This summer, two of Southwest New Brunswick’s most visible journalists teamed up to bring viewers something that had been missing from the local media landscape: time.
This Week Uncut, an hour-long weekly news panel show, debuted on CHCO-TV as a forum to examine the week’s top stories with the kind of detail rarely available in short news segments. Hosted by CHCO-TV News Director Vicki Hogarth and The Courier editor-in-chief Nathalie Sturgeon, the program blends the immediacy of television with the context of print journalism.
The panel looks back on stories first reported by CHCO and The Courier--from town council debates to regional planning issues--and re-examines them in conversation.
“The idea was to give people the space to really understand what’s happening in their communities,” Hogarth said in a recent broadcast.
Guests frequently join the table, among them contributing reporters and public officials such as Alex Henderson, senior planner for the Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission. Their participation has given the show a sharper edge, grounding policy discussions in the realities of rural life.
The experiment reflects a larger effort by small newsrooms to adapt. With advertising dollars scarce and social media platforms reshaping how audiences consume information, This Week Uncut represents an attempt to slow down the news cycle. In a region where council decisions and planning documents can shape entire communities, the added context may prove vital.
Add new comment
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.
