Justin Chandler

Justin Chandler ‘18 is TVO Today's Hamilton and Niagara reporter. We sat down with Chandler to catch up on his career and hear how J-School helped him get to where he is now.

This interview was conducted when Justin was the Hamilton and Niagara reporter at TVO Today's and is now a reporter at CBC.

Why did you decide to study journalism?

When I was in high school, I was interested in writing. And, I was interested in politics and history. I kind of thought, ‘what's something that could combine all of my interests?’ I knew about journalism, I knew about reporting, but the option kind of came up as an idea in my head, because that's actually what my mom had studied at TMU. And I started looking into it more. I started getting more interested in news and media throughout high school and eventually, I realized that was actually something that I was interested in trying out for myself.

What do you think the TMU experience offered for you, that you couldn't get anywhere else?

The reason that I wanted to do TMU, specifically over other journalism programs, part of it was because it was in Toronto, which is where I lived at the time, but also was that I got a lot of experience in first year and doing actual reporting. So within the first couple of weeks of me being a student, I was out doing interviews with strangers and booking things, and working to actually publish stories in the Eyeopener. Whereas at some other schools, I might have had to wait two years to get that actual hands-on experience. So I wanted to know, right away, if I liked it, and I wanted four years of actual practical experience that I could bring to a job and have in my portfolio under my belt.

You've worked with TVO for almost three years now. How did you become a reporter at the Hamilton-Niagara Bureau?

Well, I guess to trace it back a bit, I was working papart-timet CBC after I graduated from school. So I probably did several years on several different programs bouncing around, doing a lot of short term contract work, which is sort of the norm at the CBC in Toronto. And then this TVO job came up. I'd been following the publication for a long time and I was interested in what they were doing in this Ontario Hubs program, which, at the time, was something like five reporters stationed throughout the province reporting back to the head office in Toronto. It's a little smaller now. But there was an opening for a new position in Hamilton and Niagara so I thought, well, this seems like a really cool job. And who knows how many more of these opportunities are going to come up in this very interesting and unstable time (at the start of the pandemic)? 

How would your first-year self reflect on this?

Oh, geez. I mean, probably first-year Justin didn't know nearly as much as I do now about how the business of journalism actually works and how to do things. I think I would be happy that I'd found work that I liked doing. But I also didn't know quite as much about what I liked about journalism. When I first started, I thought (I would be doing) hard news, reporting every day. The work that I've actually come to gravitate towards is more current affairs stuff that takes a little longer to do, talking more to people, and for longer. I'm not the general assignment reporter that I might have thought I would be in first year. It turned out that I was actually interested in doing more feature-style and current affairs reporting.

Can you talk about how the things you learned in school helped prepare you for your role now?

Everything that I learned started there. So: how to properly conduct an interview; the importance of reaching out to people quickly and being polite but persistent; and, how you can talk to a vulnerable source or people in marginalized communities who you're reaching out to who may not trust reporters. And then things like technical skills like shooting on cameras, shooting on iPhones. I remember in first year thinking it was a little strange that all my professors were saying how shooting on iPhones was going to be the future. I kind of thought, ‘Sure, okay?’, and now that's what I have for TVO: an iPhone and a tripod. When I was in the Eyeopener, it was a paid position, I was managing a team of multiple volunteers. I think at one point I had something like 20 people that I was corresponding with to take pitches, assign stories, edit articles and publish those online. I was the business and tech editor one year and the news editor for another year. It was a real news environment in hyperlocal news, so I learned how important community reporting is to a specific community. That's an idea that I've tried to bring to my current role. I'm reporting on a much bigger area now than one university campus, but I still try to conduct myself in the same way that I did at the time. 

Do you have any memorable courses or professors from J-school that you think about to this day?

Probably my first-year reporting class was my most memorable because that was sort of the biggest dive in. I had Cathy Dunphy, as my instructor (who) was really focused on trying to push you out of your comfort zone, get you out there reporting and meeting people, and working as if you were in an actual job environment. So, if you were late for class, there were consequences for that, it was like you missed the press conference. If you misspell the name, you are going to lose marks on that assignment. That sort of approach really worked for me as far as getting me to get my facts straight, push myself out of my comfort zone and do things that I otherwise might not have.

What big challenges do you find yourself in as a journalist?

The employment sector is bleak as I think all students know. Anyone who's looking for internships or things like that, it's very difficult to find any full-time work. A lot of work is on contract. So precarious work continues to be something that I navigate, and a lot of my peers do as well. The concerns about layoffs and job cuts are obviously concerning. Then, of course, there's the difficult climate as far as people trusting reporters so there's work that we need to do as far as building trust with communities, explaining to people what we do, and fending off bad faith attacks from people who want to smear journalists.

Everyone always says that journalism is dying. I mean, how do you feel about that?

No, journalism is definitely not dying. I think certain journalism business models are dying and certain ways that we've thought about journalism like the ‘all-seeing objective journalist’ who has no opinion or stake in anything, that's not here anymore. But people still want information just as much, if not more, than ever. In a world where things change so fast, where people are in precarious, dangerous situations, or are vulnerable, everybody wants to know how they can get by and the way you do that is by looking to trusted sources of information. So, there's still a role for journalism. Whether or not people view us the same way that they used to is another question but that's the kind of thing that we still need to navigate as a profession.

What advice would you give to current journalism students?

It's tricky because everybody's going to have to take a different path. I think recognizing that is part of the advice:  to try to find what you're good at and what makes you care about journalism. Everybody's circumstances are going to be different. And don't beat yourself up if you can't afford to take an unpaid internship, that's a real situation for a lot of people. Maybe you're going to start by working part-time, maybe you're going to try to do some freelancing, and you're going to try to take journalism at your own pace. Maybe you will be lucky, and you'll land a job somewhere right away. I think: don't give up on the dream if that's what you want to do. But the other part of it is accepting that things are going to be difficult, it's not just you who's facing this trouble. Be kind to yourself if things don't quite work out the way that you want to. Just remember that what you're doing is important but be humble about it. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Grads at Work is a series of profiles of alums. If you know of a notable grad you’d like to see featured, send us an email at office.journalism@torontomu.ca.