Welcome to The Public Record – TPR Hamilton | Hamilton's Civic Affairs News Site

November 3, 2014
Welcome readers to a new site for Hamilton news called The Public Record here at www.thepublicrecord.ca.
The mission of The Public Record is simple: to provide informed coverage of Hamilton’s communities and civic affairs to enable all residents to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship by ensuring a more transparent, good civic government that is accountable to all residents of Hamilton.
We’ll focus on providing coverage that other outlets aren’t or can’t. As traditional newsrooms continue to shrink as corporate media focuses upon profit and consolidation, watchdog journalism is decreasing.
The Public Record works to reverse this.
The Public Record is based upon a simple idea: readers will fund and support high quality content that enables them to be informed engaged citizens.
We’re funded by readers to fill the local media gap, without the pressures of corporate media to chase clicks for advertisers by focusing on sensationalism or what bleeds leads.
Because of your support, we’re able to dedicate significant time and effort into deeply reporting and analyzing information.
We advocate for openness, all our work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
We publish the source documents used in our reporting for readers who wish to become further informed and to ensure our work can be reviewed.
We invite readers to check and challenge our work.
You can build on our work and research.
If you need original HD versions of our videos, or any of our work in an alternate format, contact editor@thepublicrecord.ca
All requests are provided free of charge under the CC-BY-SA license.
We are funded by a diverse set of Hamiltonians. We’re grateful for all support, supporters do not have any control over the editorial product or operation of TPR.
We do not engage in “content marketing” and do not provide coverage in exchange for payment of any kind. All our content is produced solely for newsworthiness and public interest – we’ll never take any money in exchange for covering a story.
The Public Record builds on the foundation of the work of Hamilton journalist Joey Coleman who is Canada’s first crowdfunded civic journalist.
Coleman began his crowdfunded coverage in September 2012, having covered Hamilton since 2010, seeing a need for an outlet committed to news for Hamiltonians by Hamiltonians free of the commercial pressures of traditional newsroom.
The Public Record will ensure this work expands and continues well into the future.
I hope you find the new site, and new brand for my public service journalism useful.