After a high school internship at CBC, a St. Thomas University degree, and two jobs in the old-school journalism grind, Cherise Letson realized this wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
She wanted something different. Something in sync with the digital revolution that already started to change the journalism world outside the window of her newsroom office.
“I wasn’t happy and I knew I needed to make a change,” she said.
So she quit her job.
Letson was born and raised in Saint John. Since elementary school, she wrote poems, short stories and vignettes, many of which won prizes.
“Being a poet wasn’t the most lucrative or stable career choice, so I knew I needed to explore other options.”
She chose to study journalism because of her love for writing and landed jobs in the field once graduated. She worked as a freelancer for the Canadian Press and as a casual reporter for CBC Saint John.
But journalism was never really a perfect fit for her. Not until she became content creator for Bonfire Communications in Saint John.
“They were a very cool and brilliant team and agency. I knew about them when I was still at school.”
Their big focus on storytelling and creativity appealed to her, they were the kind of different she was looking for.
A short time after taking the job, Letson realized she had actually been hired not to work in that company, but to help create a whole other one instead.
“They [Allan Gates and Lise Hansen] wanted me to help build a second business, a niche media outlet that would fill in a gap of stories that weren’t being told by the other publications.”
This is how the online business journal Huddle started up in September of 2015.
This news site tells stories about entrepreneurs and successful businesses around the Maritimes. Its goal is to build a stronger economy for this region by building a space to share business stories that everyone should know about.
Letson believes legacy media organizations don’t cover business unless something closes or there are layoffs. She explains it might not be because they don’t want to, but because they don’t have the staff or the resources to do it anymore.
At Huddle, “besides managing ads and graphic design, you name it, I probably do it. Like most startups it’s really all hands on deck in the beginning,” said Letson.
She is also involved in decision-making discussions about where to take the company next.
“It’s really cool to work at a place where my opinions and ideas matter and can help shape something,” said Letson.
But the real difference between working in a startup when juxtaposed to working for other news corporations is the freedom she gets to decide what to do and how to do it.
“There is also a bigger focus on how we tell stories. The digital medium allows so much freedom, so often we need to decide what’s the best way to tell a story to suit that,” she said.
Another difference is how focused Huddle is. By focusing on entrepreneurship and businesses in the Maritimes, it can dig deep and find stories that no one else is reporting on.
“I get to talk to some incredibly fascinating people doing incredible things in New Brunswick. There’s so much stuff going on here that’s not getting told. I feel like I learn something new or different with each person I talk to.”
Unlike big news corporations though, the startup has a very small team.
“There is so much stuff we want to do, but we don’t have the manpower or the time to do it all just yet. That gets really frustrating to deal with sometimes,” explained Letson.
She constantly reminds herself this is part of the process of being a startup and soon enough they’ll be able to accomplish all these ideas they have.
“I really love the work I’m doing and with such a supportive team, the tough days never last long. We all help and support each other when things get crazy.”
Ever since working in Huddle, Letson has experienced an improvement in her mental health.
Working at startups might appear risky to many since they are not well-established businesses. However, Letson believes “anyone in journalism school right now who thinks they are going to walk out and land a job where they will work at for fourty years is misguided.”
She agrees there is a risk in general of working at a startup, but explains that newspapers and news corporations are cutting, not hiring, so working at these places has its own risk as well.
This new age of digital journalism has brought new spaces like Huddle and new jobs like Letson’s. Although here there is no “typical newsroom set up” since there is no set structure, this actually permits its writers and workers to set their creativity free.
“I want to be a part of helping it grow and see how far we can take it. I feel like I’m a part of something really new and different and I’ve never experienced that before.”
