approach is financially sustainable and wants to see a shake-up in mainstream reporting. Climate change is one of the biggest stories of our time, yet mainstream coverage is often reactionary or riddled with conflict. Howard believes that without a well-educated citizenry, stronger environmental regulations are unlikely. But an informed public is unlikely without bold and prominent environmental coverage in mainstream news.

Still, Howard sees a role for crowdfunding. He hopes it can strengthen reporting by paying for research that will lead to stories in mainstream publications. That’s the only way he thinks crowdfunded journalism will reach the masses. “I don’t think it will radically change anything else,” he says. “It will just strengthen these stories so that they are so good they can’t be denied.”

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that a September 30, 1981 article in The Globe and Mail stated Canada’s governments were petitioning the U.S. to lower its carbon emissions. The campaign was to petitioning to stop the production of acid rain. The Review regrets the error.

In his book, Company of Adventurers, Peter C. Newman is at times a very enchanted writer. The book is the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its crucial place in Canadian history. While the work is extensively researched, one prominent anecdote reveals a shining example of enchantment leading to error.

Newman presents the tale in the first page of his foreword. Two men were hiking in northern Saskatchewan far from any other human contact. One night as the pair were preparing their camp they noticed something glinting high in a spruce tree. One climbed the tree and brought down, “a weathered copper frying pan with the letters HBC still clearly stamped on the green patina of its handle. The two men had their dinner and sat around the campfire, cradling and examining the intriguing object, asking themselves why anyone in his right mind would have hung it 40 feet up a black spruce.

“In one of those moments of heightened sensitivity that sometimes telegraph the flash of understanding, the truth dawned on them simultaneously. They broke into smiles that collapsed into belly-pumping laughter. Of course. The frying pan, much like the one they had just used to make their meal, must have been hung on a sapling by some long-gone Hudson’s Bay Company trader. It had inadvertently been left behind the next morning, and the little spruce quietly continued growing-and growing.”

Anyone with any knowledge of trees might already see a problem. Unfortunately Newman didn’t and continued to promote the story, which he saw as a “graphic reminder of how deeply the Hudson’s Bay Company is woven into the memories and dreams of most Canadians.”

Last Nov. 4 Newman again related the anecdote-this time on CBC Radio’s Morningside. Listeners wrote in to point out that the frying pan could not have reached its position in the tree simply through the tree’s growth.

One wrote that “spruce trees, in common with all other trees, grow from the top. A frying pan or anything else for that matter, attached to a branch five feet above the ground 200 years ago would still be five feet above the ground today no matter how high the tree had grown in the meantime.” Another used examples to illustrate the point: “Old tap holes in maple trees don’t migrate skywards. Old telegraph transformers along logging roads stay at transformer height. The tree house that you built as a kid probably seems lower now, not higher.”

Tree experts agree with the letter writers. As Philip Brennan, management forester for York Region of the Ministry of Natural Resources explains, “The way a spruce tree grows is by extending new shoots from buds on the old branches. By late summer, the new shoots have formed their own buds, so they can’t extend anymore. The shoots can’t extend, so the frying pan can’t move.” Brennan says the possibility of the frying pan’s transference from shoot to shoot would be “a small miracle if it happened once,” but this method couldn’t possible carry a frying pan 40 feet up a tree.

At the University of Toronto a similar tall tree story is told in second-year forestry classes. “We use it as a fallacy that people hear,” says Dr. T.J. Blake, associate professor of forestry. “It’s an old wives’ tale that’s been spread around.”

Somewhere in northern Saskatchewan stands a black spruce that was almost a legend.

Every so often even the best writers become too enchanted with a story. They are captivated, and perhaps a wish not to disturb the tale causes them to overlook any faults that might be found by less involved observers.

In his book, Company of Adventurers, Peter C. Newman is at times a very enchanted writer. The book is the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company and its crucial place in Canadian history. While the work is extensively researched, one prominent anecdote reveals a shining example of enchantment leading to error.

Newman presents the tale in the first page of his foreword. Two men were hiking in northern Saskatchewan far from any other human contact. One night as the pair were preparing their camp they noticed something glinting high in a spruce tree. One climbed the tree and brought down, “a weathered copper frying pan with the letters HBC still clearly stamped on the green patina of its handle. The two men had their dinner and sat around the campfire, cradling and examining the intriguing object, asking themselves why anyone in his right mind would have hung it 40 feet up a black spruce.

“In one of those moments of heightened sensitivity that sometimes telegraph the flash of understanding, the truth dawned on them simultaneously. They broke into smiles that collapsed into belly-pumping laughter. Of course. The frying pan, much like the one they had just used to make their meal, must have been hung on a sapling by some long-gone Hudson’s Bay Company trader. It had inadvertently been left behind the next morning, and the little spruce quietly continued growing-and growing.”

Anyone with any knowledge of trees might already see a problem. Unfortunately Newman didn’t and continued to promote the story, which he saw as a “graphic reminder of how deeply the Hudson’s Bay Company is woven into the memories and dreams of most Canadians.”

Last Nov. 4 Newman again related the anecdote-this time on CBC Radio’s Morningside. Listeners wrote in to point out that the frying pan could not have reached its position in the tree simply through the tree’s growth.

One wrote that “spruce trees, in common with all other trees, grow from the top. A frying pan or anything else for that matter, attached to a branch five feet above the ground 200 years ago would still be five feet above the ground today no matter how high the tree had grown in the meantime.” Another used examples to illustrate the point: “Old tap holes in maple trees don’t migrate skywards. Old telegraph transformers along logging roads stay at transformer height. The tree house that you built as a kid probably seems lower now, not higher.”

Tree experts agree with the letter writers. As Philip Brennan, management forester for York Region of the Ministry of Natural Resources explains, “The way a spruce tree grows is by extending new shoots from buds on the old branches. By late summer, the new shoots have formed their own buds, so they can’t extend anymore. The shoots can’t extend, so the frying pan can’t move.” Brennan says the possibility of the frying pan’s transference from shoot to shoot would be “a small miracle if it happened once,” but this method couldn’t possible carry a frying pan 40 feet up a tree.

At the University of Toronto a similar tall tree story is told in second-year forestry classes. “We use it as a fallacy that people hear,” says Dr. T.J. Blake, associate professor of forestry. “It’s an old wives’ tale that’s been spread around.”

Somewhere in northern Saskatchewan stands a black spruce that was almost a legend.