“Wow, I like asking questions…and I kind of like catching him off guard.” thought young Carlin at the time. Now 25 and a Videojournalist at ATV in Fredericton, there is no looking back. Carlin grew up in Saint John and chose to study Journalism at St. Thomas University.
“My best years were here” says Carlin. “Journalism was a really new program…I didn’t want to leave my family, it was close to home, a small school, and affordable.” Like other STU journalism students at that time, Carlin studied her 3rd year in Woodstock and then took a year off to work at Global.
“[STU] was a good place to be because you had Cable 10 just down the road.” said Carlin. “ I could walk down the road to City Hall.” She also shared how the program really started to evolve while she was a student.
“I learned the most in my last year with Phillip Lee…He came in and revamped everything. I learned a lot about the ethics of journalism and not just working the machines and the camera, but what made me want to be a good journalist, what made me want to ask the questions and be responsible and get in there.”
Carlin’s passion for her work is obvious when you hear her talk. Her eyes light up, she laughs, yet is brought to tears at the memory of some more difficult stories she’s had to tell. There was a man in St. John who kept appealing to Carlin to do on a story him. “I live in house with no wheelchair access,” he’d tell her. A bit uncomfortable with his appearance and pushiness, Carlin put off the story.
When she did finally go down to do his story, Carlin was surprised to find him dressed in his Sunday suit. “It would’ve been so much for him to just get that much done.“ He proceeded to show her what he had to go through everyday to get in his front door.
“This man gets out of his wheel chair and he pulls himself along the floor on his elbows,” Carlin remembers. He had had a stroke 4 years previous and was getting by on $450 per month.
“It just made me realize that it is a privilege that people invite you into their homes and share their stories with you.” says Carlin. “There’s so many injustices and those stories need to be told…It‘s my job to tell them.” As a little girl, Carlin says she always wanted to make a difference.
“When we get older, that kinda gets beaten out of us…but with my job, I get a reminder everyday.” says Carlin. “Sometimes it’s disheartening…but then there are times when you really do see a change and that’s what drives you to get through all the grueling hours.”
Carlin’s advice for anyone who wants to be a journalist “is to educate yourself, and not just in the classroom. Read the papers, watch the news…Keep up to date on current events, be really persistent and don’t give up, because breaks don’t come to you.”
As encouragement for those who are hoping to break into the competitive field, Carlin says, “Don’t lose the fire. Realize why you’re doing it…if you don’t have that motivation that you want to make a difference, that you feel like you’re contributing to society then it’s grueling work and you’re not going to make it.” She says if someone doesn’t really love it they should probably find something else.
“But if you do, go at it full force, don’t give up, and stay true to yourself.” You’d have to love it to be able to go through the routine each day. Carlin shared what a typical work schedule would look like.
“It is stressful. I start out at 8:30 looking for stories. By 9:15, my least favourite part of the day, we get on to the conference call with everybody in Halifax and everybody in New Brunswick and we throw in our ideas and you just feel like you’re getting up in front of the class,” says Carlin. “From 10am on I’m trying to line up interviews. By 12:30-1pm I better be shooting those interviews. By 3:30 I’m back in my office picking out clips and choosing pieces. By 4 I’m writing, by 5 I’m editing, and by 6pm that story goes to air. And there is nothing that can happen to interrupt that schedule!”
Carlin speaks of how bad you feel if you’re one minute short on meeting a deadline. “The going reporter’s lunch is a bagel and a coffee. I do not stop for lunch…There’s only 2 of us here in Fredericton, so if anything happens at night, if anything breaks, one of the 2 of us is covering it…It is stress to the max, so you’ve got to learn to handle it, be it yoga, going to the gym, you find ways to cope.”
As the first, female Videojournalist in New Brunswick, Carlin had to learn from hands on experience. She has a producer who looks over her work, but shoots, writes, and edits it all herself. ““I like people stories…and that’s what drives me; when I think I’ve done somebody justice.”
Though she’s extremely happy in Fredericton, Carlin is pushing to report full time. ”I wish I could stay here forever, but I know I won’t be able to…my goal is to stay in the Maritimes and get as big as I can here.”
As for career goals, Carlin says, “I want to anchor and help lead the newscast…They produce, they help reporters pull their stories together, and they shape the newscast and of course deliver it in the end.”
In November, Carlin was part of the crew who hosted ATV’s Live at 5 from STU’s campus. “That has been a highlight for me,” Carlin said. “It was kind of the meshing of my past and my present. It was just such high energy and people made me feel like I was something really special.”
Carlin admitted to being nervous at STU, when usually she isn’t. “It’s completely different when you’ve got a whole crowd around you, let alone people you feel you have a connection with. It was nerve-wracking. I wanted to make STU proud.”
Working with her colleagues from Halifax might also have been cause for excitement. She says it’s surprising how close she’s been able to get with them by going down on weekends and through telephone calls. “Pure, plain, and simple, they’re fun.”
She attributes her success and becoming the reporter she is to a Senior Producer from Halifax, Wade Keller, who she says “shaped and moulded me.” Bruce Frisko, part of the “ATV family“ has also encouraged Carlin along her way. “They’re constantly there asking ‘how’s your day going, what’s going on’ and not just professionally…He‘s helped me a lot.”
“There are a lot of personal sacrifices,” Carlin says. “You can’t ask somebody to keep moving with you and changing their career with you and so I suspect to get where I really want to be, it could be a lonely road.” With Carlin’s personality and charm though, it would be hard to imagine her alone.
“This game is a confidence game. You need people who are going to tell you you can do it. You need to believe you can do it.”
“I’m so embarrassed [when I look back at my work as a student],” says Carlin. But she’s moved forward and learned from her mistakes. “If I could’ve done it differently, when I was in University I would’ve taken it a bit more seriously…and maybe taken a keener interest in politics because it was a real catch up game for me later once I started.”
At 6pm, you can find Carlin watching her show and madly flicking between CBC and Global. “You’re only as good as your last story,” says Carlin. “Everyday the competition starts again and everyday it’s my job to kick their ass…I want to have the elements and personal details they didn’t have…there is no balance.”
There are rules that Carlin speaks of, “…You have to be so careful everyday…I’ve learned the difference that one word can make. And you have to be very aware that you do have a responsibility and a power…there are moral decisions that you make…they could have major consequences.”
Creativity is one of the prime qualities of a good journalist according to Carlin, “Creative I mean, in a way that you pull your stories together, that you approach people, that you get them to talk to you. You have to have some personality and people skills and you have to be creative in the way that when obstacles come your way…it’s do or die, sink or swim…because the cream floats to the top.”
Carlin had one final tip for young journalists, “Don’t just leave your story. Once you do a story, there are probably 70 different off shoots from it,” said Carlin. With more stories to tell, yet the pressure of deadlines again setting in, Carlin briskly left STU campus with the latest copy of the Aquinian and story ideas stewing in her head.
Stories from the journey 