Langara Journalism Review • Issue 26 • May 2022

SPRING 2022 – NO. 26

LJR.CA

The Heat is On! Climate journalism gains ground in a warming world p.30

Digital Bites

How bloggers and influencers are eating away at traditional food criticism p.18

TikTok’s Moment Is short-form video the future of reporting? p.22

Political Target Benson Gao fights to save his reputation from global harassers p.6

Diversity Driven

CBC’s Kiran Singh adds his voice to the call for more newsroom representation p.32

Jeani Read was The Province newspaper’s first full-time rock critic, a lifestyles columnist, and the author of 1986’s Endless Summers and Other Shared Hallucinations. Her husband, Michael Mercer, was an awardwinning playwright and script writer. Their legacy to young writers is Langara Journalism’s Read/Mercer Fellowship.

The spirit of thoughtful, enquiring journalism lives on.

ENDOWMENT CREATES JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIPS

2022 2017 FELLOWSHIP FELLOWSHIPRECIPIENTS: RECIPIENTS:

The Jeani Read-Michael Mercer Fellowship for Journalism

Melanie Green (CBC): A series on(Vancouver professional burnout and how Nicolette Colosimo, Claire Wilson Sun): Young B.C.

Students was established to encourage students to continue

residents difficulty a family doctor face it affects are thehaving physical, mentalfinding and emotional healthand of British

their pursuit of journalistic excellence through mentorship.

serious gaps in their health care as a result.

Columbians.

This endowed fund provides four fellowships annually worth $7,500 each. Successful applicants will receive support for approximately two months while they produce a major work of journalism, such as an in-depth newspaper

Graham Abraham (Vancouver International students, Clare Hennig (CBC): A seriesSun): on the lost art of play, why this especially from India, they are exploitedto byreclaim education loss matters, and the say growing movement theagents healthy motivated profit. pursuit ofby play.

story, or series of stories suitable for publication in a

Fellowships other media outletsSun): will be Bala Yogeshawarded and Stuby Neatby (Vancouver A announced series on at

newspaper, magazine, or on the web, or for broadcast on the

ainternational future date. students and their growing financial importance

radio. Journalism students may apply for this award in their

to B.C. post-secondary institutions.

final term. Fellowships will be awarded in the Spring.

For more information visit www.langara.ca/journalism.

Bonnie Lee La Madeleine (Vancouver Sun): A series on noise in our society and how the pitch of that noise is rising.

Contents // Spring 2022 18

Under Review

The rise of influencers and bloggers has changed the face of food criticism. For traditional journalists like The Globe and Mail’s Alexandra Gill, that’s not a welcome development.

by Emily Lyth

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TikTok Takes Off

Newsrooms are constantly adapting to new technologies— and for many, the popularity of short-form video presents a novel way to report and share stories.

by Alaina Saint Amour

P O RT RA I T S ( T O P T O BO T T O M) : ET U VI E RE M R AK P O R ; A L AI N A SA I N T A M O U R

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Stirring it Up p.18 29 Climate Chroniclers

After several years of extreme floods, forest fires and other natural disasters, the need for more environmental reporting has never been clearer.

by Lucas Jornitz

32 Due for Diversity

A growing number of journalists in B.C. are speaking out about the need of local media to amplify BIPOC stories and boost newsroom representation.

by Sena Law

A new online magazine— launched by two journalism veterans—aims to revive the art of cultural reporting in B.C.

by Sena Law

35 Do the (Side) Hustle

A fragmented media landscape and our growing embrace of the gig economy means one thing: more journalists wearing multiple hats.

by Alaina Saint Amour

p.35 L JR.C A

S P RI N G 2022 L A N GA RA J OU R N A L IS M R EV IEW

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Contents // Spring 2022 Trust is the Antidote

How to restore faith in media in an age of extreme distrust.

by Maxine Ellis, p.12

Out of Stock

Why original photography is on the decline in newsrooms.

by Lucas Jornitz, p.13

A Beacon for Community

Online news finds an eager audience in Burnaby.

by Patrick Wachter, p.14

At What Cost?

Why B.C. reporters are asked to pay for public information.

by Emily Lyth, p.15

Investing in Communities

A look at new measures being used to keep local reporting alive across B.C.

by Christi Walter, p.16

How to Talk to Cops p.6

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P O RT RA I T : A L EX A NT R O BU S

War of Words

Benson Gao Bingchen has been the target of an organized global harrassment campaign.

His story raises important questions about the protections that exist (or don’t exist) for targeted journalists.

by Alex Antrobus, p.6

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Often on the front lines of controversy, journalists could stand for some good legal advice.

by Christi Walter, p.17

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Mental Health in the Lead

In the wake of COVID-19, the health and wellbeing of many journalists has taken a hit.

Some are finding ways to fight back and put self-care on top of the agenda.

by Christi Walter, p.8

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Career Crossroads

There has long been movement between the worlds of journalism and communications.

In the past couple of years, however, the movement has become a stampede.

by Patrick Wachter, p.10

Moving Images How photographer Alec Suriyuth made his bike an indispensible work tool.

by Etuviere Mrakpor, p.38

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/// EDITOR’S NOTE

Editor’s Note

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ur world is constantly evolving—and so with it is journalism. Change, more so than ever, represents an undercurrent in this edition of the LJR. Our stories about new ways of reporting and delivering content (TikTok, p.22), new beats to cover (climate change, p.30) and new efforts at representation (diversity, p.32) highlight important shifts within the industry as we emerge from a global pandemic.

The Langara Journalism program itself is also undergoing a fundamental change: this magazine represents the final print edition of the Langara Journalism Review, part of a new approach to how journalism will be taught at Langara. A focus on digital storytelling and communications skills promises to help future journalists adapt in our ever-changing media landscape.

As we worked on this edition, we tried to encompass all this change in a way we could be proud of. We’ve had the chance to tackle stories that haven’t received much attention over the last couple of years, and we were able to do most of our work faceto-face—a refreshing change after two years of Zoom calls, Slack messages and Google Docs files. Though we still use those tools, we’ve realized that communicating and collaborating in person has been invaluable to our development as new journalists.

While the LJR may be gone for now, its legacy and principles will live on. We are endlessly grateful for this chance to connect with each other, as well as with the journalists we had the privilege of interviewing. It is our hope that the tradition of longform journalism prevails and that stories about our industry continue to be told—no matter the platform.

THE LJR TEAM PUBLISHER

Matt O’Grady D E S I G N C O N S U LTA N T

Catherine Mullaly EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Emily Lyth MANAGING EDITOR

Sena Law A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R S

Christi Walter and Lucas Jornitz D I G I TA L E D I T O R S

Alex Antrobus and Patrick Wachter C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R

Alaina Saint Amour D E P U T Y C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R

Patrick Wachter PHOTO EDITOR

Alaina Saint Amour PRODUCTION MANAGER

Patrick Wachter S TA F F P H OT O G R A P H E R

Etuviere Mrakpor CONTRIBUTORS

Alex Antrobus Maxine Ellis Lucas Jornitz Fay Lam Sena Law Emily Lyth Etuviere Mrakpor Alaina Saint Amour Patrick Wachter Christi Walter L JR.C A

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War of Words How a harassment campaign targeting Benson Gao Bingchen has raised broader questions about protections for journalists story and portrait by ALEX ANTROBUS

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or over 12 weeks in the fall of 2020, a nondescript culde-sac in suburban Surrey became very different when journalist Benson Gao Bingchen became the target of a directed harassment campaign.

Gao’s home is located in a typical quiet neighbourhood—but for a period of time it turned into anything but.

Dozens of people were leading chants, filming Gao’s home and accusing the journalist of being a spy and agent for the Chinese Communist Party.

Gao is a long-time member

of the news media, having been a working reporter for over 30 years. Starting in the late 1980s, Gao reported on Chinese financial and economic news in Beijing; he then immigrated to Canada, where he wrote for the Global Chinese Press, which publishes news across B.C. and Alberta for Chinese-language speaking Canadians.

Gao says that his harassers are followers of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese real estate magnet who has positioned himself as fighting the Communist regime. According to reporting by LJR.CA

Journalist Benson Gao Bingchen inside his Surrey home; (opposite) protesters gather outside Gao’s home in September 2020

Joanna Chiu from the Toronto Star, there have been a number of videos circulating on Chinese social media that depict a man who reportedly resembles and sounds like Guo listing off names of supposed traitors and spies for the Chinese state.

Guo, according to network analysis company Graphika, is at the heart of a wide-ranging disinformation network.

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peaking through his interpreter and friend Jimmy Yan, Gao expresses frustration with the protesters.

“If [I] was kind of a politically elected public icon, an official, that may be a different case. However, police treat the protest as if it is independent, like a local issue,” says Gao through his translator. “A group of people want to voice their anger against the CCP, but if that’s the case, if [I] was a CCP agent, the protesters should actually report [me] to a Canadian intelligence service.”

What happened to Gao is just one example of targeted harassment efforts toward journalists—something that the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) is urging the Canadian government and law enforcement officials to address.

Exact statistics on journalist harassment are hard to find, acknowledges Brent Jolly, national director of the CAJ, as there is currently no centralized method of tracking threats.

Just two years prior to Gao’s incident, in June 2018, Surrey talk show host Ashiana Khan was shot at in her car after speaking out against local gang violence. This incident only amplified the danger of being an outspoken media figure in B.C. For Gao, the ongoing harassment he endured came to a climax on Nov. 25, 2020, when the protesters launched an unprovoked attack on Gao’s friend Louis Huang. The assault was caught on Gao’s security camera, and shows two protesters dragging Huang to the ground and repeatedly kicking him in the body and head, just outside Gao’s residence.

Further frustrating for Gao is the overall lack of police response from Surrey RCMP. He compares his experience with that of Premier John Horgan, who was targeted by environmental protest organization Extinction Rebellion outside his

PH OTO (RIGH T): C OUR T ESY OF T HE BR EAKER NEWS

home in February 2020. In that case, the protesters were swiftly forced away by police, with three members of the group being arrested for mischief.

“A group of people want to voice their anger against the CCP, but if that’s the case, if [I] was a CCP agent, the protesters should actually report [me] to a Canadian intelligence service.”

-Benson Gao, journalist “This protest lasted for 77 days. So this is extraordinary,” says Gao. “And compared to what happened in front of Premier Horgan’s home, where protesters got arrested right away and detained. But the police in Surrey—the RCMP—they allowed such harassment to continue in a cul-de-sac where residents didn’t have any opportunity, didn’t have any avenues.

So [myself] and Mr. Huang are very disappointed.”

In response to Gao’s critcism over how his experience with harassment was handled, the

Surrey RCMP told the Langara Journalism Review they were not able to provide any comment as assault charges were laid in this investigation and the file is now going before the courts.

“We do however sympathize with the complainant and the area residents who were affected by the protestors,” wrote the Surrey RCMP in an unsigned email statement. “If someone feels that they were treated unfairly, they can make a complaint through the Surrey RCMP website and it will be investigated.”

Jolly is very aware of the dangerous environment that exists for journalists and public figures in the media spotlight.

And he says that there are efforts underway by the CAJ to address the growing issue of harassment.

“I do think that there is an acknowledgement by those in leadership (of media organizations) that they have a role to play in protecting their employees from the deluge of hateful messages or harassing content,” Jolly says.

For all the recent progress, much more can and should be done to protect journalists just doing their job, he says: “There’s still a long way to go.”

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Mental Health in the Lead As concerns for workplace culture and wellbeing rise post-COVID, journalists are advocating for access to counselling and care—and a less intense working environment story by CHRISTI WALTER illustration by SENA LAW

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elsie Kilawna had to quit a story she was investigating because, for the first time in her life, she faced depression.

“I was finding it was because I was digging into these deep, hard stories and not giving myself time to process it,” says Kilawna. Kilawna works for IndigiNews, an Indigenous-focused news outlet whose Okanagan chapter provides local news for the Syilx Okanagan Nation, of which she is a member.

At the end of May 2021, the remains of 215 children were found on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, sparking a Canada-wide investigation and a devastating reckoning about colonialism and trauma in Indigenous

communities. Kilawna says the discovery was an awful experience for several members of the team.

“Our mental health was challenged completely that month because we were reporting on things that directly impact our families,” she says.

The past year was a traumatic one for many British Columbians. The province experienced a deadly summer heat dome, devastating wildfires and floods, as well as the remains discovery that struck a blow to the nation’s core. All this is on the back of a global pandemic.

Journalists in B.C. are bearing witness to all of it.

It’s exactly what journalists are supposed to do. Being a witness to the world around them is an unofficial, yet highly LJR.CA

treasured mandate. But who takes care of the witnesses?

In June 2020, a survey of 73 journalists from international news organizations, led by the Reuters Institute and the University of Toronto, found that 73 per cent of respondents who had worked on news stories directly related to the pandemic were suffering some level of psychological distress.

Fifty-two per cent of those who were employed by established media companies had been offered access to some form of counselling. By contrast, freelance journalists and employees of smaller outlets are likely to have fewer readily available options.

The pressures of journalism are not going unnoticed in Canada either. A new survey

titled “The Taking Care Survey” was started in 2021 by Matthew Pearson, assistant professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism, and Dave Seglins, a veteran journalist, in partnership with the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma. This survey aims to determine the viability of a career in journalism today. As of April 2022, the results had yet to be published.

“People are desperate to find ways to make this job more sustainable, better, healthier for themselves,” Pearson said in a video on the Canadian Journalism Forum website.

To care for her own mental health struggles, Kilawna went on a two-week vacation. As the cultural editor and “senior auntie” at IndigiNews, Kilawna says she takes pride in taking care of the rest of the staff by ensuring they get enough sleep and are taking time off to recharge.

When it comes time to care for herself, though, she credits the flexibility of her job, which allows her the option of taking a break when she truly needs it. She describes IndigiNews as a distinct newsroom in that they don’t track hours, and

they view self-care as a component of work. “[Self-care] is still work. It still pours back into the work you’re doing,” she says.

A new awareness about mental health and workplace culture may be forthcoming. Kilawna says IndigiNews has been coming into other newsrooms to speak about “decolonizing journalism” and advance ideas about finding a healthier work culture.

Kilawna believes cutting down on practices like quotas for five stories a day would be a good start.

“When you’re fully available—you’ve eaten, you slept,

you had a walk in the morning, you’re feeling grounded—those all go into showing honour and respect for your source, and also for yourself and for your news outlet,” she says, adding that exhaustion, burnout and poor mental health negate strong journalism.

“When people are like, ‘I work so hard,’ I’m like, ‘Good for you, but that’s not a flex anymore,’” Kilawna says.

As conversations about burnout in the workplace become more mainstream, it is only natural to reflect the same way in the journalism industry.

“We need good heart to tell the good stories,” Kilawna says.

Kelsie Kilawna, the cultural editor at IndigiNews, puts priority on giving staff time to rest

“When you’re fully available—you’ve eaten, you slept, you had a walk in the morning, you’re feeling grounded.”

-Kelsie Kilawna, IndigiNews

PH OTO: C OU RTE SY OF KELSIE KILAWNA

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Tina Lovgreen, formerly of CBC Vancouver, moved to a communications job at TransLink; (opposite) ex-Global News anchor Robin Gill now works at Talk Shop Media

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Career Crossroads As newsroom budgets shrink, the ranks of communications companies are growing story by PATRICK WACHTER

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any journalists are leaving seemingly stable jobs in the profession to seek jobs in communications. Robin Gill, who had a prominent role as weekend anchor for Global News’ Global National show, left journalism in December 2021 to take on a new challenge as vice-president of Vancouver PR firm Talk Shop Media.

Despite being at the top of her game when she departed, Gill’s switch into communications wasn’t without reason.

Work-life balance is often difficult to achieve in journalism. News anchors in particular often have to work evening and weekend hours in order to accommodate the news cycle.

Gill says that one of the most notable changes between her communications and journalism jobs are the work hours.

“I worked weekends for 15 years, and switching careers into communications allows me to finally have weekends and a social life,” says Gill.

Layoffs, budget cuts and newsroom closures have become common in modern-day newsrooms. Bell Media, which owns a variety of local news outlets including the Vancouver Sun and CTV News, shut down its national chain of TSN sports radio stations in early 2021—an abrupt decision that came as a shock to many of its employPH OTO: C OU RTE SY OF ROBIN GILL

ees. Gill says changes like this haven’t gone unnoticed.

“The monetary resources in newsrooms have steadily declined year over year,” says Gill. “As someone who worked as a journalist in the 1990s, it’s a frustrating industry limitation that all newsrooms face.”

Gill says that another reason why she was ready to move on from reporting was the increasing presence of people in management roles who were not ready to lead a journalistic operation.

“There are people who are at the top of the food chain who are not qualified to be leaders—managers aren’t qualified to be producers—and we put them in those positions,” says Gill, “because we can’t find people, or we’re not doing the right homework to find the right people.”

Given the state of the industry, other journalists have begun making the switch to communications as well. Mike Killeen, who was a broadcaster for over four decades, retired from his anchor job at CBC Vancouver in 2021 to join his wife in a position at Killeen Communication Strategies.

Tina Lovgreen also left a job at CBC Vancouver after seven years of employment as a multimedia journalist, and joined the TransLink communications team in April 2021.

Lovgreen’s career change from journalism to communications was made in part due to the current landscape of the news media industry.

“I think it’s a terribly difficult time for news,” says Lovgreen.

“You know, we know that newsrooms are shrinking and budgets are shrinking.”

Despite imminent budget cuts in the industry, Lovgreen says the decision to leave CBC was a difficult one.

“I love being a journalist; it was such a privilege. And I really enjoyed doing that for so many years,” says Lovgreen.

“But for me, it was just time to see what other opportunities are out there and to find something that I was passionate about, and transit was a great fit.”

Some, it should be noted, also can’t stay away from journalism: Randene Neill, who spent 18 years at Global News, left for communications in 2016 before returning to CityNews 1130 in November 2021 as a morning radio co-host.

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ovgreen now works alongside a number of people who also have backgrounds or education in

journalism, which adds to the appeal of the new job.

As for Gill, she says that anyone can become complacent working the same job for a long period of time. Ultimately, she says, journalism and communications share many of the same intrinsic qualities.

“Change is good—and in a lot of ways, communications is very similar to journalism,” she says, comparing the two jobs.

“I’m still trying to tell stories. So it’s similar, but it is making my brain think for sure.”

In her new role at Talk Shop Media, Gill says she’s found a much better balance between work life and personal life. However, the change has prompted her to reflect on the nostalgia she still feels for working in a newsroom. That feeling was especially strong during the first few weeks of her career transition.

“I missed the rush of filing a story with a deadline of 2:30 in the afternoon. And good luck finding an interview before nine or 10 in the morning,” says Gill.

“So it was stressful for sure. But I do miss the rush. I miss the rush of breaking news.”

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Trust is the Antidote How faith in journalism can be restored in an era of extreme media distrust story by MAXINE ELLIS photo by ALEX ANTROBUS

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lacards displaying slogans such as “the media is the virus” or “media are the enemy of the people”—on full display during recent trucker protests and anti-mask rallies—highlight an issue that has been plaguing Canadian journalism for years: public distrust.

According to a survey conducted by the International Polling System of Society (IPSOS) in 2021, only 54 per cent of Canadian adults trust what they see on broadcast television newscasts; similar trends can be seen across media.

Michelle Gamage is a Langara Journalism alumni who

frequently writes for The Tyee about climate change in B.C. In her work, Gamage says she often comes across climate deniers who are either conservative about the idea of climate change or explicitly deny its existence.

“If I ever write about anything to do with the Trans Mountain pipeline, I get a certain amount of trolls who show up on my Twitter who just want to yell about how everything that I say is wrong,” says Gamage.

Unprecedented global events like the COVID-19 pandemic have changed how traditional media outlets report

COVID-19 protesters outside the Vancouver Art Gallery in October 2020

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the news. Despite these developments, when it comes to how trust in the media has changed in recent years, Gamage says she hasn’t noticed a significant shift in reader attitudes.

“I think people who dislike the media have always disliked the media,” she says.

Francesca Fionda, a freelance investigative journalist and adjunct professor at UBC, says the expansion of the media landscape has affected how people perceive news.

“There’s so much more information available to people now, it can feel overwhelming, and hard to decide and figure out what information is trustworthy out there,” says Fionda.

“One of the things I think that’s changed is just the sheer volume of information that people have to sort through. Someone has to do a lot of work to figure out if a source is trustworthy or not; it can do a lot of harm to our media ecosystem.”

According to Gamage, having empathy and building rapport with readers and sources is essential to building public trust in media.

“When people want to gripe about how they can’t trust mainstream media, I get to just be like, ‘Oh, yeah, me too.’

That helps kind of put me on their side,” says Gamage.

“When people just have complaints, it’s worth listening to them rather than arguing.”

Gamage says that credible sources make credible journalists, and a healthy

dose of skepticism when collecting information will discourage any sources who are looking to promote their own personal agendas.

“Even if you have a really good rapport with a source, you still have to be like, ‘Oh, could you send me the link for that?’

Or, ‘Where could I find out more information about that?’” says Gamage.

For Fionda, bridging the gap between distrustful news consumers and journalists is all about transparency and establishing intentions as a reporter.

“Journalists have a big responsibility, and a big role to play in making sure that people get a voice, and that information that gets out there is accurate and fair,” Gamage says.

“I think that’s one way that we can build trust with readers; to really give the community an opportunity to engage with journalists more and share what they think we should be covering.”

Fionda says that the new technologies and platforms available to journalists today— such as social media comment sections—can be used to create transparency for the audience while reporting. But building trust with interview subjects and readers is a process that takes time and effort.

Gamage says that it’s up to the journalist to present readers with healthy skepticism and the desire to learn more.

“I’m telling the truth the best that I can. I’m going to question everything that I am told,” says Gamage. “I’m going to always ask to hear your sources, so that I can try and do everything I can to be telling the truth.”

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Out of Stock A decline in staff photographers has left many newsrooms turning to stock photography in their absence story by LUCAS JORNITZ

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ne day when freelance photojournalist John Lehmann was working as a staff photographer for The Globe and Mail, he took a simple close-up photo of yellow police tape hanging up at a crime scene. Lehmann estimates that over the next six months, the photo was reused 20 times a month for its ability to apply to any story about a police incident.

“The problem now is that every story needs an image because of social media and clickability, and because of how people consume the news,” says Lehmann, who left the Globe in 2016 after 14 years with the newspaper. “Organizations are desperate for images, but don’t have that budget to make sure there’s an image with every story, and that’s why there’s a boom in stock photography and archived photos.”

If a reader were to click through the home pages of B.C.’s various online-only news sites, they would see the vast majority of them filled with photos pulled from stock photography websites, archives, Twitter and email submissions.

This is due largely to a decline in newsroom budgets over the decades. According to the Forum for Research and Policy in Communication, by 2020, the CBC’s government funding had PH OTO: C OU RTE SY OF JESSE WINT ER

been cut by nearly $700 million from the budget it was receiving about four decades ago.

Budget cuts like these continue to affect many newsrooms’ ability to pay for trained staff photographers.

Jesse Winter, a freelance photojournalist and founding member of United Photojournalists of Canada (UPOC), has seen photojournalism decline rapidly over the span of the decade he’s been working in the field.

“There’s probably only 100, or fewer than 100, full-time working photojournalists or freelance photojournalists left in Canada,” says Winter.

“There may be 25 or 30 more photojournalists who are staff [photographers]. That’s it.

“We’re talking about a whole industry that’s less than 150 people, and it used to be thousands.”

Winter, using the Toronto Star as an example, says its photography department has been cut in half since the start of his career in 2011. With the decline of the industry has come a rise in the use of stock photography from sites like Getty Images and Shutterstock.

“Photojournalism in particular—we’re in the middle of a collapse. We’re seeing an overreliance on stock photography, but something that I think is actually even worse is an over-

“Photojournalism in particular—we’re in the middle of a collapse. We’re seeing an overreliance on stock photography.”

-Jesse Winter, freelance photojournalist reliance on handout photography,” says Winter, describing photos which are supplied to the media by the organization being reported on.

Winter says that during the coverage of recent Fairy Creek logging protests, certain smaller publications were using handout photos created by the police.

Lehmann likens news publications using unoriginal imagery to a journalist fabricating a quote.

“It’s no different than when we use a photo from a source that we do not know, right?” says Lehmann. “We don’t know what’s happened to that photo in its previous life, or how it’s been manipulated.”

Many national photography associations have strict guidelines on the extent that journalistic photos can be edited before they are considered an inaccurate representation of the news. The Associated Press’ code of ethics for photojournal-

ists states that “the content of a photograph must not be altered in Photoshop or by any other means.” It also forbids adding or removing elements from images, and making extreme changes to saturation, contrast and other image qualities.

Violating these ethical codes can damage a photojournalist’s reputation—and in an extreme case, cost them their job. Lehmann says that stock imagery often flaunts these codes.

“A lot of stock photography, they’ve used filters, they’ve added stuff, they’ve removed stuff,” says Lehmann. “You know, they’ve added a sun to make it a more dramatic sunset. And that stuff is just not acceptable at all, at any level.”

Winter says that if a reporter uses an image from an unknown or untrusted source, the accuracy and quality of its content is brought into question.

“Anything that looks like a photograph needs to be a piece of journalism,” says Winter.

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A Beacon for Community An online community news startup finds an eager audience in Burnaby story and portrait by PATRICK WACHTER

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he rise of community news start-ups in B.C. has provided readers interested in small communities a different way to receive daily breaking news: Through push notifications.

Municipal-focused platforms such as the Burnaby Beacon are part of a broader shift toward non-mainstream media sources. In the past 10 years, there has been significant growth in the number of independent news outlets in B.C., from Daily Hive to Capital Daily.

But community news has quickly become one of the fast-

est-growing niches, with the Beacon’s 2021 launch being emblematic of the trend.

The Beacon is a weekly community newsletter run by managing editor Simran Singh, and reporters Srushti Gangdev and Dustin Godfrey.

The small but capable team of three each bring unique talent to the page.

Singh is a Punjabi-Canadian journalist with several years of experience reporting in Metro Vancouver. She previously worked as the city editor at Daily Hive and is passionate about telling stories that offer a platform to diverse voices

and communities.

“There’s no shortage of news,” says Singh. “There hasn’t been a day where we’re like, ‘Oh, there’s nothing to write about.’ So clearly in a city as big as Burnaby, there’s a lot going on. I think for far too long, there just hasn’t been enough attention paid to it.”

Gangdev—who began her career at CKNW and Global BC—says that Burnaby, her home of the past eight years, has a thriving multicultural community with no end of stories to tell. “[Burnaby] has got so much of the ethnic diaspora living in this city—the Chinese, the Indians,” she says. “There’s so much happening here in terms of that multicultural identity.

And those are communities that have been underserved by mainstream media.”

Godfrey rounds the newsroom out with several years’ experience at local newspapers across the Lower Mainland. He says the interest and care each

of them bring to the local angle sets them apart.

“We’re trying to get people to read a story, because it’s an important story,” says Godfrey.

“It’s all things that we’re really interested in personally, and I think that really kind of shines through in our reporting.”

Julie MacLellan, Godfrey’s editor from his previous job at the Burnaby Now, says he’s a great journalist.

“Burnaby Now does see competition with the Beacon being a thing in news, but we are more focused on daily news output, unlike a community newsletter like what the Beacon is,” says MacLellan.

Staff at the Beacon see their newsletter as a needed, distinct voice for the community.

“It almost felt like Burnaby was being seen as this other corner of Vancouver where all of the news that applies to Vancouver just automatically applies to Burnaby,” Gangdev says.

The Beacon’s promise to readers is also to publish compelling stories without clickbait.

“I think the endgame goal is just to keep on telling stories that don’t get the light of day or are overlooked,” says Singh. “People in this industry are really busy chasing those hits, getting their headlines out, and who can click more. The Beacon’s goal is to keep on serving the community.”

Behind the Beacon: (from left) Srushti Gangdev, Simran Singh and Dustin Godfrey

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/// THE LEAD

At What Cost?

B.C. journalists now face a price tag when trying to access critical public information story by EMILY LYTH illustration by SENA LAW

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hile former Liberal premier Christy Clark was flying around B.C. on private jets in 2011, Bob Mackin was filing Freedom of Information requests to the provincial government to find out whose money she was using— and how much of it.

A former reporter for Vancouver’s 24 hours daily newspaper, and a freelance journalist at the time, Mackin developed a routine of periodically filing FOI requests to look into Clark’s flight expenses after he noticed that her campaign air travel was being funded by party donors.

By early 2016, Clark had spent nearly $500,000 on charter flights.

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“That attracted a lot of attention,” says Mackin. “Back then, the NDP was the opposition and they saw the story and brought that to question period.

Other media outlets started to ask questions too, based on my story. It became quite a controversy.”

Mackin estimates that he filed about 1,000 FOI requests a year prior to 2021. But these days, Mackin says he’ll have to scale back his requests—and file them in a more targeted fashion.

The reason? In October 2021, the B.C. government announced a plan to begin charging a $25 fee for filing Freedom of Information requests in order to access public information.

The move garnered criticism in the media across the province, with complaints that it would disproportionately affect journalists without the financial means to pay for several requests, particularly students.

Chad Skelton, chair of the department of journalism and communications at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, says the sole purpose of the fee is to discourage people from filing requests.

“We as citizens have a right to know what our government is up to, and to have our questions about government answered,” says Skelton. “And I think we should have that right, and there shouldn’t be unnecessary obstacles to exercising that right.”

Skelton headed the decision to write an open letter to B.C.’s Minister of Citizens’ Services Lisa Beare addressing concerns about the fee. The letter was signed by the chairs of other journalism departments across B.C., including Kamal Al-Solaylee at UBC and Erica Bulman at Langara College. It dubbed

the fee “a step backward for government transparency and openness,” as well as “particularly unfair to requesters of limited means.”

Two months after sending the letter, Skelton says he received a formal response that explained why the fee was being implemented, but which neglected to address the specific concerns of university students.

In November 2021, the government officially implemented a $10 fee for FOI requests in an amendment to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The document states that the fee is meant “to bring B.C. in line with other Canadian jurisdictions that also have an application fee.” While lower than initially proposed, Mackin says the fee is still too high.

Skelton estimates he filed between 100 to 300 requests a year during the 17 years he spent as an investigative and data journalist at the Vancouver Sun. Now Skelton says that newsrooms will have to cover the cost of their journalists’ FOI requests, which will run them a yearly bill in the thousands of dollars. Skelton says this is especially worrisome given the already stretched budgets of many local newsrooms.

The same worry spreads to freelance journalists like Mackin, who has been running his own news site since 2017, theBreaker.news.

“Ultimately, this is the public’s information,” says Mackin, “and the governments, the politicians, the bureaucrats —they are only stewards. They may think they own the information, because they’re in charge, because they’re in power. But they’re in power because of us.”

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Rochelle Baker reporting on food security in B.C.’s Discovery Islands; (below) multimedia journalist Norman Galimski from his base in Prince Rupert

/// THE LEAD

Spending Local For years, community papers have been struggling. The Local Journalism Initiative is making strides to change that story by CHRISTI WALTER

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he challenge of keeping local journalism alive is a longstanding one, but the Canadian government has been making recent attempts to safeguard it.

The Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) is a program designed to supply small community papers with the funds to hire reporters and keep them employed. The initiative puts public funds into the hands of several independent media organizations that hold a role in informing small communities.

Each contract with the LJI 16

lasts around a year, and should both employer and reporter agree to renew for another year, newsrooms would have to re-apply for funding.

The program also gives new reporters a chance at their first newsroom position. Norman Galimski, a multimedia reporter and Langara Journalism program graduate, was hired right out of school by the Northern View in Prince Rupert.

“I hope the Canadian government keeps doing it,” says Galimski, who found working in the two-person newsroom a

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great way to apply his skillset.

Rochelle Baker is an LJI reporter, writing from Quadra and Cortes Islands. She says covering civic affairs for a small community newspaper often doesn’t pay the bills.

“If I were being paid by, let’s say, the Campbell River Mirror, I think the running wage is 15 bucks [an hour],” Baker says.

“And you need to bring your own car, computer, phone.”

Baker says she wouldn’t be a reporter today if it wasn’t for her LJI contract.

The organizations awarding contracts pay close attention to the content that comes out of them. According to LJI director Tina Ongkeko, the issues covered by community papers tend to vary.

“If it’s in a more remote area where there’s no other local media, you’re probably going to want a reporter to cover a whole slew of civic issues,” Ongkeko says. “Whereas in other parts of the country, you might notice there’s a need for coverage of

the school boards and educational matters.”

Ongkeko works at News Media Canada, a trade association for newspaper publishers that runs the LJI and awards contracts to reporters. She’s been around long enough to witness the erosion of local news up close and remembers once looking at a map of publishers across Canada. “[I was like], ‘Oh, there’s a newspaper here and there.’ And then I looked them up for their contact information, and—‘Oh, this one shut down, oh that one shut down, too,’” says Ongkeko.

Quinn Bender has worked for 10 years as a freelance writer at B.C. community newspapers including the Creston Valley Advance, the Terrace Standard, and Victoria News.

Bender was an LJI reporter from September 2020 to March 2021 and covered fisheries and marine life for Black Press.

Bender says he sees news media as under attack in an age where people are increasingly

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accustomed to staying in their own echo chambers. According to Bender, local news may be the only real hope the industry has. “But we also have a lot of competition,” he says, “with hedge funds and large media corporations.”

As well as providing jobs, local news gives a sense of place to journalism. Eric Plummer has worked at four different small-town newspapers in B.C. and Alberta, one of them being the now-closed Alberni Valley Times. Plummer says that community papers play a significant role in society: “You’re sharing stories, you’re illuminating things, that are important for people to know.”

Plummer now runs HaShilth-Sa—a community-funded newspaper put out by the tribal council of Nuu-chahnulth, an Indigenous community on Vancouver Island.

For Plummer, having staff that live and work close to the community is an asset to the newspaper because it gives them a deeper connection to the stories and concerns of the people they write about, which establishes trust with readers.

“We try to put more time into just really understanding where people are coming from so that their voice is heard,” says Plummer.

/// THE LEAD

How to Talk to Cops Facing troubles reporting from the frontlines?

It’s time for some sharp legal advice story by CHRISTI WALTER

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his has been quite a year for protests in B.C., and covering these events is not always smooth sailing for the media. Protests can lead to injunctions, and journalists have an obligation to cover what’s happening during conflicts between protestors and authorities. But this can occasionally lead to journalists getting caught in the crossfire.

During the 2021 protests on Wet’suwet’en territory, two journalists were arrested by the RCMP. The incident caused discontent within the media circle and acted as a reminder that journalists don’t necessarily come equipped with solid legal knowledge.

You have a few options when faced with legal challenges, including filing a complaint.

There’s also the opportunity unique to journalists of reporting what happened to them.

If you are a journalist seeking representation, the Canadian Media Lawyers Association is a great resource.

Remember, above all else, journalists have a right to witness and collect information.

Here are four must-know tips— from B.C. media lawyers Farid Muttalib and Dan Burnett—on what to do when journalists’ work brings them in contact with police.

PH OTOS: C OU RTE SY OF F AR ID MUT T ALIB AND D AN BURNE TT

Dan Burnett

that you know what your rights are.”

NO. 3: KNOW ABOUT SEARCH AND SEIZURE Farid Muttalib

NO. 1: SAY WHO YOU ARE A good, simple reminder: always communicate that you are a journalist, both verbally and with some sort of employee logo; if you’re a freelancer, display some sort of pass that says “media” or “press,” according to media lawyer and former legal counsel for CBC, Farid Muttalib.

NO. 2: ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS If you’re covering a protest and the police instruct you to stay with them, ask if you’re under arrest. “They know they have a very fine line about how long they can detain someone without arresting them,” says Dan Burnett, a Vancouver lawyer who teaches media law at UBC’s journalism school.

“By asking those questions, you are telegraphing to them

It’s not unheard of for police officers to request to see your notebook, camera, or memory cards. “Somebody standing there wearing a uniform saying that in a confident voice kind of gives the impression that, ‘Well, I’d better do what they say,’” says Burnett. “The problem is, you may think you don’t have a choice, but when you hand anything over, you’re now subject to a ‘consensual search.’”

Muttalib says you can even specifically say, “I do not give consent to a search,” even if the police have already confiscated those items.

NO. 4: LAWYER UP In extreme cases where you are arrested, contact a lawyer immediately. If you’re a freelancer, have a lawyer’s number on hand, because whether the outlet you work for will represent you legally is on a case-by-case basis.

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/// FEATURE STORY

Under Review

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As influencer culture changes what it means to be a critic, room for local food reviewers diminishes story by EMILY LYTH photo by ETUVIERE MRAKPOR

Alexandra Gill first began writing

restaurant reviews as The Globe and Mail’s western arts correspondent when she moved to Vancouver from Toronto in 2001.

The food scene in Vancouver at the time was vibrant, Gill says, and new trends like heirloom vegetables and sustainable seafood were beginning to take the city by storm. There wasn’t anyone writing hard-hitting reviews about these changes though, and Gill quickly began to carve out a niche for herself. In 2005, the gig evolved into her own weekly newspaper column— and hundreds of food reviews later, Gill is still writing her column for the Globe.

But the career of a food critic isn’t always exquisite entrées and delectable desserts.

After writing a particularly negative review in September 2016 dubbing the downtown Vancouver restaurant Nightingale “a hard miss for a Canadian culinary leader,” Gill was confronted by the establishment’s owner, David Hawksworth.

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“I saw him two days later at an event, and he accosted me. He almost hit me, and he was just seething mad,” says Gill of Hawksworth, an internationally renowned chef. After telling Gill her review was “a bunch of bullshit,” Hawksworth promptly banned her from his dining establishments, which also include Bel Café and Hawksworth Restaurant.

“I think a lot of people aren’t willing to be hated, you know, or aren’t willing to be banned,” says Gill. “And so it takes a serious professional critic to be willing to say, ‘I don’t care if that guy hates me. I’m gonna write.’”

Over the span of Gill’s career, a rise in online bloggers and social media foodies has left traditional restaurant critics with a diminishing role in the industry. The critical narrative format of honest, news-style restaurant reviews is being replaced by conflictavoidant Instagram captions, short-form blog posts and sponsored reviews.

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Alexandra Gill inside the restaurant Mott 32 in downtown Vancouver

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Instagram influencer Brenda Yim; (below) food blogger Richard Wolak

As paid restaurant critics continue to disappear, writers such as Gill are rare. In the digital age, most reviews are pay-forplay, and unfailingly positive.

Richard Wolak is the founder of the popular food review blog Vancouver Foodster, which he has been running since 2008.

Wolak says he no longer writes negative reviews because of complaints from chefs that he received when he published a few critical blog posts.

“It’ll come back to haunt you,” says Wolak. “The problem is chefs say, ‘Oh, please tell me your honest feedback.’ Then if you actually give them the honest feedback, they don’t like it.”

“The Globe and Mail is the only one that will write negative reviews now, because they are backed by a huge organization,” says Wolak. “It’s crazy, right, but that’s the 20

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way it is.”

Wolak has embraced a career in multimedia food journalism, having written and hosted a weekly radio show on CKNW for over six years before it was cut from the air at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, running Vancouver Foodster is Wolak’s full-time revenue stream; in addition to blogging, he hosts his own weekly podcast, and spends upwards of 10 hours a week promoting his content on Instagram and Twitter.

In an increasingly competitive field, Wolak says that food bloggers need to be creating content across a variety of online platforms in order to earn enough revenue.

“Right now you’ll see a lot of influencers in Vancouver that are just doing Instagram; they’re not really doing much else,” says Wolak. “But for people who actually want to

make it a career, it won’t work.”

Brenda Yim is a Vancouver-based foodie who runs the Instagram account and food review blog Pistachiopicks. Running her brand helped Yim land a full-time job doing digital marketing for a healthy snack food company.

Yim says the plethora of features on a platform like Instagram makes food reviews more accessible and convenient for consumers compared to traditional print journalism. “You can automatically see a bunch of reviews, or a bunch of photos at once,” she notes. “You can use the location tags so you can immediately see where the restaurant is and whether you can go there or not.”

Many of Yim’s reviews are written after having received an invitation from a restaurant asking her to visit and post about it on Instagram. However, Yim says these types of collaborations are usually unpaid.

“If I don’t like the experience, or I’m not confident about it, I don’t post about it. I might just do a story saying I’m here, but I never really dive deep into what I don’t like,” Yim says. “I don’t want a business to close down because of what I’m saying.”

Gill, on the contrary, says she doesn’t write for restaurant owners; she writes for consumers, and has “no qualms about pulling the rug out” on a restaurant coasting by or receiving undue praise. The pandemic, however, has prompted her to take a softer approach to criticism in light of how difficult it is to run a profitable restaurant nowadays.

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According to Gill, critical restaurant reviewers have become a “dying breed” in Vancouver. This can largely be attributed to the cost of writing food reviews: Gill spends an average of $300 to $500 in expenses on each restaurant she reviews, often more.

Because she has a reputation as a respected critic in the city, The Globe and Mail is still willing to cover the cost of her reporting.

Gill says that without the support of a news organization willing to stand behind their journalist, many internet-age food critics may not choose to expose themselves to the backlash that comes with negative reviews.

“If I don’t like the experience, or I’m not confident about it, I don’t post about it.

I might just do a story saying I’m here, but I never really dive deep into what I don’t like,” Yim says. “I don’t want a business to close down because of what I’m saying.”

- Brenda Yim, food influencer The way in which a critic decides what restaurants to review can blur the line between honest journalism and advertorial content, Gill says. When a critic receives an invitation to a restaurant, they are usually expected to write a positive review, especially if they’re being paid.

“There has become a divide—and social media is not the place for critical reviews,” says Gill. Sponsored food writing doesn’t stop at social media, though. According to Gill, it’s been creeping into widely read news publications as well.

“There’s a lot of digital newspapers— Daily Hive, Vancouver Is Awesome. And the issue with those publications is that they do a lot of food journalism, but a lot of it is paid content: Advertising disguised as journalism. A lot of it is sponsored,” Gill says. She worries about the implications for those looking to read honest news: “It’s very difficult for the average reader … to distinguish what is real journalism and what is being paid for."

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Q&A with AJ Yao Food journalist AJ Yao talks about creating cooking content for traditional magazines versus for social media interview by Maxine Ellis

Richmond photographer and writer AJ Yao started sharing home-cooked recipes on Instagram in 2014, and celebrates his love for food and photography on his food blog, @yvrhomecook.

Q.

Your type of content used to be available only in magazines, but social media has changed that for food lovers worldwide. Would you consider yourself a magazine journalist?

A.

Social media has definitely made access to content quick, unlike how it was with traditional media back in the day. While I don’t necessarily consider myself a magazine journalist, what I do can definitely be considered quasi-journalism due to the nature of the content I produce. Given my background in photography and having a bachelor’s degree in English Language from UBC, both visual and written communication came naturally for me. It seemed like a natural marriage for me to incorporate these two with my love for cooking and share it to the rest of the world.

Q.

What are some similarities between the food magazine industry and food blogging pages?

A.

It’s the passion for food, cooking and sharing that makes these two mediums similar. However, having had experience working in a print food magazine as a photographer in the mid-2000s and doing what I do now, I definitely have more control over the type of content I produce. Also, I decide how quickly I can get these out to my audience for consumption.

Q.

How do you stay authentic with your followers when promoting sponsored content?

A.

I think there is a way of communicating what you want to say in a manner that doesn’t bring down or disparage your sponsors. I’ve had posts in the past where I didn’t necessarily enjoy a sponsor’s product, or it just didn’t suit my taste. However, I’ve found a way to promote the product by focusing on other aspects instead, such as what I enjoyed about it and what I think other people will enjoy about it.

I think there’s a sense of responsibility that influencers have to their audience and to their sponsors and that they have to find a balance between the two.

Q.

Do magazines still have a role in how food is covered?

A.

I think that food magazines still have a place in the industry if they evolve along with the times. For example, perhaps they can invite foodies or home cook influencers as a guest contributor or editor. This way, food magazines can reach a wider and younger audience than their traditional target audience.

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TikTok

Takes Off How newsrooms are expanding content while navigating the new potential of shortform video platforms such as TikTok story by ALAINA SAINT AMOUR portrait by FAY LAM

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CityNews journalist Vanessa Doban outside of the Rogers Media offices in Vancouver

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U Up to its neck in water, a cow is tugged by a rope. In the background, a man on a jet ski leads another cow through some murky flood water.

In the next scene, a herd of cattle is guided around floating cars and debris by men on row boats, leading them to the shore. By the end of the minute and-a-half vignette, the cattle are seen walking on dry land.

This CityNews Vancouver TikTok video from November 2021 showed in a devastating snapshot the floods that ravaged B.C.’s Fraser Valley. Approximately 500 cows perished in the floods; this video showed the quick effort of area farmers and volunteers to save the animals.

As of February 2022, the video had generated more than 200,000 views, becoming one of CityNews’ most watched videos.

TikTok is a short-form mobile video app that first launched worldwide in 2018; CityNews Vancouver launched its TikTok account, @citynewsvan, in August 2021.

Initially known as an app for influencers who dance to choreographed music, today its breadth of content has expanded and the app has seen a rapidly growing user base.

According to the tech information organization Business of Apps, TikTok generated an estimated 1.9 billion dollars in 2020, resulting in a “457 per cent increase year-on-year,” and Cloudflare ranked it the most popular website in 2021.

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Pew Research Centre reported that 70 per cent of 18-to-29-year-olds receive news on their mobile device often. With almost half of TikTok’s users being 10-to-29-yearolds, the platform is a new way for national and local news stations to tell stories to a fresh audience by connecting with their younger users.

Ria Renouf, a Vancouver video journalist, was responsible for collecting footage for TikTok videos and reporting on the platform for CityNews Vancouver until she left the position in February 2022 to pursue independent writing and multimedia opportunities.

Renouf says that the flooding in Abbotsford that she reported on was one of the most memorable stories she’d shot for CityNews Vancouver’s TikTok account.

“During the floods, [it’s] just some of the stuff that people need to see,” she says.

“Because it’s been so heartbreaking.”

The inspiration to create a CityNews Vancouver TikTok account came from Renouf’s then-colleague, Vanessa Doban, in early 2021. Doban proposed the idea to her team at CityNews Vancouver, and seeing how active she was on her personal TikTok account, management encouraged her to expand onto the platform for the station.

“I spent a couple months really preplanning a lot of things and really doing analysis on other accounts that were news-related … so that we started on the right foot,” says Doban.

CityNews Vancouver’s TikTok videos feature shorter versions of full news videos, broadcast in smaller snippets, or reporters on site for live events. Much like the video of livestock being rescued from the flood, Doban says footage that is visually rich is important for TikTok. After Doban creates the TikTok videos, she staggers their release, using research she conducted prior to opening the TikTok account to determine the content posting times that will result in the most viewer engagement.

“I’ve noticed a lot of brands start to do TikTok and they’ll just put out really random stuff, and some of it is really kind of ‘cringy.’ I wanted to be super professional from the get-go,” says Doban.

Despite the vast opportunity TikTok’s platform holds for news agencies to reach a

(Above, left to right): Shibani Gokhale at work; the TikTok app as seen on a phone; a CityNews Vancouver video showing cows being rescued during the 2021 Fraser Valley floods

younger demographic that look for their news on their phone, it wasn’t until 2019 that media outlets hopped on this opportunity.

Dave Jorgenson was one of the pioneers that brought major news sites to TikTok. Jorgenson, a video producer, launched the Washington Post’s TikTok account, @washingtonpost, in May 2019—and it quickly gained a lot of traction. The account saw its success with Jorgenson’s unique take on content: Videos of himself and his colleagues presenting comedic takes of current events. As of February 2022, the account had over 1.2 million followers.

The success propelled Jorgenson to write the book “Make a TikTok Every Day,” where he details ways to succeed on the app as a content creator.

“When people take joy in what you’re creating, and that creation is the result of your own creative process, it’s hard to stop,” wrote Jorgenson.

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Other news agencies began to see the potential of this new video platform and started creating their own TikTok accounts.

National news outlets have amassed large fan bases on the app, with CTV News at over 300,000 followers, CNN at more than 340,000 followers, and E! News with 2.6 million followers.

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s of April 2022, CityNews Vancouver’s TikTok account is sitting at just under 30,000 followers. Considering they only launched in late 2021, Renouf says she thinks the growth has come from following the successful methods of other users on the app.

“We kind of had a bit of a breakthrough a couple of months ago when we started putting B-roll, consistent captions, and some of the things that you would find on the more popular TikTok videos,” says Renouf. “I noticed there was a massive spike in receipts, and also a massive spike in followers.”

Freelancers and independent reporters have also benefited from the popular video platform. Vancouver video journalist Shibani Gokhale creates TikTok videos of herself reporting local news under

the handle @bani_sg. Her niche is journalism law, which she says is separate from what she works on at her full-time job at Yahoo Canada.

“I didn’t want to do what I’m doing at Yahoo. Otherwise, I would get bored just reporting the same thing at both places,” says Gokhale.

Her TikTok videos cover everything from Canadians’ right to film in public restrooms, to why texting the emergency number 911 rather than calling it isn’t a widely available service. Gokhale says she’s reaching viewers under 35 years of age on TikTok, while the baseline audience of Yahoo Canada is around 55 years old.

Although not all news outlets have tested the TikTok waters, it is expected that most will expand to the platform sooner or later. For CityNews Vancouver, its TikTok account is something Doban is excited to continue developing. And after a year of positive viewer feedback, she’s hoping to incorporate new features in the future— like livestreams and behind-the-scenes footage of journalists on the job.

“Everybody seems to be pleased with it so far,” says Doban. “But again, it’s only the beginning.”

PH OTOS (FROM L E FT ): COURT ESY OF SHIBANI GOKHALE; M A Y G A U TH I E R ; C I TY N E W S V A N C O U V E R

“I’ve noticed a lot of brands start to do TikTok and they’ll just put out really random stuff, and some of it is really kind of ‘cringy.’ I wanted to be super professional from the get-go.”

-Vanessa Doban, CityNews Vancouver

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(from left) The co-founders of Stir—Gail Johnson, Laura Moore and Janet Smith—outside Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver

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Stirring it up A new online magazine brings coverage back to a beat increasingly ignored by mainstream news

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When Gail Johnson and Janet Smith first met, they were working together as reporters at the Georgia Straight. But over decades of watching the industry change, there was one thing that remained bothersome for both Johnson and Smith: Arts and culture reporting was continuously being placed on the backburner.

During their time at the Georgia Straight, Johnson and Smith dreamt of having their own platform devoted to arts and culture, exploring the expanding creative scene in Vancouver.

“There is so much art and artists going unnoticed,” Smith says. “There has never been a lack of art to report on, but never enough reporting done on the arts.”

With this observation in mind, Johnson and Smith, alongside third co-founder Laura Moore, created Stir: an online magazine platform dedicated solely to covering the L JR.C A

story by SENA LAW portrait by ETUVIERE MRAKPOR

local creative scene.

Stir was launched in September 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Smith says they saw an opportunity as arts and culture reporting was among the first sectors to be neglected by larger news outlets during that time. “[The bigger newspapers] thought that the arts were kind of done. And the very opposite was true,” Smith says.

Smith graduated from Carleton University with a focus on arts journalism.

Johnson graduated from Langara College’s journalism program in 1996. After spending most of their careers working in mainstream media, the pair found that the balance of content made it difficult to devote enough attention to the arts.

Johnson says that mainstream media often lack the time and resources for longform journalism. “We want to pursue that

side of things and talk to the people creating all this amazing art in Vancouver, and have the space and time to tell those stories a bit more comprehensively than we had been seeing,” she says.

According to Johnson and Smith, the biggest hurdle when it comes to arts and culture reporting being recognized by media outlets is the disconnect between outof-town corporations and the local creative scene.

“With a corporately owned media outlet, covering the arts is just trying to convince them that dance is a thing in Vancouver, or theatre is really experimental and exciting,” Smith says. “Try to explain that to a ‘board of suits.’ It's just not their world.”

Kay Higgins, who is the head of gallery publishing at Emily Carr University, knows this all too well.

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in the world of arts, Higgins was responsible for reviving Issue magazine in 2014 with the nonprofit Unit/Pitt Society for Art and Critical Awareness. Issue was originally published in 1983 and places a significant importance on covering Vancouver’s political and social art landscape.

“It’s no secret that print magazine publishing has really, really diminished compared to what it was 20 years ago,” says Higgins. “Newspapers are thinner than ever, and they don’t have a lot of specialty reporting.”

Higgins says the result is a lack of venues for critical writing about art, or even very basic reviews. The under-reporting of arts and culture strips away opportunities for threads of discourse around bigger issues in the creative world.

“We’ve already got so much lost history in cultural production, especially around the margins,” Higgins says. “There’s very little record of some of the things that were actually major upheavals and that we

Kay Higgins, head of gallery publishing at Emily Carr University

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“Don’t let anybody tell you it’s a dying industry. We’re a living, breathing example that it can be done. So people who are talking about the death of newspapers, especially in the face of the pandemic, I think we prove that that’s not necessarily the case.”

-Gail Johnson, Stir

should retain the knowledge of.”

Operating an independent news platform comes with its own set of challenges, the main one being funding. Without revenue from subscribers or advertisers, Higgins says a lot of independent news startups only last a year or two at the most.

Unlike some news platforms that sus-

tain themselves using a subscription-based model, Smith and Johnson say they chose to come up with their own revenue model, resulting in more hands-on work for a smaller team.

Stir operates on donations from readers—and while they have contributors who write stories for the platform, the full-time Stir team consists only of Johnson, Smith and Moore.

“When you’re a small operation, we’re not just the writers and the editors; we are the ones building the website and doing all the backend stuff,” Johnson says. “You have to be willing to wear a lot of hats.”

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hallenges aside, Johnson and Smith say operating their own platform has given them a sense of limitlessness when it comes to the content they want to produce.

“You don’t have to play into those factors where you’re dealing with what political party you belong to; we try and strive to be just open and neutral,” says Johnson.

The perks of independence were also felt by Higgins, who says the independent nature of Issue magazine allows its content to be honest and ever-expanding.

Johnson and Smith say they are optimistic about a change in the media landscape, and that more independent voices are needed to highlight the arts in B.C. “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s a dying industry,” says Johnson. “We’re a living, breathing example that it can be done. So people who are talking about the death of newspapers, especially in the face of the pandemic, I think we prove that that’s not necessarily the case.”

Johnson says that digital platforms offer plenty more opportunities than traditional print news for independent voices to stand out.

“We’re starting to see those types of publications appear,” Johnson says.

“Having everybody scrambling for a story, everybody scrambling to cover some arts event—that is the dream.”

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/// FEATURE STORY

Flooding in the streets of Victoria in 1946, after the city experienced up to 300 millimetres of rain

Climate Chroniclers As the climate crisis worsens, media outlets are quickly realizing the importance of solid environmental reporting story by LUCAS JORNITZ

O

n June 29, 2021, the village of Lytton, B.C. was hit with the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada: 49.6 degrees Celsius. The following day, 90 per cent of the village burned to the ground in a wildfire. Two people were killed in the blaze.

Temperatures on the days leading up to the wildfire, June 27 and 28, also broke records amidst a heatwave that affected much of western North America from June

to July. Months later, in November, most of southern B.C. was devastated by severe flooding from atmospheric rivers, which caused mass amounts of heavy rainfall. The flooding resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to local crops, livestock and properties.

But 2021 was not the first year that B.C. has been ravished by wildfires or flooding.

In 1946, up to 300 millimetres of rain fell on villages in southwest Victoria over three days, resulting in what is now known as ‘The Big Flood.’ Two years later in 1948, an

PH OTO: C OU RTE SY OF MUSEUMS VICT ORIA / UNSPLASH

excess of melting snow caused the Fraser River to overflow, prompting the evacuation of approximately 16,000 people.

The effects of climate change have been discernable for decades now—but for a long time, there were few news outlets dedicating substantial space to covering environmental issues. Emma Gilchrist and Carol Linnitt are two journalists helping to change this narrative, which led them to found The Narwhal in 2018.

Having a strict focus on environmental journalism, The Narwhal has risen to S P RI N G 2022 L ANG AR A JOURN A L I S M R EV I E W

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prominence over the past few years with its innovative model of independent, donorfunded news.

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rom the very beginning, Gilchrist and Linnitt have worked to develop a concept that differs from local mainstream outlets. According to Linnitt, The Narwhal isn’t just about environmental journalism; it’s about covering the topic in a compelling way that attracts a dedicated audience.

“Our environmental issues in Canada are not boring. They’re some of the most pressing, urgent, important, exciting, and shocking issues of our time,” says Linnitt.

Gilchrist says that when they started The Narwhal, the environmental beat was marginalized in such a way that the general public didn’t comprehend it as a news sector. When Gilchrist would tell people she was an environmental reporter, they would assume she was an activist.

Each with a diverse background, Linnitt and Gilchrist walked winding paths on their way to building their own publication.

Linnitt graduated from York University with a master’s in English. Before going into journalism, she was a researcher focusing on human rights issues in countries where the freedom of press was being undermined. After that, she worked as a research assistant for a conflict resolution mediator that was working to settle a natural rights dispute between Indigenous groups and the B.C. government.

“Our environmental issues in Canada are not boring.

They’re some of the most pressing, urgent, important, exciting, and shocking issues of our time.”

- Carol Linnitt, co-founder of The Narwhal Gilchrist began her career as a copy editor at the Calgary Herald but soon got her own weekly lifestyle column called “The Green Guide,” focused on how to live more sustainably. After witnessing a round of layoffs, she began to question the viability 30

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of her career at the Herald and moved on to working for the Pembina Institute and other environmentally focused NGOs. Linnitt and Gilchrist continued their journalism careers working for an investigative climate change blog called DeSmog, which served as an incubator to what eventually became The Narwhal.

Linnitt and Gilchrist’s varied backgrounds help them tell stories about environmental changes, and connect their readers to the communities most affected by those changes. Gilchrist says an important factor in making this connection is achieving credibility through trust by maintaining high journalistic standards, and featuring diverse voices in The Narwhal’s stories.

“That might be fishermen, oil and gas workers; it might be ranchers, miners, real people who are also deeply impacted by changes to the natural world,” says Gilchrist.

Being a non-profit and a start-up newsroom has enabled The Narwhal to report on these issues in a new way that can catch and keep the attention of a diverse audience.

Traditional news outlets have been adding more environmental beat reporters to their staff, but outlets like The Tyee and The Narwhal have been pioneering the growth. Journalism students now take specific classes on environmental journalism, as climate reporting impacts all beats and has connections to the vast majority of news stories.

Long-time journalist Sean Holman made his name covering political corruption on his B.C. online outlet The Public Eye. He has also written for a number of newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun and Toronto Star.

When Holman changed his focus to environmental journalism in 2017, he says that traditional news media was failing to connect the forest fires to climate change.

Today, Holman is a professor of environmental journalism at the University of Victoria and works in tandem with other journalism programs across the province on the “climate disaster project”—an initiative that seeks to humanize the impacts of climate change in journalism and move the story beyond its political and economic aspects.

“So if climate change is going to happen, and if that is a fact, let’s deal with that fact— and what does that mean for journalism?

What does that mean for democracy? What does that mean for society?” says Holman.

“There is going to be a massive disruption in how our society operates.”

According to Holman, journalists will have to be at the forefront of the discussions surrounding environmental issues.

Holman says he is concerned at how governments might respond to what he sees as a major oncoming crisis.

“If the current trends continue, how do we live through it as an equitable society?” says Holman.

If climate change affects our society in as major a way as Holman believes it could,

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Emma Gilchrist and Carol Linnitt, co-founders of The Narwhal

the world will see a spike in issues such as authoritarianism, food scarcity and xenophobia, according to Holman.

As these concerns heighten, journalism will become an instrumental tool for commenting on and ultimately dealing with the complexities of a warming world.

T

hrough his work with the climate disaster project, Holman hopes to spark thoughts on how society will live through this crisis and adapt to its effects. An important component of this is sharing stories that connect people and bring them closer to environmental issues.

Despite the doom and gloom that some climate news brings, Holman says the news must also be solutions-driven. Part of covL JR.C A

ering climate change, he notes, is providing tools and information to the reader so as to not make the audience feel helpless, but instead, to feel empowered in the face of these changes.

In Holman’s view, covering climate change is also a reminder of why journalists do what they do. The growing importance of the climate beat for many media organizations is due largely to the fact that it influences all sectors of our world.

“There are a bunch of beats that are going to be impacted by climate change. And we’re just not talking about that right now,” says Holman. Using every journalistic outlet possible to talk about climate change is the first step towards making its coverage mainstream.

As for The Narwhal, Emma Gilchrist says that the common perception about it is that because it’s independent, it’s alternative. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be mainstream, she adds—which she and Linnitt believe it has been from the start.

The Narwhal opened an Ontario bureau in the fall of 2021 and recently hired reporters in Alberta and Manitoba. Competing with larger news outlets has been a longstanding goal of Linnitt and Gilchrist’s, they say, and both credit The Narwhal’s success to its audience and the team they have built to better inform its readership.

With plans to be fully national in the next five years, The Narwhal is growing rapidly as the need for climate journalism grows just as fast.

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Kiran Singh standing in front of the Komagata Maru Memorial in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour

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TITLE

/// FEATURE STORY

Due for Diversity Journalists in B.C. are calling for local news outlets to amplify the perspectives of BIPOC employees and stories story by SENA LAW portrait by ETUVIERE MRAKPOR

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hen journalist Aaron Hemens was working in Creston, B.C. a couple of years back, he was told by an unhappy reader one day that he should be “metaphorically lynched.”

This racially charged comment came as a result of a story written by Hemens, who is half Filipino and was one of the only reporters in Creston.

“What better way to threaten a person of colour, who’s in a journalism position for a little community, than to say these harmful things to scare them off from reporting,” Hemens says.

Hemens was offered the job in the summer of 2020 by Black Press, his employer at the time, running a one-person weekly newspaper called the Creston Valley Advance. During his months working in Creston, Hemens says he feared for his safety daily. According to Statistics Canada’s 2016 census data, the town’s population of 5,100 is 86 per cent white.

Conversations about diversity in the L JR.C A

journalism industry have been brought up increasingly in recent years. In 2021, a new race- and gender-based study from the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) found that “almost half of all Canadian newsrooms exclusively employ white journalists.” The study also shows that nearly 75 per cent of working journalists in Canada are white.

Kiran Singh is an associate producer for CBC Radio’s The Early Edition, and their pop-up bureau reporter in Surrey. He says that change needs to happen in journalism, and that it starts with a newsroom’s demographic makeup.

“It’s a painful process,” says Singh. “You have to let go of old journalists and old journalistic ways to make way for new diverse voices.”

Singh’s three-month position as a popup reporter is part of an initiative where CBC sets up a journalist in a diverse city that is lacking detailed coverage, so the journalist can report on the community in a hyperlocal fashion.

Singh has been a journalist in Surrey for almost five years. He immigrated from

South India to Canada 10 years ago and is part of the queer community. Singh says these intersections in his life make it important for his journalism to amplify the voices of others who might have had similar life experiences.

“I like to tell stories of marginalized people. I like to tell stories of people who look like me. I like to tell stories of people who talk like me—because I have seen a lack of those stories historically,” says Singh.

Singh and Hemens are not the only BIPOC journalists in B.C. advocating for institutional change. Other reporters, including Sunny Dhillon and Andree Lau, have also spoken up about their experiences and treatment as racialized journalists working in non-diverse newsrooms, pushing for media managers to rethink how space can be made for journalists of colour.

Dhillon quit his job working for The Globe and Mail in October 2018, stating in a piece published for Level that he felt the perspective he brought to the newsroom as a brown journalist “did not matter.” Dhillon concluded by urging local media outlets to reflect upon diversity within the industry.

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hange, where it is happening, is happening slowly. Hemens’ situation and treatment by locals in Creston was not looked at by his employers at the time with a sense of urgency. After expressing concerns for his safety in January 2021, Hemens says it took nearly three months for him to be transferred out of Creston, as Black Press searched for a journalist to take his place.

“I feel like there is a gap in knowing what it’s like to be a person of colour in a small town running a little newspaper,” Hemens says, noting the difference in levels of sensitivity between his boss and himself.

“I think [my boss’] main concern was getting the paper out; making sure the paper was being published instead of me getting out of there as soon as possible. Having a racialized boss, they probably would have understood.” Even in bigger newsrooms, Hemens says it can feel isolating as the only person of colour, and that it’s important to have racialized journalists as colleagues who can relate experiences and “have each others’ backs.”

“Canada is a diverse country. But the media industry here is still very whitewashed and traditional,” says Hemens. “I think a big part of it is hiring more racialized people here because then you can turn to them and you feel safe turning to them, like they understand your struggle.”

Singh also says the need for diversity in a newsroom goes beyond the treatment of racialized journalists. He says historically, there has not been enough diverse voices when it comes to storytelling—whether it’s racial, sexual, gender or language diversity.

“We’re trying to bring those [diverse] people on board so they can connect with people the way male, cisgender, straight white journalists probably can’t,” says Singh. “Point of views are as important as the variety of stories, and they cannot just come through a singular lens.”

Singh says he is seeing changes in the journalism industry as more marginalized people are being brought forward and hired in newsrooms. But the most important shifts have to be made on a management level. Those who are making executive decisions are ultimately going to make the biggest difference in forcing the journalism world to be more accepting and diverse.

“It’s changing, and it’s a good thing.

There is so much space available for all colours, genders, and all kinds of journalists,” Singh says.

“If you want a diverse Canada to read your web stories, to listen to your TV stories—you need to have diverse voices telling those stories.”

Newsroom Diversity by the numbers

The Canadian Association of Journalists’ first annual diversity survey includes data from 3,873 journalists working in 209 newsrooms nationwide (2021)

52.7%

of all newsroom staff identify as women

46.7% identify as men LESS THAN

1%

identify as non-binary

80% 75% BIPOC journalist Aaron Hemens had a tough time reporting from Creston, B.C.

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LESS THAN

1/3

of newsrooms have no visible minorities in leadership roles of employees in newsrooms are white

of newsrooms are as diverse as their audience

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/// FEATURE STORY

Dominique Armand works as a lifeguard and swim instructor on top of his work at CBC—while attending nursing school

Do The (Side) Hustle Smaller newsrooms and a growing acceptance of the gig economy is advancing the trend of journalists wearing multiple hats each working day story and portraits by ALAINA SAINT AMOUR

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ere Dominique Armand to get ready for all his jobs at once, he’d be wearing a pair of blue scrubs with swim trunks over top, a whistle around his neck, and carrying a microphone and notepad to capture the latest scoop. If you haven’t

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guessed, Armand is a journalist—but also studying to become a nurse. Oh, and he’s a lifeguard, too.

Armand has worn many hats over the years, but his reporting one had been a childhood dream. Armand studied journalism at BCIT where he graduated from in 2009, and has contributed to multiple news agencies. His main gig was at CBC

Radio, where he forecasted the weather and reported on sports in both French and English.

He worked at CBC for almost five years full-time before his position was cut to a casual schedule. It was at this point that journalism became his part-time gig.

Through all his careers, journalism has always stayed close to his heart as Armand S P RI N G 2022 L ANG AR A JOUR N A L I S M R E V I E W

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Fred Lee at work at the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre at UBC. In his spare time, Lee reports on some of Vancouver’s biggest social galas

continued to work part-time at CBC until January 2022, when he decided to take a break to focus on nursing studies. Even while in school, he’s kept up side jobs as a lifeguard and aquafit instructor for the City of Vancouver, where he works at least one shift per week.

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aving side gigs and second jobs is nothing new, but it is a reality that has been gaining currency nationwide. The number of individuals holding multiple jobs in Canada has steadily risen over the last five years (2020 being an outlier, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

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Statistics Canada reported in 2018 that 8.7 per cent of healthcare and social assistance workers have a second job—the occupational class most likely to hold multiple jobs, according to the agency.

Darren Dahl, a business professor at the University of British Columbia’s business school, says that the shift towards side gigs and entrepreneurship is driven in part by technology.

“It’s easier today than ever to create a side hustle. The reason is that the internet has provided awareness and access,” says Dahl.

For Armand, having a second job is

nothing new. When he worked full-time at CBC, he was also managing a handful of other jobs, including doing autopsies at a morgue.

“At the same time that I was doing autopsies, I was doing the weather on the weekend and researching on the weekday evening,” Armand says, adding that some of his colleagues were uncomfortable with his ability to switch between jobs that required such different dispositions.

Coming from a family heavily involved in the healthcare sector, nursing would seem a logical career path. But Armand says he had his mind set on storytelling LJR.CA

between nursing and journalism. He says not only has work as a journalist made him accustomed to taking notes quickly, but his communication with patients has been heavily influenced by his journalistic training to remain unbiased.

“[With] my media writing or my work at UBC, it’s very similar. It’s storytelling. It’s telling about all the great things that are happening, whether at the university or in the community.”

- Fred Lee, Director of Alumni Engagment, UBC

“First of all, a homeless person, a lawyer, or a doctor coming to the ER and as a nurse, there’s no difference,” says Armand.

“As a journalist or as a nurse, it’s the same thing: you have to be non-judgmental.”

U after graduating from highschool, so doing broadcasting and covering the weather was a passion he wanted to pursue.

“I always wanted to become a journalist,” says Armand. “But my mom was always like, ‘Oh, you should go into pharmacy and nursing.’ I didn’t want to do it [at the time].”

But as time went on and his role at CBC changed, so did Armand’s workday. He decided to enroll in school again to become a nurse, and is now set to graduate by the end of 2022.

Having pursued both passions, Armand has found unexpected intersections L JR.C A

nlike with Armand, the decision to enter journalism was not planned

by Fred Lee—it came instead, via a chance Christmas party encounter.

“The Vancouver Courier shared that they were looking for a columnist; a writer to cover community events,” says Lee, now UBC’s Director of Alumni Engagement. “And I may have had a few too many drinks, because at that moment I said, ‘Heck, I think I can do that job!’”

Lee was already working a full-time job at the University of British Columbia when he accepted his role as a columnist for the Courier. But being an extrovert and enjoying the arts, Lee took on this responsibility in stride despite his tight schedule.

He worked at UBC from 8:30 a.m. until late afternoon, and by 5 p.m. Lee would be out covering events. He would report on galas, art exhibitions, charity functions, grand openings, and many other events across Vancouver. Eventually, Lee was given the moniker “Man About Town” at the Courier.

Lee would also become a contributor for CBC Radio over the year, where he hosted a

show called “Flavour of the Week,” all while holding down his job at UBC. “So at the height of it, I was writing three columns a week [on] Sunday nights, and any other magazines I would be freelancing for,” says Lee. “On top of my job.”

Lee found connections between his two places of work that benefited each position. Networking between UBC alumni and those he met reporting came in handy, and he found that his journalism skills could be utilized at his UBC day job. “[With] my media writing or my work at UBC, it’s very similar. It’s storytelling.

It’s telling about all the great things that are happening, whether at the university or in the community,” says Lee. After the local arts and events scene took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Vancouver Courier was shut down in 2020, Lee says he hasn’t had a permanent place to write his social column. But the break hasn’t slowed his passion for storytelling and sharing what Vancouver has to offer as a freelancer.

“It’s a nice pastime of mine, to be able to just sit in front of a laptop and just start writing. So yeah, I will continue to write as long as I have opportunities to,” says Lee.

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rabbing his scrubs and getting ready for his final exams, Armand isn’t anticipating giving up his work in journalism either. He’s planning to make his return to the industry once he finishes his nursing degree at the end of 2022.

Armand says he has already been approached by a colleague to write a column, and he is hopeful his reporting will come in a form that complements his skillset, perhaps healthcare reporting. And while Armand says he likely won’t obtain a full-time position within journalism, he thinks there is still a place for him in the industry as a part-time journalist.

“I was already approached to write an internal column about what we do in the lab,” says Armand. “It doesn’t mean necessarily I’m going to be on TV, but there’s still a lot I could do.”

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Photographer Alec Suriyuth on his bike at Vancouver’s Stanley Park

/// THE LAST WORD

Images in Motion Taking alternative forms of transportation to work is an easy ride for Vancouver photographer Alec Suriyuth story and photo by ETUVIERE MRAKPOR

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here has been a growing interest in active transportation in recent years. There are plenty of reasons for this, but concern about the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly pushed sus38

tainability to the top of many minds.

For journalists now working from home, active transportation has also forced them to find experimental ways to tell their stories. And for some, this has also led to the addition of

L AN GAR A JOURNA LISM REVIEW SPRING 2022

bicycle helmets and a camera to cover the changing world around them.

Freelance photojournalist Alec Suriyuth weaves effortlessly through Vancouver traffic on his teal rocky mountain hybrid bike—his camera strapped on

his back and his eyes staring intensely for gaps between cars.

For his work in photojournalism, Suriyuth chooses a bicycle for his main form of transportation for many reasons—the key one being how quickly it allows him to get to his destination.

“I think for starters it has to make sense,” he says. “I suppose you could call it a bit of selfishness, because I want to be on the bike more,” he says. “But have you ever tried finding parking in the city?”

Suriyuth is passionate about mobility and energy conservation. With a focus on sustainability and energy consumptions in buildings, his day job (outside of freelance photography) involves helping companies reduce their emissions.

“That’s why I’m so passionate about this stuff,” he says. “I think we need to reduce our impact on the environment as much as we can.”

Another reason for Suriyuth’s love for biking to work: The mobility allows him to experience the city and build story ideas.

“The ease that you can stop, shoot, talk to people and quickly be on your way is great,” he says.

“I think people also relax much more when it’s just someone on a bike that rolls up to you.”

The bicycle has been the natural vehicle of choice for Suriyuth. Being close enough to work, and having a good channel of bike lanes, he reaches for his bike before even thinking of taking the car for a drive.

“The versatility of the bicycle is something to be admired,” says Suriyuth.

LJR.CA

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