Unplugged, the CAJ’s newest professional development opportunity, is a regional event organized by local journalists which aims to bring hands-on, in-person, training to journalists in smaller centres, where they can hone the skills and techniques they need to do their jobs.

Want to host your own Unplugged event? Send us your pitch. You might even qualify for some funding to help support the event! For full details on how to qualify for funding, please be sure to read our funding initiative policy.

Upcoming Events

Coming to Kamloops in Fall 2026, Unplugged will be hosting by local journalists in partnership with Thompson Rivers University. More details to follow as they become available.

Past Events

Unplugged: Voices in Durham, held Nov 15-16, 2025, hosted by Durham College (DC) Journalism – Mass Media program, funded by Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL) and the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), was a two-day event bringing together journalism students, media organizations, and community partners to co-create solutions-focused stories that reflect the Durham Region. Now in its fifth year, Voices in Durham expanded with two central themes:

  • Indigenous ways of knowing and being
  • Journalism-school partnerships to address the local news gap

Events, activities and speakers for Unplugged: Voiced in Durham included:

  • Soup lunch hosted by DC’s First Peoples Indigenous Centre
  • Shared organizational mission and lived experiences tied to Community Safety Well-Being priorities
  • Outcomes included student-written stories in The Chronicle, possible publication in Orono Weekly Times, and a feature broadcast on Riot Radio
  • Sessions led by Indigenous Knowledge Keeper & storyteller Jim Adams and peer mentor Eva Ritchie
  • Literature Review, exploring how post-secondary journalism students can help fill gaps in local news deserts
  • Richard Watts, University of Vermont’s Center for Community News — on building a student-powered statewide news wire and publishing impact
  • Gabriela Perdomo, editor of J-Source and co-producer of the Engaged Journalism Conference

Local news matters: A symposium on incubating local news in the Maritimes, was held in Sackville, NB on June 14, 2025, in partnership with the Mount Allison University’s Libraries and Archives. Speakers included keynote speaker April Lindgren, as well as Maureen Googol, Jo-Ann Roberts, Paul MacNeill, Tim Bousquet, Vicki Hogart and more. The keynote address and workshops focused on communities’ need for local reporting, tools for startups, revival of local news and more.

How can we save local news coverage in the Maritimes? That’s the question roughly 70 journalists, community leaders, media experts and citizens aimed to answer on June 14, 2025 at the gathering.

The event brought participants together to talk about what communities need from their news, how new local projects are serving their communities, and what needs to be done to seed the growth of local news projects.

The symposium featured panelists from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI, and beyond, ending with a workshop to help participants determine actions and next steps to bring back local news. That session produced calls for a variety of actions and next steps, and an acknowledgement of the need to gather again for further discussion.

To read more about the symposium and the actions, please read the full report.

The first-ever edition of Unplugged, Unplugged: Essential skills for today’s journalists, was held in Halifax on the weekend of Nov. 23-24, 2024 in partnership with the University of King’s College. Keynote speaker Stephan Maher opened the event with The Value of Journalism in Trying Times. Other speakers included Kim Pittaway, Fred Valance-Jones, Steph Wechsler, Sonya Fatah, Chris Waddell, Angela MacIvor, Don MacPherson, Moira Donovan, Caora McKenna, Tim Bousquet, Maureen Googol, Caroline Wood, and Bruce Wark.