Alaina Pert is currently contributing to systems change through Unrigged & Harbinger Media Network’s organizational & narrative development. She is a weaver of business strategy, communications, and shared leadership, helping to build fairer structures that centre belonging and solidarity, including innovative startups supported by SEIZE, Concordia’s solidarity economy incubator organization.
Shaping the culture of journalism we need
Progressive narratives for a thriving journalism ecosystem
by Alaina Pert
This piece was selected as part of SHIFT's special edition issue Building Narratives (May 2026), which invited pieces from our community related to "speaking truth to power" in an ever-shifting and consolidating media landscape.
The culture of progressive independent media in Canada has a distinct flavor that stands out and contributes essential probiotics to today’s unhealthy media and informational biome. I always knew this intuitively, but only recently have I had a chance to discover its unique qualities via my involvement with Unrigged, an organization that uses innovative ways to cross-pollinate that culture across Canada. I love witnessing the creative ways that the media coalition uses values anchored in progressive movements to open conversation about independent media in Montreal and beyond.
As a de-centralized network of more than 30 distinct and diverse media outlets, Unrigged aims to strategically build power for narratives that further their members’ values regarding the role of a free press and the purpose of journalism in holding those in power accountable.
They recently experimented in advancing some alternative narratives within the context of an event held in Montreal—the 2nd Independent Media Summit. The purpose of the event itself, the stories, the email messages, the call to actions, and testimonies that were shared all stemmed from the following narratives:
- Innovative business models center journalism instead of profit
- Local independent media owned by the community serves the community’s interests
- Journalists are agents of transformational systems change
Narratives around fast growth and maximum profitability are taking up more space, and are being used to shift public perceptions on the social value of journalists and news itself. Truth and accuracy are too slow and cost too much—trust falls to the wayside as a consequence.
Any given society’s “narrative making” happens in culture, media, and movements; three spaces where all sorts of narratives are created to help people make sense of the world. Those narratives advance certain worldviews and values, which allow different stories and messages to bloom based on the relationship between these worldviews and deeply-held values, permeate widely through society.The infrastructure or organizational capacity required to create and disseminate narratives is constantly evolving to meet our needs. Technologies have changed the mediums, while imagination have changed the methods.
Narrative Initiative's wave analogy as a visual representation of the relationship between values, narratives and stories
As media ownership continues to consolidate and homogenize, more and more narrative-making is in the hands of too few people. Consequently, journalism and the ethical principles it aspires to uphold are in real jeopardy. The infrastructure that enables media spaces to share information, news, and stories has been co-opted by folks with worldviews that don't align with many of the liberal democratic values that help shape “society” as we understand it today.
When we feel an undertow trying to shift our worldviews and pull us into darkness and despair, it is time to reinforce progressive values and uplift hope-based narratives about the media itself!
Narratives around fast growth and maximum profitability are taking up more space, and are being used to shift public perceptions on the social value of journalists and news itself. Truth and accuracy are too slow and cost too much—trust falls to the wayside as a consequence. The many long-held narratives around journalism and journalists within media spaces seem incongruent now that the foundational values they grew from are being replaced.
Using the media to advance narratives that reinforce certain worldviews and values is a strategic way to build different types of power—economic, political, ideological, social, cultural, and military. The power grab doesn’t usually happen overnight, it often happens as part of a process; the of shifting norms. As those norms shift, so do the narratives that become the framework for stories and messages we see circulating around us.
Because I have a different worldview than those who are currently consolidating power, the movement for independent media makes sense to me. I see all the different types of independent media as an emerging bright light within the media ecosystem. When we feel an undertow trying to shift our worldviews and pull us into darkness and despair, it is time to reinforce progressive values and uplift hope-based narratives about the media itself!
If we want independent media in Canada then we are going to use every type of narrative infrastructure at our disposal to “flood the zone” by approaching the informational landscape from all directions with multiple progressive narratives that collectively build the narrative power needed to shape a healthier media ecosystem in Canada.
Movement spaces have narrative infrastructure that is collective in nature. Narrative making in movement spaces happens through shared and interwoven organizational capacity, sourced from different types of actors with aligned interests and shared values. Just look at the movement for wealth hoarding and how successful it has been in using its narrative infrastructure to mobilize folks. The top ten percent of the population holds more than seventy-four percent of the world’s total wealth today.
If we want independent media in Canada then we are going to use every type of narrative infrastructure at our disposal to “flood the zone” by approaching the informational landscape from all directions with multiple progressive narratives that collectively build the narrative power needed to shape a healthier media ecosystem in Canada. We will need to get strategic and target key media ecosystem influencers, ensuring they ingest, integrate, and propagate progressive narratives where they can use their power in shaping the stories being told.
Web of influence
Lots of the ideas we may have about journalism are shaped by influencers of the current media ecosystem. This is how I see the main players:
- Journalists: The creators of journalism work.
- Journalism Consumers: Audiences, communities, civil society organizations.
- Journalist Organizations: Set professional norms and defend working conditions.
- Educational Institutions: Train and do research for journalists, the owners of media structures, and policy and political people in government.
- Government Policy Frameworks and Funding Mechanisms.
- Owners of Physical and Digital Distribution Infrastructure.
- Owners of Media Structures and those that benefit from the Economic Models the Structures are Built on.
Each type of influencer adds to what we come to accept as the culture of news media in Canada. Of all the players in our media ecosystem, there are four, aside from journalists themselves, that should feel the urgency to join in the collective effort to advance progressive narratives: the organizations where they work collectively, the unions that advocate for their working conditions, the associations that advocate for professional standards, and the consumers that value the work of journalism. Other players may not understand the potential for such collective action or why it matters. I believe every media ecosystem actor can and should be organized.
Do you recognize your role in the list above?
I think it is time to activate the progressive narratives that are essential for a thriving field of journalism to bloom and that are needed to seed a media landscape ripe for transformation. Let’s mobilize!
