These are very difficult times for people who make their living in the arts sector in Nova Scotia. To do our tiny little thing to help, the Nova Scotia Advocate, in yet another bad business decision, commits to featuring (at least) one poem or piece of short fiction each month, for the next five months. And we pay.
With our province in the midst of a pandemic, just a reminder that the Nova Scotia Advocate is always looking for writers who bring different perspectives to the table. And, thanks to our many wonderful donors, we pay.
The tiny but mighty Nova Scotia Advocate turns four today.
A bit about the constant effort to stop our super generous donor community from shrinking.
Tundè Balogun: For anyone reading this article who is not familiar with Halifax and Mulgrave Park in particular, they would think it is a ghetto with graffiti everywhere, and residents that don’t take pride in where they live. Thus the community needs outside help to clean the mess they themselves have created. If CBC’s editorial staff allowed an artist outside that community to speak about budgets and people being left behind, it would also be fitting to speak about a community totally shut out of a $30 billion project.
I talk with freelance journalist Maggie Rahr about the challenges of doing investigative journalism in Halifax, and why she’ll keep doing it no matter what.
More in our interview series on the state of journalism in Nova Scotia. I talk with APTN’s Angel Moore about doing journalism for a mostly Indigenous audience. “It’s not my job to change preconceptions. It’s my job to tell stories about the community for the community. However, when I’m writing a story, the potential negative comments and the racist comments on social media are always on my mind. I’m very aware and I’m very careful of that.”
I interviewed Joan Baxter, author of The Mill, and all round excellent reporter. We talked to Joan about bringing her African experience to Nova Scotia, what’s good and not so good about journalism here, the dangers of too much skepticism, the walls governments build around information, why give up your weekend to sit behind a computer, and much more. “That’s the very long story about how I got to be old and cranky,” Baxter said.
We’re always looking for writers, and we pay better than other much larger outlets, I am told. You don’t have to be an experienced writer, we will help you. You’ll find doing journalism is a lot of fun, and really not as hard as it is cracked up to be.