Part of cannabis laws and regulations
Dear reader,
We’re less than a month away from cannabis becoming legal in Canada and one thing is certain: Public interest in all things pot is growing.
I’m Michael Snider, an editor on The Globe’s team responsible for distributing our content. Recently, I helped build what we call our cannabis ecosystem.
Cannabis coverage is a major focus area for The Globe and Mail. We believe this issue is extremely important to Canadians and we’re positioning ourselves to be a leader in reporting on this rapidly changing industry.
We’ve been busy, working behind the scenes to create a unique and high-quality reader experience around our cannabis coverage. As part of this work, we’ve taken steps to showcase and organize cannabis stories on our website in a new way.
A screengrab of The Globe and Mail's Cannabis and Health topic page
Ordinarily, stories are organized on globeandmail.com by their corresponding web sections. Stories from the business desk can be found on the Business hub, stories from our health and lifestyle reporters are found on the Life hub. This method of story organization largely mirrors the traditional layout of a physical newspaper.
But cannabis touches every section at The Globe. We have reporters in Report on Business and Globe Investor who focus on cannabis sector acquisitions and stock movement. We have reporters who cover cannabis as it relates to health, parenting and culture. Many of our political reporters closely follow how cannabis legislation is changing and evolving across the country. Cannabis legalization affects all of Canada and so it’s being covered, in one way or another, by our entire newsroom.
Because of this, we’ve decided to do something a little different. We created a cannabis section that houses all of the Globe’s cannabis stories, regardless of which department penned the article. So we created an audience-informed, topic-based section.
To start, we dug into how Canadians were finding their cannabis news and what it was they were searching for. Our research revealed searches for cannabis stories typically fall into one of six categories: news and policy, business and investing, retail and small business, consumers and culture, parenting, and health and science.
This research is informing our reporting and helped us create topic pages based on what our readers really want to know. If you’re interested in cannabis health stories, you will be able to find related stories and information easily. Our six topic pages mirror the search suggestions that came out of our research.
We also wanted to make it easier for readers to navigate between related articles and make it clear that the cannabis story they’re reading is part of a larger ecosystem. This was the motivation behind what we call the Pot Ribbon, a green drop-down menu located above the first paragraph on cannabis articles. When expanded, it offers the reader similar stories and also displays a link to one of our six topic pages.
screengrab of News and Policy pot ribbonSnider, Michael
We’re working to grow and enhance this new cannabis ecosystem on globeandmail.com and we’d like to know what you think. Please explore the topic pages and send us your thoughts. Does housing all of our cannabis content in one spot improve your experience? And if you have ideas for cannabis stories or feedback on any of our coverage, don’t hesitate to message me at msnider@globeandmail.com. If I can’t answer your question or comment, I’ll find someone who can.
And before I go, we also recently launched Cannabis Pro, a daily premium news service geared toward those involved and invested in the cannabis industry. If you are keen to learn more about this innovative business product, you can read more about it in this letter from Cannabis Pro editor Rob Gilroy.