Why subscribe?

There is a layer of media production that most people never see, because it happens before what they’re watching exists. A director calls a camera. A producer decides which version of reality goes to air. An editor cuts thirty seconds from an interview and changes what the interview means. These are not neutral choices. They are arguments—about what matters, who speaks, and what citizens get to know.

I spent twelve years in those rooms, training the next generation of creators in the journalism world. Now I study what comes out of them.

The Frame is a newsletter about democratic legibility: the capacity of citizens to read, interpret, and act on the information systems that govern democratic life. I publish roughly every two weeks, in plain language, about the research and the production realities that most people on each side of that divide never hear from the other.

I am an Assistant Professor at the RTA School of Media (The Creative School) at Toronto Metropolitan University, where I teach media production and research misinformation, AI in journalism, and the concept of democratic legibility I’m developing. Before that, I worked in audio, live multi-camera, documentary, and sports production.

The Frame is for journalists, scholars, students, and anyone who takes media seriously—and suspects there’s more to see about it than what is being presented, unintentionally or not.

Thanks for reading and hope you join :)

—AJ Cordeiro

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