Journalist Bryce Hoye has spent over a decade with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the public broadcaster that connects the nation’s audiences through its English- and French-language radio, television and digital networks. During his tenure at CBC, Hoye has covered everything from court rulings to government policy. Yet, it’s science storytelling that has captured his heart.
Hoye’s fascination with the natural world began in the forests of northwestern Ontario, where he spent childhood summers exploring the woods near his family’s cabin. He later worked as a contractor for Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service, monitoring bird populations, including endangered species, across Canada’s varied ecosystems — from the prairies and wetlands of Manitoba to the coastlines of Nova Scotia.
“I had these romantic experiences in the boreal forests, chasing frogs and observing wildlife — experiences most people never get,” Hoye recalls. “It shaped how I see and tell stories.”
Since joining the CBC, Hoye has covered healthcare, community issues, complex legal cases, and other issues from his home province of Manitoba. He’s covered stories with profound social implications, including reporting on the health needs of northern Manitoba’s Indigenous elders and the sentencing of a Winnipeg serial killer who targeted Indigenous women. It’s work he approaches with empathy, a commitment to accuracy, and a reverence for community engagement.
Currently, Hoye is spending the year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. In the following interview, he discusses his approach to reporting on sensitive issues, building trust with marginalized communities, and managing the emotional weight of covering heavy topics. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Jessica Chomik-Morales: As a journalist covering sensitive issues such as crime, indigenous rights, and LGBTQ+ topics, how do you ensure that the stories you tell are both impactful and respectful of the communities involved?
Bryce Hoye: Well, there’s this saying that has been around for some time, “Nothing for us without us,” or “Nothing about us without us.”
A lot of people lament the state of journalism and don’t trust journalists anymore. I’m also making those noises myself. Indigenous communities, for instance, have long been misrepresented, or the depth of some of the issues that they have long decried or experienced have been ignored, or they haven’t really been given the mic. So I try to approach doing stories about different marginalized communities from a perspective of wanting to ensure that, given my access to a platform, that I’m trying to give voice to people who maybe don’t have as much of a voice. You have to reckon with the fact that the reason certain people might not want to talk to you is because they’ve had bad experiences with parachute journalism in the past where people with no real connection or interest in the community are assigned to go do a story, they come in, they get their three voices and a couple quotes, and then there’s no follow up.
At CBC, there’s been this thing that we’ve done in the last couple of years where we have these community days where we’re basically supposed to cold call a bunch of people within a particular community — just forming connections, exchanging information, giving people a chance to ask you questions about your job, too. That forms trust. And it shows that you’re actually open to getting feedback.
JCM: How do you prepare for conversations with marginalized communities that you are not a part of, especially if you don’t have many personal connections within that community?
BH: Yeah, it can be Googling — in fact, that probably should be part of it. A lot of times in the public and also in journalism, if [you know] a queer person, you ask them to educate you on this or that element of the community, without taking into account the emotional labor that comes with that. That’s something I’ve learned more and more to treat with respect, not just going to the person closest in your environment or newsroom who has a connection to the community and getting them to do the heavy lifting for you. If you have connections with people, asking them if it would be okay if you ask them some questions about things because you’re preparing for an article, for a story or a reporting trip or whatever and you want to be aware that you want to approach things sensitively, that’s wise. But you shouldn’t assume that people should be able or willing to kind of do all of that work for you.
JCM: You’ve tackled serious justice issues, like the case of a Winnipeg serial killer who targeted Indigenous women. How do you approach stories of this magnitude while balancing the emotional toll they might take on you personally?
BH: There’s a version of burnout in reporting on crime and in courts on very grizzly crimes and murders. That takes a toll. It would take a toll on anyone. I’ve covered trials or even one-off sentencing dates where there’s victim impact statements that are read by survivors of someone who was killed that totally drained me.
There’s something to this notion of compartmentalization that isn’t entirely always an unhealthy skill to practice, right? I think we think of the word compartmentalization, and we think like that’s a bad thing. You don’t want to compartmentalize too much because that may to some people suggest that you’re not attending to certain emotions or feelings or whatever that you’ve experienced in this case through covering something tragic. But you also have a responsibility to be clear eyed about what you need to do to get through the day. I’m talking about mental health right now. We have hard jobs, and you have to find ways of managing that, whether that’s occasionally confiding in a coworker, somebody who can relate to how you’re feeling from covering something like that. See a therapist if you’re privileged enough to work somewhere where you actually have that covered. I think the longer you’re in journalism, the more of a necessity those things seem to become because it helps you guard against burnout or having it shape your whole worldview.
JCM: Given your successful coverage of a wide range of topics across various media formats, what advice would you give on effectively managing multiple projects at once? As an early-career journalist, that’s something I’m struggling with currently.
BH: Well, I commend you for actually being honest about that because I think every journalist struggles with that.
This is going to sound very obvious, but keeping good notes and having some kind of system. Some people have more elaborate systems, but I have a combination of folders on my desktop and folders on Google Drive that I will create for specific stories. [I’ll try] my best to fill my Google calendar with as many reminders as a single event entry will allow you to have. It might seem like overkill, but when you have so many competing demands in journalism, [it becomes a] necessity.
You have to learn how to say no. I used to think, “Why does it seem so much easier for some people to just sort of manage it all?” But they were like you early on, they were scrambling, concealing their own [feelings of being overwhelmed] and trying to just get through the day in their own sort of way. [Some] people don’t have systems, they just sort of like cobble together things as they go in a sort of chaotic way, which honestly, half the time, that’s how it feels for me. But you have to be able to say no to your assignment editors, to your managers. You have to recognize that you have the capacity to negotiate for things and push back on things and tell people when you think their demands, or their deadlines, or turnarounds are unrealistic for you for different reasons. And sometimes you’ll still end up with some friction there.
Jessica Chomik-Morales is a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.
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