If Adam Cooke and Vicki Hogarth have learned anything from their first year in the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) Local Journalism Initiative (LJI), it’s that the ordinary becomes extraordinary when it comes to delivering the news in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

Cooke, whose 28 years of full-time and part-time journalism include five years at Port Hawkesbury’s CIGO-AM Radio and a cumulative 12 years at the town’s weekly newspaper, The Strait Area Reporter, joined the staff at Arichat-based Telile Community Television a year ago, launching the hourlong newsmagazine series TELILE 24/7. For the past three months, he has also hosted a podcast version of TELILE 24/7 and his first-ever French-language journalism project, the weekly interview series Notre Coté.

Prior to her LJI term at CHCO-TV in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, where she hosts the weekly Newsbreak 26 round-up as well as the series Your Town Matters and Southwest Magazine, Hogarth was a part-timer at the station, leaving behind a whirlwind 18 years as an entertainment writer in the magazine industry.

Cooke and Hogarth were two of the three Atlantic Canada-based journalists trained for their 66-week LJI contracts at a week-long CACTUS retreat that took place in Wakefield, Quebec in early 2020. The third, Paula Dayan-Perez, began her work at CHNE-TV in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia immediately following this training week.

All three Maritime LJI participants have seen their share of difficulties as they dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying social-distancing restrictions over the past year. In Cooke’s case, the Telile studios were shut down from mid-March to mid-July, with only 10 people allowed in the station at a time from that point onward.

While Nova Scotia has emerged as the second-least active province in Canada in terms of COVID-19 cases, New Brunswick is only now coming out of a difficult stretch that saw active case levels exceed 300 within the first six weeks of 2021. This has resulted in an increased devotion to pandemic-related coverage for CHCO-TV, including regular participation in the daily press conferences provided by New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and the province’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jennifer Russell.

Through it all, Hogarth and Cooke and their respective stations have worked hard to keep their working environments safe and reliable while delivering the news that their communities require. The LJI journey has even helped these veteran journalists rediscover themselves and their love of the craft.

While Cooke received his Bachelor of Journalism (Honours) Degree from Halifax-based King’s College in 1995, he noted that his desire was not to be an investigative journalist but to become “a broadcaster and a storyteller.” Through the LJI program, he feels he has finally achieved this lifelong dream, while simultaneously giving the many voices and cultures in the Telile coverage area a chance to tell their own stories.

For Hogarth, a McGill University graduate whose magazine work and stints with Toronto-based E! Network and The W Network landed her on awards-show red carpets, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Milan’s Fashion Week, the chance to return to New Brunswick – still home to much of her family – proved irresistible.

Today, the woman whose previous interview subjects have included pop star Justin Timberlake, actress Keira Knightley and even a pre-politics Donald Trump is grateful to give voice to the likes of Saint John Mayor Don Darling and the everyday people she meets in such daily routines as grocery shopping or walking her dog Maud.

“People have asked me, ‘Well, don’t you want to go back to Toronto?’ And I say, ‘No, because there are a hundred of ‘me’ in Toronto, but there’s only one ‘me’ here,” Hogarth smiles.