Magda Konieczna

I am a PhD student at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research focuses on media economics and political economy -- specifically, the ways in which nonprofit news organizations supplement the news provided through traditional media. I am currently studying journalistic norms at MinnPost, a nonprofit newsroom in Minneapolis, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism in Madison.

I just completed a two-year project examining the presence of global public sphere in Canadian and American television news stories about the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen. I am also a teaching assistant for Mass Media Practices, an introduction to media writing for journalism students.

I have a masters of journalism from the University of British Columbia. My thesis was about the gatekeeping role of online health publications, focusing on the unique way these publications use experts. I also have an undergraduate degree in chemical physics from the University of Waterloo.

In my professional life, I spent about five years as a reporter and copy editor at various Canadian newspapers and magazines. Most recently (until 2009) I was the municipal affairs reporter and blogger at the Guelph Mercury, a daily newspaper in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. There, I started a municipal affairs blog that was a finalist in the Canadian blog awards in 2008.