During the summer of 2022, I had the opportunity to be a Video Journalist for CHEK News. CHEK News is Vancouver Island’s number one TV and digital news station. Being able to showcase over 30+ news stories on a platform like that was an invaluable experience.

Crafting those stories taught me how to create content for a general audience and gave me the space to fuse creativity with journalism. This was the first time I was able to feature my work on television.

Whether it was a bee virus, dog festivals, military announcements, or the largest flower flag ever in BC, the variety of topics I got to cover really helped widen my storytelling abilities on different subjects. This role also helped me hone in my on-air talents in public speaking and presentation.

An underrated aspect of this job which I found useful was the ability to be extremely productive under pressure situations. Every day, I had to research a story, pursue interviewees, shoot interviews, write a script, do a voice over, edit the TV news story, and write a supplementary online article all in a span of a 10-hour shift. That work ethic taught me a lot about what it takes to produce in a fast-paced environment.