National Observer is a Canadian news website focused on investigative reporting and daily news on energy, climate, politics and social issues.
History
National Observer is described as a "daily news site covering issues like government, the environment, health, climate change, and human rights, all with a progressive bent" in a profile of editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood by Nieman Journalism Lab. During an interview with Canadaland's Jesse Brown, Solomon Wood explained that the original idea behind National Observer was "to counter the influence of the energy industry’s multi-million dollar spending on ads and editorial partnerships with mainstream media through factual independent reporting". According to an article by Vivian Krause in the Financial Post, the National Observer has received funding from The Tides Foundation of San Francisco, and Linda Solomon Wood is the sister of a former chairman of the Tides Foundation. Terence Corcoran in the National Post referred to the National Observer as a "left-wing Vancouver online magazine". National Observer's owner, Observer Media Group, is a certified B Corporation. In October 2017, National Observer teamed up with The Toronto Star, Global News, the Michener Awards Foundation, the Corporate Mapping Project and four journalism schools, for "the largest collaborative journalism project in Canadian history." The "Price of Oil" project was created for the purpose of "tracking oil industry influence in partnership with investigative journalism students from across the country."
Journalists
Bruce Livesey One of National Observer’s first reporters was Toronto-based Bruce Livesey —an award-winning investigative journalist and author, formerly with CBC and Global. One of his first stories for National Observer was How Canada made the Koch brothers rich. The piece was illustrated with a caricature by American artist Victor Juhasz. Originally, the Koch's story was scheduled to run as a TV documentary for Global but, after a promotional campaign, the network decided to pull it without much explanation. Livesey decided to leave Global and join National Observer. His and other National Observer reporters’ coverage of the oil and gas industry’s push to build or enlarge pipelines across Canada has sparked interest amongst politicians, journalists, commentators, academics, NGOs, and social media influencers. An Al Jazeera documentary highlighted the coverage. Terence Corcoran has criticized Livesey as "a master of the inappropriate juxtaposition of fact and conclusion". Mike De Souza In January 2016, Mike De Souza joined the publication, as the Ottawa-based Senior Reporter and Political Editor. De Souza worked previously for Postmedia News Services. In 2012, his investigation into how oil industry-funded research funds at University of Calgary were used to cast doubt on climate change science, received a citation from the National Newspaper Awards. The Montreal native has covered politics for more than a decade at the National Assembly in Quebec City, Parliament Hill in Ottawa and Calgary. Recently, his focus has shifted towards reporting on energy and environment policies in government and industry. He became National Observer's managing editor in April 2016. De Souza broke a story that became known as 'the Charest affair' in July 2016. Through Freedom of Information requests, he discovered that Quebec's Jean Charest gave political advice to members of a federal panel reviewing a major TransCanada Corp. pipeline project in a private meeting while he was under contract with the Alberta-based company. This story sparked reactions across the country and was quoted by dozens of other media outlets, including the Montreal Gazette, Toronto Star, CBC, Le Devoir, and Le Soleil. In June 2017, De Souza was named a finalist for the 2017 Michener Award for his reporting on the Charest affair.
