Podcast producer and field reporter
A project or contract position at Cabin Radio, Yellowknife NWT, Canada
Salary range: $65,000 to $75,000 (yearly rate) - subject to experience plus Health benefits, flexible working
Cabin Radio is embarking on a new podcast series exploring the NWT's circuit court. We need someone with a keen interest in justice, audio production and travel to help lead this work.
About the show
Nobody really talks about the justice system in the Northwest Territories. We intend to change that.
Like other news organizations, we cover court cases where appropriate and report on their outcomes. We track systemic issues like calls for bail reform, concern about the drug trade's impact on public safety in small NWT communities, how the territory's corrections system is evolving, and how alternatives forms of restorative justice are being explored.
However, none of this truly captures the experience many northerners share of being in the justice system – a system that can seem alien and entirely disconnected from the isolated communities it serves, but which is also indispensable and unavoidable.
We are seeking a podcast producer with a journalism and audio production background. We'll assign the successful candidate to a one-year project covering the Northwest Territories justice system and, more specifically, the circuit court.
The circuit court sends judges, lawyers, clerks and sheriffs out to isolated communities on short tours designed to dispense justice in communities of a few hundred people, often with no year-round road access. The circuit involves every element of the legal system being flown in, including the judge and the lawyers. In Canada, it is an unusual approach.
Our reporting will examine a year of cases on the Northwest Territories circuit court.
In doing so, we will go where the circuit goes. We will meet residents whose lives have been affected by crime. With their permission, we will learn more about their lives. How do those lives intertwine with the justice systems of Canada and the Northwest Territories? What does justice look like for them? How are their lives helped, hindered or otherwise shaped by the justice they receive?
We will meet the lawyers who work on the circuit and understand how they see the system of which they are a part. What would they change? What works? Is this delivering the justice they signed up to deliver? We'll hear from advocates, experts and community leaders about whether this is the best way we have to keep our communities safe, or whether we're missing something.
About you
The successful candidate must be ready to spend significant periods travelling to the smaller communities of the Northwest Territories, and must also be prepared to conduct a large amount of the reporting and production from our Yellowknife studios. (You'll need to be based in Yellowknife for this role, and be prepared to make the move if you don't already live here.)
You must be keenly interested in Canada's legal system and how justice works in the North. You don't need to be an expert, but you do need to be prepared to quickly learn the basics and carry out interviews that help you – and our audience – establish what's going on, why things work the way they do, the outcomes the system delivers, and the consequences for people's lives. You must be an adept, sensitive and incisive interviewer.
Your audio production skills must be strong. You'll be expected to carry out the bulk of the show's recording and editing, with support from our newsroom and studio team. Similarly, we'll help you unpack the storylines over time and help identify the voices we need to hear – we already have the contacts to get you started – but we'll expect you to take the initiative and push the story forward yourself, too, with energy and a zeal for robust, reliable and responsible reporting.
If you know how to make audio sound great, know how to produce a compelling broadcast that has integrity, and want to spend a year examining an issue in Canada's North that hasn't been explored like this before, we'd like to hear from you.
The job
This is a 12-month contract with an annual salary bracket of $65,000-$75,000.
This role is Yellowknife-based with significant travel across the Northwest Territories. You should be happy hanging out in small aircraft, ready for the North to screw with your travel plans (bring a book), and excited to spend your time getting to know dozens of people from extremely varied walks of life.
Knowledge of the North and the Indigenous peoples on whose land we broadcast is an important asset.
Note that this role requires, at a minimum, two years' audio production experience delivering projects to a high broadcast standard, alongside the demonstrated ability to appropriately handle sensitive on-air interviews about complex and at times emotionally charged subjects.
Learn more about Cabin Radio here. We're an independently owned and national award-winning broadcaster based in Canada's Northwest Territories. Bring a jacket, it's cold here.
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