Editorial: Planting down roots
The Link is finding steady ground after years of transition.
Over the last three volumes, we’ve experienced high highs and low lows as we’ve worked to strengthen our publication and create a more ethical workplace for editors and contributors alike. We’ve adopted new policies and a more equitable pay structure to address internal issues and ensure that anyone can work at The Link.
This year will look slightly different. As opposed to the sweeping reforms of the past few years, we hope to nurture the changes made by our predecessors and ensure their longevity within the publication.
In Volume 43, The Link moved back to a newspaper format after five years of publishing as a magazine, increasing the workload for editors as they began publishing a new issue every two weeks.
Volume 43 was cut short with the publication of the final editorial titled “The Link Has a Problem,” which highlighted critical issues in the paper’s foundation. Editors were pushed to their limit due to understaffing, high workloads and critically low compensation, resulting in a culture of privilege at the paper.
To address these issues, The Link launched the Contributor Freelance Fund (CFF) in Volume 44. Initially deemed a pilot project, the fund ensured that everyone who contributed to the paper would receive financial compensation for their work.
While the paper was taking strides towards becoming a more ethical publication, we still made mistakes during the volume. This led to factual errors, an article retraction, and a public commitment at the start of Volume 45 to take public accountability and to do better.
Over the volume we’ve updated our mandate, implemented new policies, and committed to extending the CFF, now integral to the very fabric of The Link, into Volume 46. Through the tireless work of past and current editors, we’ve done our best to push this publication into becoming something better.
This has not come without sacrifice. The CFF has undergone adjustments to ensure its continuity. Since Volume 44, three editorial positions (outreach coordinator, features editor and coordinating editor) have had to be cut. We’ve also spent the past two years fighting to secure solid external funding—like a fee levy increase—which would allow us to ensure the fund’s permanence. Still, we bear this cost gladly—as both a token of gratitude to our contributors who give their all to The Link, and as a symbolic gesture of our commitment to fair compensation for student journalists everywhere.
Over the last volume, The Link was fortunate enough to receive recognition for our work and secure external funding, as well as a graduate-student fee levy. Throughout all these years of change, we’ve remained steadfast in our goal to create reporting rooted in alternative and advocacy journalism, and to hold our administration and unions accountable.
If you’ve read this far: thank you.
Thanks to you, our readers and community, we get to write stories that matter and maintain a voice in Montreal’s vast media landscape. We remain committed to serving you in every way we can, as we continue building on the foundations laid over the past years of reform.
As you flip through the pages of the Reorientation Issue, we hope that you see our ongoing dedication to this mandate that The Link has held since its inception.
Dozens of editors and hundreds of contributors have given their time, energy and passion to The Link over these past years to allow it to grow and become what it is today. It is due to their sacrifice that this masthead can afford to work here today.
As we emerge from a period of change, we aim for this volume to represent refinement and steadfastness. We hope to carry the work of our predecessors into a new era of The Link and to ensure its longevity. As the future remains uncertain, The Link is working towards planting down roots and crystallizing the efforts of editors past.
Volume 45’s managing team had one main aspiration: to leave The Link better than they found it. We are eternally proud and grateful that they did. We hope to carry the torch they handed us forward and keep the legacy of their work alive for the rest of this volume and for the many more to come.
This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 1, published September 2, 2025.
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