The work that journalists do in Indigenous communities requires a high degree of care, but newsrooms’ pressing deadlines can at times make this difficult.
In this episode of Ampersand, we sit down with Melissa Ridgen (Managing Editor of Global News) and Maureen Googoo (Owner and Editor of Ku’ku’kwes News) to talk about how the process of decolonizing journalism offers a new approach to relating to Indigenous communities and portraying their stories with sensitivity. They also offer insights into what communicators can take away from their work.
Content warning: This episode discusses residential schools and residential school Survivors, which we know are painful topics for many. For immediate emotional support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Survivors and their families are encouraged to contact the National Residential Schools Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419. Indigenous peoples can also access the Hope for Wellness Help Line at 1-855-242-3310 for toll-free, 24/7 counselling and crisis intervention.
This episode is dedicated to Velma's House — a 24/7 safe house based in Winnipeg on Treaty One territory.
If you’d like to support their work, the best way you can do so is through a donation if you’re able.
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email media@emdashagency.ca with any questions.
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Caitlin Kealey
Welcome to Ampersand. A podcast helping good people be heard, and comms people be better. I'm Caitlin Kealey, the CEO of Emdash.
Megana Ramaswami
And I'm Megana Ramaswami, a senior strategist at Emdash. Like all good comms pros, we've gotta know our audiences. So Caitlin, who's the show for?
Caitlin Kealey
This show is for people working to make change, people on the ground working for social justice, trying to make a difference.
It's for communications folks and designers and really anyone who wants to elevate their platforms to make them better.
Megana Ramaswami
You'll hear us picking the brains of incredibly smart folks who teach us more about bringing equity and justice into communications and design processes.
Caitlin Kealey
We'll do this by talking to advocates, folks that are leaders in their field, and people who are working hard to find new ways to make their messages heard.
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So I'm super excited for this episode. It's one that I hold near and dear to my heart. It's a conversation that I've been thinking about for a long time on decolonizing journalism and how to get reporters to cover Indigenous stories respectfully. And in a moment of true fangirling, we got to interview Melissa Ridgen, who's an acclaimed reporter, anchor, and managing editor at Global News, and the incredible Maureen Googoo, who is an award-winning veteran journalist who owns and runs Ku’ku’kwes News.
Megana Ramaswami
I would like to second the fangirling. This was such an exciting episode, as Caitlin said. I mean, we get these fascinating and illuminating perspectives from two industry veterans, and they're actively helping transform journalism right now. They give lots of tips for communicators on building trust with Indigenous communities and helping reporters tell these stories with sensitivity and respect.
So let's get into it.
Caitlin Kealey
We're so excited to have you both on today to talk about decolonizing journalism and what communicators can learn and unlearn from this process. Could you each take a moment to introduce yourself? Melissa, I'll start with you.
Melissa Ridgen
My name is Melissa Ridgen and I grew up in Brandon, Manitoba, booming metropolis of Brandon. I am Métis on my dad's side, and, uh, settler on my mom's side there, she's Polish and English. But as I love to share this story, that side of the family got overrun by Métis too because my mom and her siblings all married and had kids with Métis people.
So, we took over on that side as well. So, um, and they're from the Red River area, St. Norbert, St. Uh, Laurent, St. Boniface, which is just in and around Winnipeg here.
Caitlin Kealey
Great, thanks. Maureen?
Maureen Googoo
I'm Maureen Googoo, and I am from Indian Brook First Nation here in Nova Scotia, and I'm also part of the Sipekne'katik First Nation in Nova Scotia. I've been working in journalism for 35 years, coming up on 35 years, and, and I'm a former APTN-er, I was part of the original news team at APTN way back when, like 20 years ago.
So, um, so I've been—
Melissa Ridgen
You're a legend there still, Maureen.
Maureen Googoo
Yeah. And so right now I'm actually, um, running my own news website, uh, Ku’ku’kwes News, and I cover Indigenous news in Atlantic Canada. Pretty much what I was doing when I worked at APTN way back when.
Caitlin Kealey
So basically I'm a tag along on your reunion.
Melissa Ridgen
Yes.
Caitlin Kealey
Well, thanks for letting me be here. So I wanted to get started around the role of media and obviously from an Indigenous point of view. So if you both would take just a little bit of time to talk about what you think the media does well when it comes to covering Indigenous stories and communities right now?
Maureen Googoo
I've been working in the media for 35 years. I've worked with Indigenous media, I've worked in mainstream media, so I've actually seen the part of mainstream media where it didn't cover Indigenous news well, but over the years, I've actually seen that improve in the past 20 years. When I first started working in journalism like way back in ‘87 in this province, it was at a time where this province was actually starting to understand, um, Mi'kmaw issues in this region.
And, and a lot of that had to do with, um, the Donald Marshall Junior wrongful murder conviction. That story got a lot of media attention here in the mainstream, and when they had the Royal Commission into what happened to him and the justice system that failed him, it really brought up a lot of Indigenous issues that a lot of the media realized that they weren't covering in this province.
So it kind of opened up the door where they started c overing Indigenous news and they didn't always cover it correctly, but they started making a difference and, and started.. There was more of an awareness back then, but even so, when I was there, like I, I remember being an editorial assistant at CBC Radio in Halifax and the producers there were asking me pretty heavy questions and I was only like 20, 21 years old still trying to understand Indigenous issues from my perspective. Cause I was never taught that in the school system. But I found a lot of producers were lacking a lot of background information and they were seeking it.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But like I said, it it, it started to improve. When APTN came along in 2000 and when I was, started working there, I got to cover those issues on a full-time basis. And then I started seeing sort of a difference in more and more newsrooms wanting to cover Indigenous issues, but it wasn't really until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings started going around the country that there seemed to be an earnest change in how those issues were covered. APTN at the time didn't even have a news website. They just had a page for the show and that was it. So you would work so hard on these news stories and then it would go on the air, but really, who saw it?
You know, I, I went to, um, chiefs meetings where I got lectured by chiefs about what I should be covering, and then I had to tell 'em, well, I did cover that and it did air. Did you watch the news show? That was sort of the frustration about that, just trying to get this, get it out there. But TRC and then with social media, there just seems to be an earnest effort now to, to cover Indigenous news and to cover it thoughtfully and to put context around it.
Obviously there, there needs to be more improvement, but just from somebody who's been in the business for 35 years, those are sort of the changes that I've seen.
Melissa Ridgen
I would agree with everything that Maureen said. That there has been sort of an evolution. I think that that got amped up a little bit with the TRC but not as much as you would've thought that it would've amped things up with the TRC, right?
When that's when the Government of Canada does all that work for Canadians to lay out its history and path forward, I would've expected there to be some more uptake. I've reflected on it, and I think that it, the, just the lack of understanding was so deep that that process wasn't enough to get media and a lot of Canadians on board to considering how Indigenous people and issues are covered in the media.
I would say since June where it was affirmed that our children's graves existed on these, all these residential school sites, former residential school sites, that has turned it up so much, so many notches of this desire to, to get into the issues. What are the issues, what are the effects? And I think we're starting to see just a hyped up understanding now more than I've seen in the 25 years that I've been in the media, certainly.
Caitlin Kealey
Yeah. As someone who came into these issues really during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as you know, one of the communications people helping with that. I mean, it was eye-opening for me. And you know, this like big moment, obviously Indigenous folks have known this forever. Six years ago was my wake up and then it seemed like, okay, but we knew this. We've known this for at least six years. Obviously we've known this for decades and this year it was like a tipping point. So I guess the question can be maybe reframed as so, okay. Now we're here. Obviously there's gonna be probably a lot more discoveries in the years to come. What do journalists and media organizations need to do to better cover these stories moving forward?
Melissa Ridgen
I mean, there has to be just a willingness to, and I think there is that now, right? So if you are willing to cover these stories and these issues better moving forward, then that's the first step. Now, do you have people who can help you do that? Because a bunch of people with with good intentions isn't gonna be enough, right?
You need to have those people with those histories and those skills in your team to push it forward. And I know Maureen was one of those people kind of on the ground in the beginning before APTN, or I guess it would be after APTN when you went to mainstream media. You know, being there to open up these eyes to like, here's what you're not doing and here's what you should and could be doing, right?
Maureen Googoo
When I hear people say they want to cover Indigenous issues better and and they wanna approach 'em differently, that kind of change has to happen within the newsrooms. Yeah, and from my perspective, I mean, when I was working in the mainstream, when I was just a baby journalist, in my twenties, in the nineties, I was working with a lot of non-Indigenous editors and producers who didn't understand Indigenous issues.
So if I wanted to cover an Indigenous story, I had to do this really long pitch to give context around a story before I could get the yes. I had to educate my producers and editors before I could do that story. Even then, I had to work within, you know, their deadlines. A lot of these issues in order to understand it or to get your readers to understand it, you do have to provide context, and what I found really frustrating working in daily news was that you have to turn things out on a daily basis, which means you're not able to process or to provide as much context as you need to get the audience to understand what you're talking about. I always felt like a lot of important information was always left out because of that, and when I was younger I really had a difficult time speaking up for myself and trying to explain to producers, I need more time.
I need more time to provide the context. And it was really frustrating because sometimes I could get it, but other times I couldn't. And I've seen non-Indigenous reporters being thrown into these news stories that are happening in Indigenous communities where they're parachuting in, parachuting out — without making connections, without cultivating sources, without sitting down with somebody at the kitchen table and talking to them before you turn on your recorder or turn on the camera or take out your notebook and start making notes.
You have to build a rapport with the people you're interviewing to build that trust, fighting for the time to, to do a good story. Plus also, asking for that extra time just to build trust within the community was always difficult for me. And one thing I loved about working at APTN was that I didn't have to give that kind of context in order to get a story approved going into the communities on a regular basis.
I was building that trust and if I needed more time to do a story, I usually got it, which was great. And that's something that I've really tried to do with my own website. That I really tried to ignore if another media outlet is getting the story up before me. All I know is that when I get my story up, it's going to be a story with lots of background, lots of context. My audience is gonna understand it.
Melissa Ridgen
Yeah. I think that's part of the whole decolonizing process is just for newsrooms to start understanding that that is how things roll out when you're dealing with Indigenous stories in communities. I certainly know that that was something that I struggled with when I got to APTN because like I said, I've been at three mainstream daily newspapers before that.
I think newsrooms are starting to have an appreciation that these stories can't be told in the old fashioned way of how we've always done colonized journalism, right? And I had to learn that lesson myself, going from mainstream to going to APTN because I was a colonized journalist. I'm Métis, my family's all from in and around Winnipeg, right?
I didn't have that lived experience on a reserve going and hanging out on the reserve with family and stuff and seeing how those, how those relationships were and how the community functioned. So I had to learn that as well, while also learning. So you kind of undo what you've learned through that colonized practice of journalism. And so I, it could be done.I mean, people, you we're watching people do it, I'm sure Maureen would say the same thing. You could probably watch somebody who was a journalist 15 years ago and how they conducted our craft then versus how they do now. You can see that there is a change, there is an understanding and there's movement.
Maureen Googoo
No, and I do see a difference.
I mean, I, one thing talking about this, I, I, I'd like to give this example of when I was working with CBC radio in the province here. This was like after I got my master's degree. I was working as an editor for a morning news show, and I remember in the story meeting one of the hosts was being really frustrated because they were trying to cover, this was right around the time, like the federal government was getting ready to, uh, apologize for residential schools.
So there was a lot of talk about getting guests on the show to talk about what happened to them. And one of the hosts got really frustrated saying that they had made an attempt to, to bring in a residential school survivor into the studio to talk about what happened to them. But they never showed up, and I kind of had to kind of, and give an explanation as to probably why that happened, because it's a morning show.
It's early morning. And the closest Mi'kmaw community is about 40 minutes away. So they were asking this person who went to the Shubenacadie Residential School to wake up really early, drive to the studio for about 40 minutes, sit down in a studio with just the host, and then talk for five to seven minutes about the most horrible thing that ever happened to them in their life.
And then say, thank you very much. And then have them ushered out of the studio and the, the program goes on. Well, what do you do with that person who just had to relive their trauma in a studio for a show? If it were me, I wouldn't wanna do that. So what I did was after my shift was over I, I decided to go and set up an interview with a residential school survivor, but what I did was I took my recorder, drove out to the community, sat down with the person at the kitchen table, had a cup of tea, chatted with them, talked about people we knew before I turned on the recorder.
And I got the interview and then I took it back and edited it and put it together for the show. There's two different approaches here. You have to have some kind of sensitivity and you have to have some kind of understanding about what you're asking this other person to do. Not everybody knows how journalism is put together, how shows are put together, and you're asking this person who probably had anxiety about talking about the worst thing that happened to them in their life.
So that's sort of the approach that I try to take, or at least I try to explain to people. When you're doing these stories, yes, you're gonna have to talk to your producer or your editor and ask them for a little extra time. It's just a day. Just go spend a day. Don't worry about your deadlines. Build that trust.
Get to know the person in their environment if you're gonna come out with a better story. When you do that, and you're gonna come out of that with a better understanding. But I just really wish that a lot of the editors and producers who are assigning these stories and dealing with young reporters have that kind of understanding and that flexibility.
Not everything has to be, we need to get this this afternoon right now to fill this time spot, or we need to get this up on the website now before other media outlets get this story up. That's the thing I love about my own website. I don't care. Yeah. Anymore.
Caitlin Kealey
Yeah, it doesn't matter if you get it first. It matters if you get it right.
Darnell Dobson
The following isn't a paid advertisement. It's just us here at Emdash shouting out some good people who are doing important work. You should check them out.
This episode is dedicated to Velma's Hous — a 24/7 safe house based in Winnipeg on Treaty One territory.
They offer access to traditional medicines, elders, ceremony, and cultural ways of healing among other services.
Velma's House is an initiative led by Ka Ni Kanichihk in collaboration with other local groups. Its goal is to be a place of safety, comfort, and connection for all women.
We’ll link to their site in the show notes where you can learn more and donate.
Melissa Ridgen
Shouldn't this be, I mean, exactly what you're saying, Maureen, shouldn't this be the way that news outlets approach stories in general when you're dealing with sensitive issues and people's trauma?
Maureen Googoo
Exactly. No, I, I totally agree. Yeah, and I, and, and quite frankly, when I was in journalism school, I was told, this is how you get stories. This is how you get good stories. I never realized when I was working in mainstream media how difficult it would be to do that. Like, working at a newspaper, we were encouraged to do phone interviews.
I never wanted to do phone interviews because you don't get the color, you don't get, you know the details.
Caitlin Kealey
Yeah. I mean, it's worse than phone interviews now. It's email interviews. You don't even talk to the person. Yeah. Like very often, you know, we do media relations, you send your response by email.
Melissa Ridgen
Or you steal stuff off of people's social media, like his social media said this or this. It's like you haven't even interacted with that person. You're just taking statements that they've made. It's, it's a bizarre world for sure, compared to what it was 20 years ago.
Caitlin Kealey
So both the TRC and MMIWG reports call on media outlets to take decolonized approaches to their work.
What's the next step past having the willingness to cover Indigenous issues and taking the time to connect? There's gotta be more to decolonizing journalism. What else should be thought about, considered put in place? Other than trying to avoid crushing deadlines and doing things with thoughtfulness.
Melissa Ridgen
Taking the ‘US versus them’, that's gotta come out.
Because this, this country can't go forward if we're continuing to look and go, “you know, us versus them in that bad way. We're the good guys. They're the bad guys. They're taking, they want what we have.” And if you, you have to start looking, going, that's not the way to view this whole thing, right? Like there's promises made, there's ways forward, there's an equalization that has got to happen.
And being okay with that, not making it be something that there should be a villain in, right?
Maureen Googoo
I don't know. For me to take it a step further, like I, I've constantly been asked that question throughout the years, and if you wanna take the recommendations from the TRC and of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Mainstream media outlets need to start reflecting the communities they cover, and it's not just doing the news stories you need to have Indigenous people working in the newsroom to provide that kind of perspective. I was able to do that when I was working in mainstream media, but I was just one person and I certainly wasn't in a role of journalistic leadership back then.
That needs to change from the inside out. When people ask me, what does diversity mean to you? To me it means the stories that I care about and the issues that I find interesting, they need to be reflected in the news coverage. And when I see that reflected, then that's when I feel like that, that diversity is meaningful in mainstream media, and I think that there's a start towards that.
One thing about APTN, working there in the beginning it was about getting as many Indigenous journalists working in the media as fast as possible. We started off with like a team of up to 10 reporters at the time, and throughout the years, you know, they've, like myself, we've gone on and moved on to other things, and then other young reporters come in and start working.
So that obviously there are Indigenous reporters, there's more of them coming into the business, and when you bring that kind of perspective from the journalistic leadership into the coverage, then I think you're being reflective. One thing that I wanna do with my website, and it's something that I've always carried with me from when I first started working in media when I was, you know, just a summer student at Micmac News, is that I wanna cover news stories that Indigenous people find interesting and will talk about at the kitchen table.
It's great that we're seeing some stories, you know, like CBC Indigenous, for example, they're covering Indigenous issues, but I do feel like that they're aiming them at a non-Indigenous audience. When I see a new story from CBC Indigenous, I feel like they're preaching to the choir. What I want is to see real issues being discussed, things that affect Indigenous people on a reserve, like jobs, housing, healthcare, what's being discussed at the leadership level.
There's a lack of communication between what's going on at the leadership level to the grassroots people. A lot of decisions are being made at the meetings and nobody's really covering those stories.
Melissa Ridgen
So true.
Maureen Googoo
That's what I strive to do with my website and try to reflect, you know, like Micmac News used to be like this staple newspaper in this region right up until it folded in 1991.
But the thing is, it was always on a kitchen table. They always covered stories that people wanted to talk about. It was the newspaper to have, if you wanted to know what was really going on in Indigenous communities. I'm trying to reflect that with my website. And I think it's great that you can talk about Indigenous culture and that, and I do think that general Canadians need to know about that stuff.
Melissa Ridgen
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Googoo
But if you want to attract people like me to be a news consumer in mainstream media, you have to start covering the stories that somebody like me would find interesting and would find relevant. When I was working at CBC here, when I was really young and trying to pitch a lot of these stories, a lot of the responses I got from producers was that “That story's too internal. It wouldn't appeal to a broad, mainstream audience. You have to find a way to pitch it to a broader audience.” And I found that constantly frustrating because, a) you want to cover Indigenous issues, you want to attract more Indigenous listeners, but you don't wanna cover the stories that they would find interesting.
Melissa Ridgen
Yeah.
Maureen Googoo
That was the struggle for, for me, working in mainstream media in the nineties, and that's one of the main reasons why I, I left in ‘98. I just got frustrated with non-Indigenous producers and editors telling me what's interesting in my community.
Melissa Ridgen
No doubt.
Maureen Googoo
Yeah. And that's the thing, when I joined APTN I, I didn't have to deal with any of that.
Melissa Ridgen
Yeah. And it, and it's nice to not, not have to educate your audience. Like the jump off point from where you're coming from is so much different. I mean, I do absolutely think it is, it's invaluable for media to be educating their audience about Indigenous issues for sure. I'm saying as a journalist, you get to eliminate several steps in that storytelling because you don't have to explain the history and the situation.
You just get to jump kind of right into it. I do think that taking that time to try to, what's the perspective? What's the situation, what's the issue? How do we explain this in a way that new Canadians will understand? How do we explain this in a way that maybe settlers who have no interest in this and have preconceived notions, how do we bring them kind of up to speed?
And I think we're seeing there is that desire a little bit more and it's gonna, and it's gonna increase if you have more Indigenous journalists in newsrooms.
Maureen Googoo
Yeah. And I, I just wanna point out like you're mentioning, like how do we educate a non-Indigenous audience? I think what I'm doing with my website, is what you should be doing.
I'd like to point out that a lot of my supporters to my website, my Patreon supporters, are non-Indigenous.
Melissa Ridgen
Love it.
Maureen Googoo
I write for an Indigenous audience, but most of my supporters are non-Indigenous. So they appreciate and they learn something from a story that I put up on the website I write for Indigenous people.
And I put all of that context down. And the thing is when I do, a non-Indigenous reader is still getting something from it as an Indigenous reader, and one thing I love when I post a story on my website, I love watching how it goes viral throughout the day and seeing who is actually sharing it and the comments that they're making.
A lot of it is from non-Indigenous people who didn't know that that was going on and appreciate the context and the background that I'm providing with that particular story I'm writing that day. I get a great sense of gratification watching that happen.
Melissa Ridgen
I'm jealous. It's nice to feel that when you're at work every day, certainly I do know what you're saying, hearing from those people who reach out and say like, they enjoy APTN, not just for the programming, and we have a lot of incredible programming, but also, that's a source of their news.
They get it from our website, they get it from our tv, and that they appreciate it, and their understanding is growing from that, and it's making them have higher expectations for those non-Indigenous mainstream news organizations too, because they're seeing what we're putting out and they can see the discrepancies in what mainstream's putting out and kind of, you know, almost like to say, snap to it and, and catch up faster, right?
So it's invaluable telling Indigenous news to an Indigenous audience and having those other people peek in on that and then have just changed their expectations and, and their own understanding.
Caitlin Kealey
I would just like to say that you have blown through all of my questions. I haven't had to ask a single question and you've literally hit—
Melissa Ridgen
You have two journalists on here.
Caitlin Kealey
My job here is done. You continue to talk and I'll just sit here and be, I will nod.
So I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and start to sort of talk a little bit about what communicators, what they can learn from you. We work with a lot of folks at nonprofits and NGOs who are struggling with some of these issues.
This great awakening is sort of affecting how we do our jobs. What advice would you give them in terms of doing their jobs better?
Maureen Googoo
Well, I did work as a communications coordinator for the Union of Nova Scotia Indians for a couple of years in the late nineties, and before I went full launch with my website, Ku'ku'kwes News, I actually was working a couple of years with my own First Nations Sipekne'katik as the communications coordinator, on a contract.
But those two positions, I actually brought in my understanding of how media works to help the organization better get out their message. And the one thing I found as a communicator is that there are non-Indigenous reporters who have no idea who to call. They have no idea who to call, and again, they're up against this deadline, this imposed deadline.
So when calls were routed to me about they're coming in and doing a story about social assistance being changed and what it would mean to an Indigenous woman living on the reserve, who's a single mother with kids. So, they would call me up and ask me, well, I don't know who to talk to, and I would spend an hour or so asking who wants to do the interview, who wants to talk to them and, and actually help them prepare a bit to get them ready.
So when the TV crews showed up, I would have somebody ready for them and they would be grateful. They would be grateful. They would actually appreciate that somebody was sort of acting like a fixer for them. It was always when they wanted— organizations wanted to promote something. I always made sure that the interviews were lined up to make it easier for the organization, but also make it make it easier for the reporters that they had somebody that they could interview the face of the issue and actually, like I said, and have some time just to, to prep them on, on the type of questions that are gonna be asked.
And, it helped. I mean, I, I served as that liaison, so I guess with other communicators who are working with organizations, my advice is the same. You, you got to get to know the community. You have to work with your clients and to know what the issues are and to identify the people who aren't going to be intimidated by a camera or a microphone being shoved in their face.
If you wanna look for the good talkers, I kind of enjoyed that liaison part of the job, just to help both parties, to help the organization I worked for, but also to help the reporters. So they met their deadline and at the same time, I developed a rapport with those reporters as well. So when something else came along, they would call me up and ask me.
I don't know who to talk to, so then I would just, suggest a few people and it, it may not even have been something that pertained to the organization I worked for. It was just the contact that they had that that they felt comfortable talking to. So if you're gonna have that type of communications person working with Indigenous communities, you still have to put in that kind of same work, and that same kind of rapport, that same kind of trust, but also at the same time, you have to reassure the person you're working with that everything's gonna be okay, that this is what they're gonna talk about, and all you need to do is be yourself and just be sort of like a cheerleader for them. So that's my advice.
Melissa Ridgen
I think this generation of, you know, new journalists and new communicators, I think they're coming in ahead of where a lot of people of our generation came in. There is a better understanding of this country's history and Indigenous issues. Certainly not where it should be, but I think it's better than what it was.
They're just more open to re-imagining how they would be communicating with people, whether you're interviewing them for a news story or if you're engaging with them cause you do PR or whatever. I just think that there's a fixed kind of baseline. Better understanding that this is different and you approach things differently and they have a little bit more of the history now as opposed to just 20 years ago, or still even journalists around our age, right?
Going in with the elbows high, “I need answers. You give me this” and you know, take, take, take, take, take, and then pack up the light kit and go home. I think we're gonna see people with a little bit of a softer touch in the fields going forward. We're already seeing it a little bit.
Caitlin Kealey
Interesting. Thank you both.
I think that you're right. It's about relationship building. Anything in communications, journalism or or non journalism, it is very much about the relationships that you cultivate and the way that you leave people feeling. One of the things that we do, especially with our work with Indigenous organizations at Emdash, we've created media protocols to aid journalists who might be covering residential school Survivors.
So we've got basically a rules of engagement on what you can and can't do. Sadly, this came out of necessity. So what other things can communications and PR professionals do to help frame coverage in an accurate and respectful way?
Maureen Googoo
It's the same thing with newsrooms. I mean, you want to have a bit more understanding and a little bit more sensitivity to working with Indigenous communities, that you need more communicators who are Indigenous working in your organizations too. There's a lot of people like me who are getting up there, who want to take a break from the daily grind. Why not seek their advice or, or seek their work on a contract basis to, yeah, to to work with your organization and to provide that liaison role.
It's the same thing. I mean, newsrooms, they, they need to be more reflective of the communities they cover. Well, if you're working in communications, you need to have people on staff who are reflective of the people you work for.
Caitlin Kealey
I couldn't agree more, but there's also a challenge in finding Indigenous communicators.
We try to hire them regularly and there are few and far between. That, you know, aren't already doing—
Maureen Googoo
There's competition now.
Caitlin Kealey
Yeah. Well, there's great strong competition. I mean, even, you know, national Indigenous organizations are having problems finding Indigenous communicators to do the work.
Melissa Ridgen
We struggle, I mean, I could tell you at APTN we struggle hard finding Indigenous journalists.
You know, they're getting out and they wanna go work in mainstream.
Maureen Googoo
I don't know why. It is bizarre.
Melissa Ridgen
I mean, we've had a lot of job postings and we don't get an Indigenous candidate that's applied. A lot of non-Indigenous candidates who are interested in Indigenous issues applying.
Caitlin Kealey
Yeah. I think there's a, a supply problem in terms of number of people to fill the positions.
Melissa Ridgen
Then, I guess that's the other thing, how do we get more Indigenous people into communications and media?
Caitlin Kealey
I was really hoping we could solve that today.
Maureen Googoo
Well, I think if you're talking about that, then you're getting into a whole issue about recruitment, right? With journalism schools, they're always talking about the same thing.
They want smart, young, Indigenous people applying to their programs. But the thing is, if you're a smart Indigenous person, you're also being recruited by universities that want you to get into the science program or get into law. You know, but the thing is, I mean, for me, my route into journalism wasn't going straight from high school into a journalism program.
I actually went and got an undergraduate degree in political science. Then I went and got a postgraduate degree in journalism. So maybe you should be recruiting in university from those who like to write.
Melissa Ridgen
Brilliant.
Maureen Googoo
You need to work with, um, those programs that offer public relations degrees, like here in Nova Scotia it's Mount St. Vincent University, or working in journalism programs. Doing more, you know, more recruitment as well. More incentives, more scholarships. Maybe a co-op program if they're in that program, give them a summer job, give them a taste of what it might be like working at a communications organization.
Caitlin Kealey
No, I think, I think it is an identified challenge in terms of communications and journalism, and I think there's a lot of opportunity. I'm really glad that you guys would both take time for us. As I said, I think I said to Maureen this morning, uh, Megana and I are both fangirling over both of you, so it's really nice—
Melissa Ridgen
Well, I fangirl over Maureen, so I'm always like, she's OG. She knows that I have a big love for her. I interviewed her a while ago and was telling her like, oh my God, it's, I can't believe I'm interviewing Maureen Googoo. She's like, OG APTN. So lots of fangirling happening here.
Caitlin Kealey
Good. It's a mutual fangirling then.
Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ampersand. Thanks for joining us. For more comms and design tips, sign up for our newsletter at emdashagency.ca and follow us on your favorite podcasting app so that you don't miss our next episode.
Ampersand is hosted by Megana Ramaswami and me, Caitlin Kealey, and it's produced by Elio Peterson.
This podcast is a project of Emdash, the small agency focused on big impact helping progressives be heard.
We recorded our series with Pop Up Podcasting, and our theme music is courtesy of Wintersleep.
I'm Caitlin Kealey, the CEO of Emdash. Thanks for listening.