What does the future of journalism look like? Rachel Gilmore on carving her own path.
Journalists are up against a lot: paywalls, dwindling attention spans, disinformation, and clickbait, to name a few things. So, what’s the future of journalism?
In this episode of Ampersand, we dig into it with Rachel Gilmore, a journalist and investigative reporter best known for her work on Global News’s TikTok and her own popular digital videos. Rachel has innovated the medium by embracing new digital tools to reach audiences — but not without consequence. She shares her experience in the field and how her hard work has led to threats and harassment by online trolls.
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Caitlin Kealey: Welcome to Ampersand, the podcast helping good people be heard and comms people be better. I'm Caitlin Kealey, the CEO of Emdash.
Megana Ramaswami: And I'm Megana Ramaswami, senior strategist at Emdash.
Caitlin Kealey: So in this episode, I had the huge pleasure of speaking with Rachel Gilmore, who's an investigative reporter and journalist who's best known for her work managing Global's TikTok account.
Megana Ramaswami: Okay as somebody who literally gets notifications for every single video that Rachel does on TikTok and Instagram, I got to tell you firsthand, she absolutely has innovated traditional media and she's managed to reach audiences where they're at: on social media! What did you guys talk about?
Caitlin Kealey: Well, we definitely talked about social media, but we also talked about the nexus of comms and journalism, and we get deep into tough subjects like extremism, polarization, and her experience of being doxxed.
Megana Ramaswami: Rachel's fighting the good fight. And I mean that literally. She's inundated by trolls all the time, given her decision to operate on social media platforms that actually prioritize the trolls instead of protecting its users.
Caitlin Kealey: We certainly talk about that and it's not an easy path that she's chosen, but it's so important.
So let's get into it.
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Caitlin Kealey: So, we start with a fun icebreaker question. Um, what was your first computer or like, you know, early days on the internet, like, like what's your, like formative memory that also dates you?
Rachel Gilmore: Oh man. Uh, we had a computer in the basement that I had to fight with my sisters over who got to use. Um, I remember the dial up connection, um, to try to get on the internet.
And, um, yeah, I remember surfing, like genuinely surfing the web because you could do that. And there weren't a million websites and, uh, looking at really horrific things with my friends that my parents would probably shudder to find out that I looked up. Um, yeah, but it was, uh, it was fun times, you know, chatting on MSN late into the night, uh, you know, flirting with boys.
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Caitlin Kealey: Oh, wait, that was ICQ. Sorry, wrong sound.
Um, yeah, I, I, I'm, I think I'm older than you, but like, I remember when I first got a computer that loaded images off the internet and it would slowly like line by line–
Rachel Gilmore: Yes!
Caitlin Kealey: and it would take forever. Anyways, we are in better, maybe better times now, at least different.
Rachel Gilmore: Definitely.
Caitlin Kealey: Um, so you've been in journalism for years. Do you want to tell us how you got started?
Rachel Gilmore: So I kind of did the old school, old school route, but reluctantly. Um, I, uh, I did go to journalism school, but I wanted out immediately because I didn't think it was for me and I was double majoring there. I was also studying human rights and I wanted to switch to that. Um, but was convinced to just double major and that's what I did.
And then, um, towards the end of my degree, I realized I hadn't had time for any internships because I had been waitressing throughout my whole degree. So I couldn't do the unpaid internships cause I had like, you know, rent and stuff. Um, but I managed to, uh, last second, I was like, you know what, maybe I should give this journalism thing a try, because I do think you can help a lot of people with it.
And it's a really powerful tool in the right hands. So, you know. I'll take a swing at it. And I was like, oh man, I haven't done any internships. So I frantically applied for some and I was accepted, um, to ones that you do if you are in first year and have no experience because I hadn't done any. But the one upside of that is they're not used to having someone who's about to graduate in their internships.
So luckily CPAC, which was one of the internships that I did, hired me briefly, um, contract to contract. And I just basically hustled really hard while waitressing on weekends because I had never knew if I had more than two weeks worth of work in journalism and, uh, CPAC turned into iPolitics, um, through that hustling, and that was my first sort of reporting job in political journalism, and it kind of all kicked off from there, and I was able to quit the waitressing, but there was a very funny period of overlap when sometimes I'd be interviewing a politician on Monday, and I'd end up serving them beer on the weekend because I was doing both.
Caitlin Kealey: Well, you might have got your best stories from the beer serving and less from the interviewing.
Rachel Gilmore: Definitely.
Caitlin Kealey: I needed an internship and I ended up at Frank Magazine in Halifax.
Rachel Gilmore: Oh god.
Caitlin Kealey: So we can talk about that some other time. Cause I'm sure you have questions.
Rachel Gilmore: Yeah, that must've been horrifying.
Caitlin Kealey: I'm a nerd. So I got to learn how to like dig in the registry of deeds and like figure out who had bought land.
Yeah, there was some, some upsides to the, Uh, strange thing that is Frank Magazine. Um,
Rachel Gilmore: Yeah, even trashy outlets can do real journalism sometimes, you know? Every now and then. Good people can do good things in bad places, you know?
Caitlin Kealey: Yeah, I'm the opposite. I started in journalism and didn't want to go to the evil bad side of communications and look where I've ended up. So.
Rachel Gilmore: But then you realize that you wanted to, like, have a life and maybe get paid more than two bucks a day, you know? Yeah.
Caitlin Kealey: Yes, I like eating and sleeping under a roof.
Rachel Gilmore: So jealous. Although, actually, the nonprofit world is a little bit kinder than the corporate journalism world. So I will say that.
Caitlin Kealey: Speaking of which, do you feel excited about journalism these days?
Um, or, you know, You know, do you wish you lived way back in the good glory days of journalism when, you know, reporters got paid and, you know, there were newsrooms with more than three people in them.
Rachel Gilmore: As much as I'm jealous of the pay and the job stability that seems to have existed, uh, even like 10 years ago, um, the glory days to a certain degree also seem to be the days when there will be more than three people working in newsroom, but the vast majority of those are white men.
So I feel like a lot of journalism's glory days, um, might not have been glory days for me and certainly not for some of my friends. Um, and, uh, yeah, I don't know. I, I actually am weirdly super excited about where journalism is heading right now, which I know might kind of be surprising because I have a lot of criticisms of it, but it's only because I believe in it.
And I think it can be so much better because we're at a time where the, I would argue the profit motive that is driving, you know, journalism as a corporation that is beholden to shareholders, which is what Corus is, which is what Bell is, you know, like these, these media companies are beholden to shareholder profits, which is not how journalism is supposed to be.
Um, and I think that we're kind of reaching a bit of a tipping point where that need for, uh, shareholder profit is starting to expose some cracks in that as a model for journalism, for, um, a business model for journalism.
And as a result, we're seeing some people go a different route and try new things and build new, um, you know, infrastructure for journalism. And I'm really excited to be able to live through a time where we see journalism, not so much as the institution that in so many ways perpetuates the existing structures of power, but actively kind of dismantles them and resists them and, um, you know, holds power to account in ways that are more profound than ever before.
I think there's a lot of hope there.
Caitlin Kealey: So my next nerdy information about me is that I wrote my master's thesis, uh, on discussions of the future of journalism through discourse on Twitter, which is the stupidest thing to do. Don't ever do that. Um, but I did that like in 2008 to 2010. And I don't know that discourse has changed much.
Like we still need to innovate and we still need to find new business solutions because the eyeball equals payment equals journalism isn't working, but I don't, are we, are we past, like, have we found a better way yet, or are we still working on that?
Rachel Gilmore: I think we're still working on it. Um, there, there's one aspect to it that I am like a broken record with, um, because I feel like it's a solution that not a lot of people talk about, and I think a lot of people haven't heard of, that is a huge part of what is damaging journalism, and I'm going to try to, like, keep this brief and not boring so that people don't, you know, stop listening.
Um, but it is so interesting because the work that I've been doing with the nonprofit I work for, Check My Ads, has been, um, learning tons about how ads work and how that whole, like, ecosystem of an industry, um, functions. It is a $700 billion industry. So why is journalism that traditionally has needed ad revenue to survive struggling, right? When this industry is bigger than ever?
And the answer to that in large part isn't just that like Facebook and Google are taking a huge cut of it, but it's also that they aren't regulating and they aren't there's no oversight for what ends up being funded by ads and what doesn't. So, because of the way in which advertising gets, like, from the initial advertiser to the individual website, it is like a black hole in between, okay? Like, the vast majority of advertisers have no idea where that money that they spend on having their ads land in certain places actually sees their ads end up.
And there's almost no way to trace it. Like they've actually done studies and something like 3 percent of all of the ad spend that they followed was going to an unknown Delta, which is wild when you consider it's a $700 billion industry. And um, that's why you end up with, you know, disinfo sites making money off of ads.
You know, websites that are R rated making money off of ads from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, which is something I literally witnessed with my own eyes. The US Mint advertising on an Iranian based website that's likely sanctioned. So like, you know, there's clearly an issue with oversight here.
But what's happened in response to that isn't that we're calling for the people who are, uh, you know, so the antitrust trial that's happening in the US right now is Google. It's Google's ad business, and it's because Google arguably has a monopoly — that's what the Department of Justice is trying to prove — over the advertising business.
And because of that, advertisers can't ask for better, can't push for regulation, can't push for oversight, can't push to know where their ads are going. And the result of that is that a companion industry has cropped up called the brand safety industry, and it's so that brands can say, “Hey, I don't want my ads showing up on R rated websites or sanctioned websites or disinfo sites” and these companies are like, “Hey, we can help you do that by say scanning web pages and making sure that your ad doesn't show up on a web page that has the word ‘racism’” because that's a contentious topic.
And what ends up happening as a result of that is a) it doesn't actually work very well. What it succeeds in doing is depriving ad revenue from journalism from legit outlets that are ethical and aren't going to try to be sneaky to get around these, um, brand safety sort of precautions and the unethical websites like disinfo sites have ways to dodge those protections and keep the ad money going.
They literally can share information on the backend with a website that looks totally brand safe and then split the profits. So like it's a, it's a whole mess. And I probably got more into the weeds than I needed to there, but the difficulty is that this is depriving real serious, good journalism of its revenue.
I interviewed a guy who had a music magazine. That had its articles defunded because they included the word song because this was triggering brand safety protections because these lists of the kinds of words that they're called keyword block lists that defund a web page can be thousands of words long and are not updated.
So this is like a huge thing that I'm not seeing people talking about. Like every executive and every responsible newsroom that's actually doing its job and earning its like multi hundred thousands of dollars a year paycheck should be completely seized with this problem and trying to do something about it.
So that's like 1 major thing that we need to see change. And then I also just think that we need braver, independent, like, media cropping up and we're starting to see that happen. And that's an area of a lot of hope for me too. And while there's not a lot of clear revenue streams, I do think that people will subscribe and will, um, you know, find ways to pay for work that they believe in.
So that's the optimist in me, I guess.
Caitlin Kealey: I was reading David Moscrop and he has a call to arms that media is terrible and journalists aren't doing a great job, but that it's our, like, basically it's the audience fault because, um, we will say out loud that we want long form in depth journalism, but where we click is not that at all.
So I think that's, I mean, that's very interesting. Um, does this feed into the misinformation and, you know, the far right issue? Like, is that sort of, are they, do they go hand in hand?
Rachel Gilmore: Oh, definitely. I mean, uh, do you mean, like, does the lack of, uh, willingness to pay for journalism or just the overall funding issues, period?
Caitlin Kealey: The funding issues, the ad, the, the ads —
Rachel Gilmore: Yes, oh my god.
Caitlin Kealey: I, I, I saw your flowchart of, like, here is the black box that is Google and here is how everything just kind of gets spit out.
Rachel Gilmore: Exactly. Um, yes, this is a huge part of the problem, because we, you can literally, like, patch these disinfo sites. Like, I did an investigation and found that Google was monetizing one of the worst disinfo sites in India, um, right ahead of their elections.
And, you know, it's like, this because there's no regulation and oversight and like, you know, the government's forcing these middlemen like Google to do better. Um, disinfo sites are profiting off of ad dollars that if advertisers were actually choosing exactly where their money went, most of them do not want their advertiser, their, um, brands to be associated with these websites.
They don't want to be funding it, but they don't know what's happening. So that is a massive part of the problem. And you know, the fact is that stuff that makes you feel intense emotions is more likely to be clicked on and disinformation often makes you feel rage. It makes you feel scared. And when it preys on that, it makes it something that gets a lot of clicks.
And so if the ad industry is focusing on clicks as opposed to content, that's also a, uh, you know, related issue where it's rewarding that kind of bad faith behavior. And additionally, the social media platforms, like, do you know? How much money I could make if tomorrow I made a video saying like “Why I left the mainstream and uh, you know expose and you know now I'm fully right wing” and like all this stuff if I did that tomorrow I would have so much money, like it would blow up.
I would, you know, get all kinds of like, I mean, just look at the money that's going towards, um, the various, like the infrastructure behind all of these right wing podcasts, for example, that you just don't see behind any sort of equivalent on the left or even, like, center. So there's a lot of money behind this sort of disinfo sphere and a lot of motivation to engage in it.
So whether or not it's actually something that the person who's engaging in this kind of so-called journalism believes, they know that it’s profitable. They know it gets clicks because it makes people scared because it makes people angry. And they know that also, frankly, they're serving the interests of a lot of people in power and that power also comes with money.
So, you know, you can get a lot more backing from wealthy, you know, backers if you are serving their interests. And it's just inherently unethical and it's really sad because I think that, um, you know, the world needs journalism more than ever, but the language of journalism is being co-opted by bad actors to further destroy real journalism and the institutions that it's supposed to be protecting.
Caitlin Kealey: So, speaking of the far right and reporting on it, can you share any particular challenges that you've faced? I don't like, don't re-traumatize yourself too deeply, but I know you've definitely had some challenges.
Rachel Gilmore: Yeah, I mean, they do love to threaten my life. Um, and frankly, like a companion problem to the threats that is actually like, I would say more traumatizing is the fact that the police and a lot of the institutions that are supposed to protect us aren't equipped to adequately respond to those threats.
So it's like, it's one thing to have the neo Nazi tell you they're going to hang you from a lamppost. It's quite another thing to have the police tell you that that isn't a crime and that that isn't something that is worth them doing anything about, you know? And, and I think that that because, because they're supposed to be protecting you and looking out for, you know, citizens who are being threatened and whatnot.
And, um, you know, and even newsrooms, their responses tend to be, in my experience, to further, and this isn't my current employer there, it's so wonderful and I'm incredibly lucky. But my experiences in the past have been that there are responses when I'm getting harassment and hate for my reporting on the far right.
Is to try to pull me off stories that relate to that for my protection and to tell me to shut down my social media for my protection. Those are two things that are effectively punishments and they're what the people harassing me want. Like the neo Nazis and the far right extremists want fewer people reporting on them.
And when newsrooms say for your safety, we're not going to let you write this story. We're not going to, um, you know, we recommend that you private all your social media accounts. That makes my capacity and my ability to report on these issues smaller. And that's actually the more painful, more frustrating thing because it, women are disproportionately targeted with this harassment when they do this kind of work.
Which means that their newsrooms are disproportionately silencing them, because they're responding to what they perceive as an immediate threat, but long term what they're doing is taking women off these beats, telling them to make themselves smaller, and not backing their courageous work, and instead silencing them.
It's, it's really disheartening and really frustrating. Like, I, you expect it from the police, frankly, they don't have a great track record when it comes to protecting women. I wish that they did better. Um, but they, they don't seem overly seized with these issues. Um, but from the newsrooms, from the places that claim to be holding power to account and claim to be being brave, you would expect them to kind of support and encourage the work, um, of reporting on these dark but powerful forces such as the far right and neo Nazis and the increasing organizing we're seeing in those spaces.
So. It's, um, that's really the biggest and most heartbreaking thing that I've encountered. Um, I do also have a lot of guilt sometimes because, because as a result of reporting on these issues, my loved ones have gotten threats and that's, you know, I'm kind of like, oh, if I was working, you know, um, any other job, really, they, they wouldn't be dealing with that.
And like, it's kind of, it's not my fault, but it is my fault. You know what I mean? Like if I, I did this action and then they are paying this price. And if I did not do this action, the bad actors would not know about my family. And it's, it's hard sometimes I'm lucky that my family's really wonderful and really bad ass and they just tell me to like, keep going and, and fight harder and, and report harder, um, when they, they face that stuff, but.
If anything, ever actually, you know, I just, I, it's hard to forgive yourself sometimes when you see it impacting people you love. So I'd say that those are sort of the big things.
Caitlin Kealey: Yeah, that's terrible. And no one should, by shedding the light on the dark spaces, of course, you know, there are inherent risks, but it's important work and it should be supported, not obviously… unsupported is not great English, but we'll just keep going.
Um, So, I mean, it's obviously a terrible dynamic. Is there, there must be a solution to it or a way out? Like, how do we move past it so that, you know, you can safely, other than solving the issue, which sadly I don't think we're going to fix in the next few weeks or anything, you know, is there a solution to this?
Rachel Gilmore: I think there's a certain degree to which, um, this is a question of how do we stop people from being jerks and how do we stop bad people from doing bad things, which is a more existential, you know, thing that humanity has grappled with for forever.
But as long as we want to report on said people doing bad things, I think that there's a number of things we can do to mitigate the harm to the people doing that work. I mean, newsrooms have a huge responsibility here. They need to stop victim blaming their reporters. And I think that sometimes the things that they do that they think are to protect their reporters end up being, uh, an extension of that victim blaming.
So, um, don't tell your reporter to make his or her platform smaller. Don't tell them that they're going to be taken off the beat for their safety. Allow them to make those decisions and just support them as they do it. Provide mental health care. Provide, um, adequate benefits to be able to access that mental health care on an ongoing basis.
Not just like one, uh, you know, conversation with a therapist and, you know, then you never get to see them again because you can't afford another session, or maybe it's like an employee assistance program and so you just never know which therapist you're going to get, you know? Um, I also think that, uh, newsrooms should take on the load of actually reporting things to the police when they tell their reporters that they need to because that's just really time consuming and frankly retraumatizing, especially when the police can be quite dismissive when you say, I'm getting threats online.
Um, you know, I, I had, a police officer or at least the person working the phone. So I don't know if those are officers per se, um, respond to me and say, like, who are you that you would get this kind of threat? It was just like, so odd. It's like, why does it matter? I'm getting the threat, you know? Um, and so like, there's a lot of, you know, potential areas for really unpleasant experiences.
So it'd be really great if newsrooms stepped in there. Um, and I also just wish that, you know, there was a way to get law enforcement to take it more seriously so that people are actually protected. Like, you know, they, they, they should be, um, at least not outright being dismissive, they need to, uh, stop their interpretations of the law that are extremely forgiving to the person undertaking the threats.
Like they have told me that under the criminal code, mafia language, um, can't be considered a threat. So if someone says, “Oh, it'd be terrible if someone broke your leg,” the implication obviously being that they want to break your leg. Um, the police can't take that, um, assumption or can't make that assumption.
So they told me I've had criminal defense lawyers tell me otherwise, and they disagree with the police's interpretation of the law. But, you know, overall, I think that, um, that's something that needs to be rectified because, uh, these guys, these bad actors very much know what the safe place is for them to play within, and they really stretch that to its limits to be able to try to make people feel as unsafe as possible.
Um, Yeah, so I don't know. And I also honestly just wish that like newsrooms and society would take the issue of the rise of far right extremism more seriously, because I feel like a lot of the time there's almost a normalcy bias and, you know, a lot of newsrooms are more than happy to report on, uh, you know, long held, uh, I guess assumptions or prejudices or people who they generally categorize as terrorists, for example, like it's, it's easy to write the stories on, um, or to, to get interest for reporting on ISIS extremists, for example.
But it's a lot harder to get that kind of approval for reporting on homegrown extremism that is not from racialized folks. And I, and I think that that speaks to not only ingrained prejudices within newsrooms, but a bias towards, um, a bias away from challenging that worldview that then turns around and makes it much harder to capture, uh, serious, uh, threats to our society and our democracy.
So, it would be really nice if we could just speak a little more honestly about what is happening, about what there's research for happening, about what, you know, like there are so many extremist groups that are cropping up in Canada and in the US. They are also gathering, like they're doing, I've literally seen footage of them creating these things called active clubs that are for white nationalists, and they are going out into the woods and punching each other, which is like kind of pathetic, but also like the fact that they are gathering in person with violence is a sign of escalation and I just wish that newsrooms took this stuff more seriously.
You can ask anyone who reports on far right extremism. It is a slog to get newsrooms to accept pitches from freelancers on the far right and it always has been. Like I have heard that time and time again from my sources who are journalists in this space.
field. Um, and frankly, my personal experience was that I had to fight tooth and nail for almost every story I did on the far right. And if we don't accept that this is an issue, how are you then going to protect your journalists when they report on it? So it's, it's all kind of tied together.
Caitlin Kealey: Yeah. And I mean, there's comfort in stereotypes, which is why they exist, right?
Like, you know, what, how could we, Canadians are nice. We couldn't possibly be racist and have far right extremists amongst us because we're nice Canadians and that's not how Canadians function.
Rachel Gilmore: Or the idea that extremism is on the fringes and can't, you know, permeate our, um, existing political institutions.
Like we're seeing Pierre Pollievre embrace some of the conspiratorial and, you know, borderline extremist language. And it's frustrating to me that that can't be talked about and acknowledged, um, in the mainstream because it's just so outlandish sounding like it's, and it is outlandish. It's frankly offensive to conservatives because conservatism isn't this extreme thing.
It's just a different ideology of how to make the world a better place. And it is incredibly frustrating to see Pollievre’s brand of politics that is so removed from conservatism be conflated with it. Um, and, you know, I, I just, I think that that is a real failure of journalism and of our, you know, mainstream newsrooms to call out how abnormal that is.
And that fuels all of the issues that I was just talking about because if we normalize this kind of rhetoric and allow this kind of dog whistling and stuff to go unchecked, then it just helps facilitate that normalization.
Caitlin Kealey: Yeah, it's incredibly dangerous. And, you know, when we were talking about earlier, people click, click on things they wouldn't admit clicking on.
I mean, I do click on Donald Trump's stories and I hate myself for it, but I'm like, what did he say now? And I mean, Pollievre’s the same. It's, you know, dog whistle politics and playing to the base and the further right the base goes, the scarier the outcome is going to be. I think you and I could talk literally all day, because this is fascinating and important and something that obviously needs to be talked about a lot more.
Um, I just want to wrap up with the last question. If you know this, this podcast is for helping people do comms better and obviously journalism and comms as much as I, my younger self would have said are nothing alike. There are definitely storytelling similarities. Um, what piece of advice would you give to someone who wanted to excel in your field?
You know, what would you tell them?
Rachel Gilmore: Don't wait for someone to give you an opportunity. You can just do it. Take it. That's the beauty of the era of the internet that we're in. And the advantage of an era that has so many disadvantages is the fact that you have ways to reach your audience that don't require the stamp of approval of a newsroom.
Like you can go out there, you can do the work and get creative. Use YouTube, use TikTok, use Reels, use all of these different methods. As long as you are doing rigorous fact checked, you know, responsible journalism, it doesn't matter if it's coming from, you know, your account or Global News's account.
There's a huge appetite for that kind of work and a huge appetite for people who are doing it responsibly. And, you know, I, I just think that we need to recognize where audiences are and meet them where they're at, because that's our responsibility. Because if we don't disinformers and people who don't do that kind of rigorous research will fill the void.
So it's both a responsibility and a huge opportunity. And I can't wait to see, like, more people take advantage of it because I think that our entire information ecosystem will be better off for it.
Caitlin Kealey: Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ampersand. Thanks for joining us.
For more comms and design tips, sign up for our newsletter at emdashagency.ca and follow us on your favorite podcasting app so that you don't miss our next episode. Ampersand is hosted by Megana Ramaswami and me, Caitlin Kealey, and it's produced by Elio Peterson. This podcast is a project of Emdash, the small agency focused on big impact helping progressives be heard.