Vancouver magazine opens newsroom to train budding journalists from underrepresented communities | CBC News
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A Vancouver publication’s latest newsroom initiative is helping some of its vendors realize their storytelling potential.
Since its inception in 2008, the street magazine Megaphone has been sold on the streets of Vancouver and Victoria by low-income vendors.
The magazine, which features stories of underrepresented and marginalized communities, is one of hundreds of such street publications published around the world, giving people experiencing housing or job insecurity an accessible way to earn an income.
At Megaphone, vendors buy the papers for 75 cents and sell them for $2, keeping the profit from every sale.
Last year, the magazine launched an initiative called The Shift, which its editor says is dedicated to making its newsroom more inclusive by training aspiring journalists from the communities they serve.
Vancouver-based Megaphone Magazine, which features stories of underrepresented communities, has opened its newsroom to train budding journalists. CBC’s Wawmeesh Hamilton speaks with participants of the training program — many of whom are residents of the Downtown Eastside — about the stories they want to tell about their communities.
“We called it The Shift because it is shifting towards being a more inclusive paper,” Paula Carlson, editorial and program director at Megaphone, told CBC News.
Carlson says The Shift is part of a year-long project in partnership with the University of British Columbia Learning Exchange, that will also develop journalism best practices for reporting on marginalized communities.
The project started with a few students in 2023, where students learn storytelling in-house at Megaphone.
Participants also take an introductory journalism course at Langara College funded by Megaphone.
Carlson says the skills and passion demonstrated by Megaphone vendors and contributors were the impetus behind starting the initiative.
“Just the calibre of writing and enthusiasm and passion that I was seeing from the people that we work with … writers that were contributing and vendors [inspired us to start the program],” she said.
About one-third of the dozen participants of The Shift are Indigenous, according to Carlson.
“So many of the population that we work with in the Downtown Eastside are Indigenous and they have important stories to tell,” she said.
“That’s why they need to be amplified.”
Telling positive stories
Priscillia Mays Tait, a Gitxsan-Wet’suwet’en mother, is part of The Shift program.
A community writer for the magazine, Tait tells CBC News that Megaphone has given her a much-needed outlet to tell her story.
“Some of the challenges I faced were in my early 20s when I was homeless, being Indigenous single mom and people accused me for being an alcoholic, so that was a struggle,” said Tait, who has called East Vancouver home for over 35 years.
The journey hasn’t been easy, she says, and getting through college was also challenging.
“Some of the professors treated me like [I was] not smart enough or not capable … and I never completed my program.”
In addition to being a vendor for Megaphone, Tait has worked as an activist, an actress, a puppeteer and a vocalist in various Vancouver Moving Theatre productions.
But Tait, who is now learning journalism at Langara College, says her true calling is storytelling — and the Megaphone newsroom has helped her do just that.
Publishers say the aim of the project is to share stories of people living in poverty through their own lens. This year, 150 community members from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside took part, using disposable cameras to capture their lives.
“I picture [students like Tait] working in the industry, I picture so many of them working in the industry and that gets me excited,” Carlson said.
Tait says she is also taking podcasting as part of her journalism course, which she hopes will be a stepping stone towards a career in filmmaking.
She hopes to tell stories in a different way.
“I wouldn’t mind being behind the podcasting and have people tell their story … not just Indigenous, but non-Indigenous,” she said.
“My dream is to tell positive stories. We hear so much about Indigenous trauma … how about if we can listen to the positive side, the gifts that these Indigenous people want to share?”
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