Meet Olivia Bowden

My name is Olivia Bowden. I’m a web writer for CBC News. I work full time, but I’m casual status. So I’m split between a couple different teams, but mostly with the National desk and the Toronto local desk.

What inspired you to be a journalist?

I grew up reading a lot of news. I think that’s a privilege in a way that my parents had subscriptions to the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. So I remember reading the news before school a lot in the paper.

Throughout high school and there were always social justice issues I really cared about, but I wasn’t sure what kind of career I wanted to make out of that. I actually applied to Carleton’s B.J. program, and I got in, but I decided not to go because I was like, ‘You know what, I don’t know what I want to do. And I feel like that degree would be too specific.’ But then I went to Queens for undergrad and I ended up working for the student newspaper for the entire time I was there. I think it was that student newspaper that really made me interested because I had just decided to join the paper. I thought it would be cool.

But then, as a lot of us know, when we work with student papers, you end up working there 40-50 hours a week. I gladly left class for breaking news, you did not have to convince me to leave class to cover breaking news. Some of my closest friends are the ones I made at that paper. The paper really became my life. When you’re passionate about something, obviously, you’re exhausted and you’re working hard, but you’re enjoying it and it feels worth it. By the time I was in my fourth year, I just thought I spend literally, all my time at this newspaper, and I don’t really see myself doing anything else. So that’s sort of where it happened.

What are the biggest lessons you have learnt in your career?

I think one big thing is to trust my own instincts with stories and pitches. If you don’t push for them to be covered, they may not be covered. That’s the benefit of having people from different backgrounds and different life experiences is that we all bring different types of pitches to the table. So, I think probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to never be shy in terms of wanting to focus on certain stories and speak up when you have concerns.

If you’ve been assigned something and any portion of it makes you uncomfortable, or if you feel like ‘I don’t want to push this story until I get another source that’s more representative.’  Standing up for yourself is very difficult in this industry, but I think that there’s never any regrets in doing that. I think it’s always worth it to advocate for the kind of coverage you want. So that’s probably what I’ve learned at this point.

Toughest challenges and how did you overcome them? Do you often feel pressure? How do you cope or how do you address mental health challenges in journalism?

I think a lot of the challenges are areas in this industry that really shouldn’t be there. So obviously being a reporter, and being a journalist is a challenging career, in general, and it takes, you know, it takes a lot. The career’s already challenging, but I think there’s obviously a lot of barriers within newsrooms that are a problem and disproportionately impact young reporters and BIPOC reporters specifically.

The toughest challenges have been what a lot of us deal with, which is multiple unpaid internships [and] not seeing yourself represented in the newsroom. I feel like this industry is shifting a lot, but there’s a long road ahead here, in terms of the industry being majority white men.

I think those kinds of challenges, they exist, and how I’ve addressed them is sort of what I touched on earlier [which] is never compromise in terms of pushing forward what, what you think is important, and speaking up when something is wrong, and obviously, I’m not saying that there aren’t any consequences to being like that.

I think that this is the right time. Obviously, it shouldn’t fall on young people and BIPOC journalists to be the ones to address those kinds of issues. I’ve always tried to pitch as much as possible, the stories I care about, and when I think we haven’t done a deeper dive in the last two years, especially to be more vocal to say, ‘no, that story’s not good enough, we need to do another one.’ Just challenging things when you can. I’m saying that because the ability to even challenge anything, you have to have a certain level of privilege to be able to do that.

I think probably the toughest challenges are, how this industry is built in terms of pressure on reporters, especially young reporters to work overtime, skip out on things in your personal life, which, of course, I understand, we all need to pay our dues. But I think there’s a difference between paying your dues and exploitation. So I think especially for younger porters, that’s going to be a problem.

What advice do you have for those aspiring to go into the media industry?

This industry really needs energetic young people who are available to help shape this industry to be better, again, not that it should fall only on younger people like, this is obviously on management as well to fix things for everyone. I feel like, if you really care about this, and you’re willing to put in the work, and you’re willing to work hard.

I still think that this is really the best job in the world. I’ve gotten to write all kinds of stories that I feel are really important to me, and hopefully are important to other people. At the end of the day, that is obviously the most rewarding part of this is being able to put out those stories into the world.

So the reward you’re getting, you know, it’s huge. But also, the same thing that I’ve been saying is none of that is worth anyone taking advantage of you, or you being in an environment that’s not conducive to your own mental health. Because I think a lot of the messaging we get in this industry is if you want to be a reporter, all those things have to go out the window. And it should not be like that, and it doesn’t have to be like that.

For instance, in the last year, when I was at Global I had an amazing editor, and she was able to, you know, nurture me in a way where I was able to work really hard [and] cover all the stories I wanted to cover, but I never felt not listened to. If I had a concern, I would be able to tell her and she would listen to me like. If I was burnt out, I could talk to her about it and I feel like that’s the kind of environment we need to foster in newsrooms.

So I think my advice would be, to be mentally prepared for a lot of the slog that comes with being in this industry and it’s going to be exhausting. But, I’ve been really proud of the work I’ve been able to produce.

Do you have any advice for graduates?

I would say cold message all your contacts. Never be afraid to reach out to people for coffee chats or networking and I understand that is going to be over Zoom and this is tougher.  I know this happened to me, if I messaged 10 people, I’m sure some will just never respond to me, but there are a good deal, who will be more than happy to have a video chat with you.

Never be afraid to cold pitch, actually I encourage that.

If you have a favorite reporter or you love their work or you have ideas that could add to a project they’re doing, never hesitate to reach out. I think with jobs that are available, a lot of things you have to sort of create yourself, which sucks, but that’s what I would recommend.

I would also recommend, not being hard on yourself. If everything doesn’t come to fruition the first year after you graduate, because I think this goes for anybody graduating school, for any industry, you leave school and then you see the one person where everything seemed to work out for them. Well, that’s not true for the majority of us. It takes a lot of trial and error to find success.

So I would just say you know, be kind to yourself and and don’t take for granted making connections with other people.

Interview conducted by JSOC second year representative, Jasdeep Kaur.