J-School alum Zoë Todd (BJ ’15) — a former CBC Edmonton journalist now working at the award-winning U.S. investigative program FRONTLINE PBS — has published a first-person research paper on the rise of CBC “pop-up bureaus” as a low-cost approach to improving the network’s news coverage in underreported regions outside of Canada’s major urban hubs.
Carleton journalism alum Zoë Todd, a former CBC reporter who works with the U.S. investigative program Frontline PBS, has just published a research paper on CBC “pop-up bureaus” as part of her recent fellowship with the University of Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. (Photo courtesy of Zoë Todd)
The study was undertaken as part of a U.K. research fellowship Todd was awarded by the University of Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Since her time at Carleton, Todd has also graduated with a Master of Arts from the Columbia School of Journalism, and the New York university sponsored her successful bid to become a RISJ journalism fellow.
Todd’s research paper was inspired by her own experience in 2018 establishing and operating a five-month CBC pop-up bureau — a temporary base for regional reporting by a solo multimedia journalist — in the northwest Alberta city of Grande Prairie.
The concept is described in Todd’s 28-page study — released by RISJ on Aug. 10 and titled “Pop-up journalism: the CBC’s low-budget solution for under-reported regions” — as “the corporation’s way of using new technology to extend its coverage without overextending its budget.”
Todd explains further: “Unlike a stringer, a pop-up reporter is a full-time employee with daily news duties. Lasting three to 12 months, pop-ups occupy the space between parachute journalism and permanent satellite operations.” Launched in 2015-16 in response to a series of budget cuts, pop-up bureaus have remained part of CBC’s coverage strategy.
Informed by the challenges and successes Todd experienced in Grande Prairie, the study also incorporates extensive input from CBC journalist Dan McGarvey, who has embraced the pop-up concept through a series of remote postings in Alberta, as well as from the CBC’s Livia Manywounds, an Indigenous journalist who operates a ground-breaking pop-up bureau from the Tsuut’ina First Nation southwest of Calgary.
Tuesday, August 11, 2020 in General, Journalism News
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