ARICHAT - The third anniversary of the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) at Telile Community Television gave TELILE 24/7 host Adam Cooke the chance to catch up with fellow participants under the auspices of the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies.
Making her third consecutive annual appearance on TELILE 24/7, Vicki Hogarth of CHCO-TV in St. Andrews, New Brunswick was this time accompanied by Rrain Prior, the news director for Neepawa Access Community Television (NACT) in Manitoba.
Noting that the scope of her work has changed dramatically since New Brunswick lifted its COVID-19 restrictions at this time last year, Hogarth has been kept busy with her weekly five-minute Newsbreak feature, as well as hosting duties for the interview series Southwest Magazine and a series focusing on New Brunswick's municipal leaders, Your Town Matters. She added that the latter program and CHCO-TVs regular broadcasts of the region's municipal councils are helpful to viewers who may still be adjusting to a massive overhaul of the province's local councils as a result of the municipal reform program New Brunswick launched this past fall.
Both Hogarth and Prior spoke enthusiastically of how their current LJI experiences differ from their previous work. Hogarth, who worked in the arts and culture fields for magazines and TV stations in Montreal and Toronto, found herself interviewing guests as diverse as Justin Timberlake, Donald Trump and The Property Brothers prior to her arrival in her family homestead of New Brunswick. Similarly, Prior was a writer for the online edition of The Toronto Star, one of Canada's largest daily newspapers, before she heeded the call of the Neepawa Valley area that she called home in her childhood and early adulthood.
"I planned to come back for a few years, and I blinked, and ten years later, here I am," Prior beamed, adding that her NACT work "is not as different as you'd necessarily think" from her previous life in Toronto.
"Even in a place like Toronto, you're looking for those community stories - you're looking for those personal stories that people want to hear about."
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About LJI
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.
