Dear friends of My Country Talks,

Hello and welcome to our monthly newsletter. With February behind us we are looking forward to an exciting spring ahead. We have news about Europe Talks 2024 and updates about our next big event, The World Talks. But first, catch our project team, Sara and Hanna, in two talks planned for March. 

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The World Talks: meet the media partners

This past month we have been hard at work getting ready to launch The World Talks. In our last newsletter we highlighted some of the partners who have already joined our media network for The World Talks. This month we would like to take a moment to also shine a light on some of the amazing indie and startup media organizations that will be taking part. 

These outlets are producing some of the most innovative journalism out there today, while also amplifying local voices, and dismantling bias in the newsroom.

• The Green Line is a local news startup from Toronto that is working with Torontonians to find solutions for local issues.
• Unbias The News is a new media that describes itself as "a feminist cross-border newsroom." They are working to break down bias in media as well as structural barriers for journalists.
• Red/Acción is an innovative new media platform from Argentina that centers participatory and constructive journalism.
• The New Humanitarian started as a project from the United Nations. Today, they are an independent outlet reporting on humanitarian issues around the world.

Do you work for a media outlet? Would you like to learn more about how you can join the network? Email Hanna Israel at hanna.israel@mycountrytalks.org

Connect with us in March

Digital Media India

MCT project lead Hanna Israel will be taking the stage at Digital Media India on March 17. She will be speaking about our dialogue format and how MCT can help newsrooms connect with their readers while also fighting polarization.

Will you be there? Reach out to schedule a meeting! You can email Hanna at hanna.israel@mycountrytalks.org

Lightning chat: Readers = resource

Featuring real readers is a great way for newsrooms to find new stories and constructively report about divisive political issues. But it can be hard to know where to start. Join MCT project manager Sara Cooper on March 7 for a lightning chat about best practices for reader centered stories, together with the team from Britain Talks at The Mirror. Learn more and sign up here.

New projects on the horizon

We’re so excited to announce that we have received funding from the European Commission for Europe Talks 2024. Starting in March of next year we will host dialogue weekends around Europe to create a public debate ahead of the European Parliament elections. We will be launching Europe Talks 2024 together with Gazeta Wyborcza, the Leading European Newspaper Alliance (LENA) and the European Cultural Foundation. 

We’re also looking forward to two more My City Talks events this year, funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung. Learn more about My City Talks and our work here.

What we're reading

For journalists, covering conflict and war in a constructive way has rarely been as important as today. Take a look at this report by the Bonn Institute to get a sense of how to cover conflict and war in a constructive way. Based on interviews with media users and journalists, they’ve found that news avoidance is best understood as a self-defense strategy against psychological stress and not as indifference to current events.