Lightning round: Nicholas Hune-Brown

After a longer conversation about The Local’s nonprofit model and the future of community journalism, Newsjunkie managing editor Peter Landau put executive editor Nicholas Hune-Brown through a lightning round. The answers range from Toronto’s Corso Italia and downtown café eavesdropping to print magazines, immigration reporting, Rachel Aviv, Patrick Radden Keefe and a stubborn optimism about the future of local news.

What’s your favorite Toronto neighborhood to wander through?

I’m going to go with my own neighborhood. It’s Corso Italia. That’s where I live.

Best place in Toronto to overhear a story?

We’re right downtown in the financial district, and sometimes in the cafés here you hear people high up in finance or mining whispering things that intrigue you.

Do you prefer print, digital, or both?

I use both. I love print. I love print magazines. But increasingly I’m digital, like everyone else. Computer, not phone, though. I can’t read on a phone.

Do you prefer being a morning reporter or a night editor?

I work best in the morning.

What would you consider the most underrated local news beat?

I think people don’t think of immigration as a local beat, but that’s one of the beats we cover here.

Is there a Toronto issue that deserves more coverage than it’s getting?

There are so many, but I can’t think of anything I can immediately share.

What’s the best piece of journalism advice you’ve received in your career?

Someone told me—and it seems obvious, and I tell it to students—that if you’re able to, at the beginning, spend more time than you think is reasonably useful and put all your heart into a story. Have one great piece you can share as a calling card, one you’ve put everything you have into, even if the word rate does not warrant it. Really kill one of those early stories, and you’ll have something you can share with editors from then on.

Is there a pet-peeve word you edit out of every story?

Fulsome, when people use it to mean “full” instead of the opposite of that.

What’s the first thing you read in the morning?

I read the Toronto Star and The New York Times.

Is there a journalist whose work you always read?

I have a lifetime subscription to magazine writers. If Rachel Aviv writes something, I want to read it. If a Patrick Radden Keefe story comes up, I want to read that. They’re magazine writers whose work I’ll always read.

What’s a story you’re tired of seeing reported on?

As a Canadian and a Torontonian, I’m tired of our news being swayed by what’s happening in the States, where we have to have a follow-up on what Donald Trump said about us yesterday as an entire news story. It’s going the other way now, so that’s good. The United States is responding to Canada now, which is a nice change.

If you weren’t a journalist, what would you be doing?

I spent a lot of my 20s in different parts of the arts as a musician and a playwright. Probably book publishing, something like that. That’s the corner of journalism I come from.

One word to describe the future of local news?

Vital.

Finally, what are you optimistic about?

I am unreasonably optimistic that we will figure out this local news thing. All the signs point the opposite direction. We haven’t even talked about AI and Google Zero and everything being destroyed. But I see that there’s a readership. I see that there’s a hunger for this kind of reporting. I think if people want it, smarter people than me will figure out how to get it to them and make the business side work. I think people still want local journalism.