Midcoast Morning: The State of Local Journalism Pt. 1

🎧 Listen in your podcast app: Apple Podcasts / Google Play

Transcript:

[Intro on the project]
[00:00:00] Jesse Woodward: Hello, listener, station manager Jesse Woodward here. Years back in 2019, I received an email from the Community Radio Fund of Canada about this thing called the Local Journalism Initiative, aka the LJI. The LJI is a federal program meant to assist media organizations in hiring local journalists to report on civic affairs in underserved communities, being somebody who cares about journalism and working in media,  
[00:00:33] at the time, I knew this was something we needed in Nanaimo and in our broadcast community. Local newsrooms had shrunk or disappeared. In my years of living in Nanaimo, we were underserved. I wanted to start a nonprofit newsroom to fix this. I wrote the grant. I ended up getting the grant. And ultimately, I ended up hiring Lisa Cordasco, a veteran CBC journalist out of Victoria, with years of reporting experience under her belt and experience in hosting a morning show.  
[00:01:05] We were to start a live morning news and current affairs program called Midcoast Morning, and we were to launch March 15th. 2020. And then the pandemic happened. Our small non profit team was sent scrambling to keep the station operational while everything was uncertain in the world. Priorities had to shift internally.  
[00:01:26] Our volunteer hosts pre recorded their programs from home. Only staff had access to the station, and even then, we mostly all worked from home while neighbors banged on pots and pans. The LJI project changed to a top of the hour newscast with pandemic numbers and updates on other news in the community.  
[00:01:46] A live morning show was out of the picture for now. Eventually, 2020 blew by, and it was 2021 all of a sudden. Lisa Cordasco is wrapping up her contract and heading home to Victoria. With some leftover LGI funding, we were able to create at least a pre recorded version of the original morning show concept.  
[00:02:05] Mick Sweetman hosted while I did the production and editing. I applied for another round of funding to keep the project moving, but we were denied due to budget constraints. We managed to do a few more episodes of Joe Pugh, now host of People First Radio, taking the lead over the summer of funding from Canada Summer Jobs.  
[00:02:24] A third round of LJI funding opened, and again we didn't make the cut. Nothing wrong with the application, just not enough money available. So it goes with grants. The project was over. With that, I put my dream of a non profit news department on the back burner for 2022. I had to prioritize operational funding for the station after not asking for funding from our listeners over much of the pandemic.  
[00:02:50] Then, new grant opportunities came, when another Community Radio Fund of Canada grant called Radiometres started to allow for funding to support the creation of new, I submitted an application to fund Midcoast Morning. Again, we failed to secure funding, but with feedback from the CRFC, we eventually secured a year of funding with our next Radiometers application.  
[00:03:16] Funny enough, we received some surprise funding from the local journalism initiative earlier this year. Finally, we could start our non profit newsroom. And none of this work would have been possible without the support of our listeners. May the stories we cover on Midcoast Morning over the next year keep you informed.  
[00:03:36] I can't wait to hear what you think. And now, here's Midcoast Morning with its new theme song, new host, and new format.  
[Episode Intro]
[00:03:49] Lauryn Mackenzie: Hello and welcome to the first episode of the newly revamped Midcoast Morning, CHY's news and current affairs program. I am your host Lauryn Mackenzie. Welcome to our inaugural episode. With the launch of this program we are going to first set out to understand the state of local journalism today in a two part series.  
[00:04:09] What's changed over the last decade? It's an industry that has seen rapid change in how people consume their news. It's also an industry that has seen declining ad revenue, resulting in shrinking newsrooms both local and national. I'll be sitting down with Julie Chadwick and Lauren Kaljur from The Discourse to discuss this and hear their perspectives.  
[00:04:27] We will also touch on what it's like to run an independent media company and hear their thoughts on Bill C 18, the Online News Act.  
[Interview]
[00:04:42] Okay, to start us off, what are your names and what are your titles?  
[00:04:46] Julie Chadwick: So I'm Julie Chadwick. I guess my title would be like lead reporter for the discourse Nanaimo, which we started, I guess it's going on three years ago now, which is actually really cool to say that because it's been a steady three years.  
[00:04:59] Right now, the kind of stuff that I'm doing is Um, primarily, like a lot of investigative work, we do a lot of issue based reporting. So, um, we try to be really responsive to what residents in Nanaimo want to hear about or want to hear about in more depth. So it's not as much chasing the latest story as it is providing the deeper context for stories.  
[00:05:20] Lauren Kaljur: Yeah. So my name is Lauren Kaljur and I'm an editor with, uh, the Discourse in Nanaimo, but also, um, some other outlets and, uh, Of course, community publishing network. So that's, um, kind of our, our, I guess our umbrella company that has within it, um, many outlets. And, uh, so I also work on the interior side where we have the run, which launched last year.  
[00:05:47] We also have a new acquisition and level scope. So I get to support the team over there as well as some independent news. And yeah, so I work a little bit all over, but broadly, I'm an editor and I also focus. My time on audience engagement, which is a big part of our business model, which we can maybe touch on.  
[00:06:07] Lauryn Mackenzie: How long have you been working in journalism and can you describe your background and experience in journalism? What inspired the two of you to become journalists? So I guess my journalism probably started back just right out of high school. I think it was probably the last year of high school, I, I realized that I wanted to get into writing and journalism at the time seemed like a viable career option.  
[00:06:26] Julie Chadwick: So I got involved with a project, um, with Nanaimo Youth Services, uh, called Primus, I think it was, and they just basically wanted us to do a project in the community that would benefit youth. So we ended up starting a youth newspaper, which was called The Mind's Eye, and that ran in all the high schools.  
[00:06:42] That was probably very late 90s, 98 I think it started. Um, and that went for some time and that was probably my foundational experience of, of learning. But I moved on to the, The Nav, um, and was the editor there for a year. And then after that, freelancing stuff and then I got hired on. at the Nanaimo Daily News after pestering them for a long time to, I think I started as a columnist, but I really wanted to work full time as a reporter.  
[00:07:09] So because of my experience with the Mind's Eye, because I'd done a lot of layout stuff, I actually got hired as both the entertainment editor and a reporter, which is very weird thing because I was kind of like a cub reporter as this as it's called but also doing editorial stuff and and laying out the paper in that and then from there I basically left and worked on a book after that.  
[00:07:32] I I did some freelance again. I worked on Magazine and in town then basically, yeah, my next work specifically in journalism was with The Discourse.  
[00:07:42] The idea we're gonna do some pop up coverage in town. Other folks in the discourse including Lauren and one of the editors that's moved on, was hearing a lot from people after the closure of the Daily News that there was a real news gap in Nanaimo and that there is a real need for more reporting. So The Discourse folks decided to try and do some pop up coverage and it was received really well.  
[00:08:03] And then that ended up I moved from kind of freelancing to doing contract work and now working full time.  
[00:08:09] Lauren Kaljur: Yeah. So I was always, uh, really interested in journalism. I, um, I studied political science, uh, early on in, in my, um, university time and was super interested in journalism, but, uh, was a little discouraged by the job prospects.  
[00:08:25] So I didn't pursue it immediately. Um, but I actually got my starting campus radio at UBC at CITR. I ended up taking over a radio show. Um, don't ever look it up. It's embarrassing,  
[00:08:36] Julie Chadwick: I didn't even know this.  
[00:08:39] Lauren Kaljur: And, uh, it was called the end of the world news and I would just was just kind of messing around on there, but absolutely loved it.  
[00:08:46] And I'm pretty sure that's probably like how I got my foot in the door at UBC to do my master's with the journalism program there. Yeah. And then actually, I think it was my first year at UBC. Doing my journalism degree where Erin Miller, who's a co founder of the discourse, she came and presented just about like what they were working on and how they were trying to re imagine journalism and, and kind of create more solutions, focus more in depth.  
[00:09:11] Stuff that was like, uh, focused on engagement and like encouraging people to be part of the journalism process and inform the stories that were covered and like have this kind of circular conversation, um, going on with, with journalism. And I was super inspired by that talk. And I, I, uh, ended up getting hired, uh, pretty much right after I graduated from the program with the discourse actually as an environment reporter.  
[00:09:37] And, uh, have worked there ever since. Um, my entire journalism career, save for a few, like, side jobs, has been almost entirely in independent media.  
[00:09:45] Lauryn Mackenzie: Can you share some examples of impactful stories you've covered in your career and what made them stand out?  
[00:09:50] Julie Chadwick: I think just some of the most impactful stuff, if I'm going to speak more generally, has just been connecting with people that I never thought I would normally connect with.  
[00:09:58] One of the stories, I, I, for some reason this one always sticks out for me, but, um, I mean, you can imagine talking to people after really painful things in their life has, you know, you would definitely connect with them. But also, for example, like stories of the daily news that I used to do that would be.  
[00:10:15] Just your run of the mill stories. So, for example, like, um, Miss Nanaimo, the Miss Nanaimo pageant, um, which we covered every year, and we did like a lot of kind of generic stories on it. And I remember one time I was talking to the woman, I can't remember her name right now, but the woman who kind of was in charge of it, she probably still is, and we got chatting, and then after a while she started telling me about her deeper motivations for doing it. It turned out that, you know, as a child, she had a hard time at home and was taken in by this other family and the ways in which they had mentored her and helped her out really changed her whole life. And that was why she was so engaged with the Miss Nanaimo stuff.  
[00:10:49] And so when stories like that come out, it's really It's really beautiful. Um, more recently, I think covering a lot of the housing issues in Nanaimo has felt really impactful because I feel like we have really at least guide some of the conversation around it or, or engage. In the conversation really meaningful ways where we try to be pretty solutions oriented.  
[00:11:12] So we looked at what some of the solutions are out there and this is something that my work with the discourse has been really interesting for me because some journalism are like we're sort of trying to push a new way of Doing things and a lot of the older way of doing journalism is kind of often labeled as extractive.  
[00:11:30] So you go in and You take a story and you kind of fly out again or whatever. And there isn't always a lot of like aftercare and that kind of thing. And also it's a matter of like reporting on something but then not engaging with the impacts of that in terms of like you, you can analyze a story but then you just leave people with it.  
[00:11:50] Whereas the solutions part that we're working on is to really engage with using journalism as a tool to keep that conversation going. So after that series and another, another series that I did, uh, we had like a community forum afterwards that felt really impactful just in terms of, um, it's hard to always gauge your impact and stuff, but it just, it was good to be able to keep the conversation going with people and, and.
[00:12:19] I think that's something we really want to stay focused on.  
[00:12:21] Lauren Kaljur: I would echo what, what Julie said. I think that, uh, what's most rewarding, I mean, discourse, we're, we're always talking about impact. I think sometimes traditionally in journalism, it's like you do the story and you walk away, but we're always looking to find ways to like actually see how the journalism can make a difference.  
[00:12:39] And, uh, often that involves like really listening to what people. I think our solutions and I think what's most valuable, like with the example of the senior housing reporting, like I think sometimes as journalists were very reliant on kind of like expert voices and like similar kind of voices that we're used to hearing a lot because it's kind of easy to reach out to those people.  
[00:13:02] But we really emphasize getting in touch with like just community. People like people with lived experience who maybe don't have a formal title associated, but they have lived experience with whatever we're reporting on. And they have the best story ideas. They have the best like insight on what is kind of needed to move an issue forward.  
[00:13:24] And, um, yeah, I just find it. It's just constantly, uh, just so rewarding to get to listen to folks. And so that was really, um. Definitely the experience with the roundtable that we hosted, and it was really neat to get, um, other kind of players involved. We had a couple, uh, we had a council member of City Council.  
[00:13:43] We had someone from the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition, um, and then a couple other, uh, just, like, kind of stakeholders who were there to listen to the seniors talk about what they andisty Uh, wanted to see just like broadly and they came out with some really brilliant ideas and we were able to kind of compile that into a like a summarize, summarize it in a story that kind of highlighted what solutions based off.  
[00:14:07] So, so, yeah, I think, like, again, and again, I think that's definitely what's most rewarding is just to get the chance to talk to people. out there in community, listen to what their insights are. Like the experts are great and they have a place too, but the lived experience that's the most interesting to me.  
[BREAK]
[00:14:24] Jesse Woodward: Midcoast Morning is made possible by the Community Radio Fund of Canada's Radiometres Fund and listeners like you. Support Midcoast Morning and CHLY'S non profit news department today by becoming a sustaining donor at CHLY.ca/donate. Local news can't survive without your support.  
[BREAK]
[00:14:44] Lauryn Mackenzie: You've both been around to see newsrooms, both local and national, come and go over the last decade. Can you speak to your experience in this, from your perspective, and perhaps why it's happening?  
[00:14:54] Julie Chadwick: So, uh, I was around, I'm trying to think, it was probably 20, maybe late 2012, early 2013 that I started at the Daily News. So I guess I would have, like, right through that time would have been working there and then also...  
[00:15:09] Can kind of remember and compare it to what it was like when I was there. Um, I guess in the late nineties, 'cause I was in the Office of Ferret, we used to do the layout of the Mind's Eye, the youth newspaper. And it was, it was carried as a, as an insert in the Daily News. So we, um, worked in the offices there.  
[00:15:26] And so from then, You know, it was kind of like a huge warehouse that we worked in. Yeah, very bustling and huge. I mean, even the fact that they, at the time, um, it was Doyle McKinnon and Nigel, I can't remember his last name right now. They were the, um, the managing editor or the editor in chief and the publisher.  
[00:15:47] And they were, they were so enthusiastic, um, when we came to them with the idea to do this paper. And they, they really provided a lot of guidance and like, There was reporters and I remember this one photographer in particular would, like, just took so much time with us because back then it was, we were scanning photos in the flatbed scanner and like a negative scan, aging myself here, but, um, yeah, yeah, so late 90s.  
[00:16:13] I would say it was still like, uh, definitely I remember talking because I was so curious about everything. I remember talking to the circulation guy and he was saying, you know, our numbers are kind of dwindling and we're trying to get more subscribers and blah, blah, but it was still like a yeah, like fairly healthy at that time.  
[00:16:28] And I think it's remarkable that the newspaper was flexible and quick enough on its feet and that, that might have been due to these particular, this particular editor and publisher, but that they could do something new like that. Uh, they liked the idea of course that it was getting into high schools and it would kind of increase their reach, but also, you know, they, they put in a lot of work, like it wasn't just a free a free ride kind of thing.  
[00:16:56] So that's significant because when I later came to work for the paper, obviously, you know, you fast forward to somewhere around 2013, I think was when I started full time. One of the biggest issues I would say, obviously, besides things like changing technology and the internet and all of that, and the way that the internet impacted things like classified ads, which I think a lot of people don't think about, but that was like a pretty big revenue stream for papers, at least, you know, in the late 90s.  
[00:17:24] But if it you know, historically, it always been a pretty big revenue source. And so as that switched to going online, in some ways that, that finance, like that, that portion of money was useful, because I would argue, and I might be totally wrong here, but I would argue it's kind of more democratic to have just lots and lots of little bits of money rather than being entirely dependent on advertisers, which it also was but It's kind of a neat way to have one revenue stream.  
[00:17:54] I guess probably similar to CHLY having like donations and stuff It's like, you know, you're providing a small service for small fees so as that started to falter the biggest thing I think was that there were, me and Lauren were kind of talking about this yesterday, but there were ways in which I think the newspaper could have been more innovative and, and print media in general could have been more innovative and not just in terms of maybe implementing paywalls early on and making that a normal thing, getting like, you know, finding a way to monetize content early on instead of just kind of dropping the ball on that.  
[00:18:27] But also there was just other things that could have been done even pretty late in the game to change things, but I feel like the model was so kind of static and stuck in old ways of doing things that is almost like, I don't know, like almost like the old guard would rather it just die than try to do things in new ways.  
[00:18:48] One of the ideas I remember being thrown around at the time, let's say this was around maybe 2014 or so, um, our editor at the time, the managing editor, not the editor in chief, um, Phillip Wolfe, he was, he was really great, like, really, really good to us and, um, often, like, looked out for us. And protected us from some of the, um, crazy ideas of, of our editor in chief at the time.  
[00:19:15] But, um, he had this idea of, of expanding the paper and doing sort of an island wide paper and that our advertising could, um, you know, be more island wide and that that would bring in advertising from other Other cities on the island, um, and he had another idea of possibly even running it as like partnering with the Times Colonist and maybe doing like a whole island edition or having the Nanaimo as like one of the sections in their paper and that they could distribute through the whole island.  
[00:19:44] So, and, and, you know, he was coming from a ton of experience and stuff, so there'd be some logistics on how to figure that out. But just some of these ideas are just really, really cool and if like if the paper had been a little bit more flexible. And a little more innovative, like, like they were back when I first got involved.  
[00:20:03] I think we potentially could have saved things. I don't know what kind of machinations were going on behind the scenes in terms of when Black Press acquired the paper. I don't know if it was intentional to shut the Daily News down. Uh, and keep the bulletin because it was cheaper to run, or, um, we were unionized, so I don't know whether that was threatening in terms of us having good wages and, and benefits and stuff.  
[00:20:29] Um, so maybe that was, you know, maybe those things couldn't have been entertained because there was just this, uh, idea, you know, that our days were numbered kind of thing. I remember also proposing ideas like, I had, I was in charge of the entertainment section and we did a once a week section and so I was talking to the editor at one point, not, not Philip, but the editor in chief, um, Mark McDonald, I was talking to him about, you know, like we have a daily sports section, I could really do a lot more with the entertainment section, there's so much events happening in Nanaimo, right, um, you know, I could at least do a twice weekly section, I have so much content, and, I said, you know, like, I don't know how much money, I wanted to pitch it in a financial sense, because I knew that's what he would listen to, and I said, I don't know how much money the sports section is earning, or what advertisers you have, but like, every small theatre group in town has a budget, even the tiny ones, for advertising, and, you know, if we just did, like, covered a few more things, I just, I just feel like it could be a chance for increased revenue, and, you know, he just wasn't open to that, and so I talked to the  
[00:21:26] Andrea, Andrea Rosetta Taylor. Yeah. She was, she was really cool. I talked to her about it and she immediately got it. Like she was like, yeah, that's a great idea. So she got going on doing a special insert kind of booklet type thing about all the different theater groups and all the entertainment stuff in town.  
[00:21:45] And, um, she got a bunch of advertisers for that and stuff. So this was more of like a special one off thing. And I remember the day after. It came out, or maybe even the day it came out, is like right around the same time Mark wrote this editorial totally blasting the arts as this like, I can't even remember the actual content of it now, but it absolutely pissed so many people off.  
[00:22:08] And, and I just remember thinking, what are you doing? Like, it was all ideological, right? There was no financial motivation there. It was kind of like, are we running this as a business or not? Because I just couldn't, I just couldn't understand. Why he would sort of torpedo it like that and, and again, like, yeah, a lot of it was just kind of nonsensical.  
[00:22:30] I remember, um, Andrea was pretty upset about it, too. So yeah, there was a lot of things like that that I thought, like, yes, broadly the industry was and is really in a state of change. But I also felt like, you know, maybe in my fantasy or something, if it could have been run more like a workers collective or if the journalists could have had a lot more say in how things were being run, or even just the managing editor who himself had a lot of good ideas, like the on the ground people doing the work, I feel like we could have, we could have still made a go of it, you know, so we can, we can go into like what some of the, maybe some of the broader industry challenges are, but I also feel like.  
[00:23:11] lack of flexibility and, and lack of like ability to change and use new models was part of the problem.  
[00:23:19] Lauren Kaljur: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in the Comox Valley on Comox First Nation Territory. We used to have the Comox Valley Echo and the record when I grew up and only one of those papers exists now and certainly the resources available to, I believe it's just one reporter.  
[00:23:36] But you know, it's that you can certainly see the impact in the coverage. There's only so much one person can do. And yeah, I mean, it's such a similar story everywhere. And, uh, you know, in Cowichan, when we launched, um, in, I believe it was 2019 formally, Jacqueline Ronson, who's also our editing editor, she was the founding reporter in Cowichan.  
[00:24:00] And the initial story that folks really wanted her to tell there was a story that was not being covered by the the sole paper that existed there and the allegation was that it was because of an advertising conflict. So it was around a racetrack that was causing a lot of noise and nuisance to the neighboring community, like the neighborhood and that racetrack was a was an advertiser in the paper.  
[00:24:24] And so Jacqueline was actually able to kind of explore that and uncover that through her reporting that there was certainly Um that relationship that was hindering the coverage and actually after her investigation came out the paper did actually Start to cover the issue a bit more in depth. So, uh, so yeah, what's super interesting to me is just that like You know, as, as you know, The Discourse is very, very deliberate about not trying to recreate the reporting that's out there, but the former model where you would have like a, a presser or news announcement, and then all the papers would be there covering the same thing.  
[00:24:59] Like, we just see that as ridiculous and super inefficient. We have such limited resources in this industry. We're very deliberate about making sure that what we're covering is something that is not being covered elsewhere. Uh, we do a lot of community surveys and, um, research to make sure that, that, that we're being true to that, uh, commitment.  
[00:25:17] And so, when we go into communities, like launching in, in Cowichan and Nanaimo, more recently Kamloops, um, We are, we're, we're, we're deliberately asking people like what, what's not being covered. What, what can local media do a bit better? So those types of questions are super interesting to me. And again, and again, the, like, there's just like such a through line and what you hear from people.  
[00:25:43] And, um, yeah, certainly the, um. Sometimes, like, concerns about conflicts, things that aren't being covered, is something that comes up quite frequently. Generally, the arts are another area that, like, has seen, uh, cuts in most communities pretty, pretty quick. So that's, like, uh, definitely a gap, especially in communities like Nanaimo, where the arts are so rich.  
[00:26:03] There's just so much happening. Um, yeah, and just more, kind of, like, yeah, just in depth, more investigative work that's often the first to go in a paper when, when resources are limited. Yeah, what's really interesting to me is just, uh, that the themes are, are very similar across all communities and, uh, it's really wonderful to be able to start to kind of step in to where those gaps are.  
[CREDITS]
[00:26:28] Lauryn Mackenzie: That's the end of part one of our two part series on the state of local journalism. Part two of our conversation will air next Wednesday, September 20th on CHY 101. 7 FM and will drop as a podcast the same day. You can find more information about The Discourse and where to sign up for the newsletter at thediscourse.ca. You can sign up for CHLY's newsletter at CHLY.ca/subscribe for updates from our news department and more. Thank you to Julie Chadwick and Lauren Kaljur for coming in and speaking to me. I'm Lauryn Mackenzie, host and producer of Midcoast Morning. Jesse Woodward is our executive producer, and Arby Fru is our technical advisor.  
[00:27:03] Our theme song is First One by local Nanaimo band Waste Management. You can find more of their music on their Bandcamp. Support local artists by buying their music. If you have a story you would like us to cover, Email us at news@chly.ca.  
[00:27:16] Jesse Woodward: Midcoast Morning would not be possible without funding from the Community Radio Fund of Canada's Radio Metres program and listeners like you.  
[00:27:24] Midcoast Morning is a project of CHLY's non-profit news department. Support non-profit news in Nanaimo and on the Salish Sea by making a donation at chly.ca/donate.  
[00:27:37] Lauryn Mackenzie: This program acknowledges and gives thanks to Snuneymuxw First Nation as we broadcast and podcast from their traditional territory. Thanks for listening.