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Arts, Culture And Digital Storytelling · Cariboo Signals

• 0:00
  Riley: Hey there, good to have you. Today on Cariboo Signals we're looking at who gets to write things down and what happens to people who try. We've got Nazko's chief race going to the wire, a Turkish reporter jailed on a complaint from a former regulator chair, and Egypt's Mada Masr editor convicted over a licensing rule. Then our Deep Dive asks what a small outlet owes residents when a departing council gets the last word. Stick around.
• 0:39
  Riley: Welcome to Cariboo Signals, an AI-generated review of the latest tech news and ideas that impact our rural communities. I'm Riley. It's Monday, November 2nd, 2026. Today's theme is Arts, Culture & Digital Storytelling. Reaching you from the heart of the Cariboo, the homeland of the Secwépemc, Tŝilhqot'in, and Dakelh nations.
• 1:00
  Casey: And I'm Casey. Today we're asking who gets to write things down, and what happens to the people who try. Out at Horsefly Lake this morning it's clear and around minus 1, with a high of 11 and a low of minus 2 today, going overcast through the day and a 25 percent chance of precipitation. Across the Cariboo, 100 Mile House is around 0 and clear, Williams Lake around 1 and mainly clear, Quesnel around 2 with partly cloudy skies, and Alexis Creek around 1, also partly cloudy.
• 1:29
  Riley: Over to the news.
• 1:31
  Casey: Most of today's news is about who gets to tell a story, and what happens to the people who do. We'll start right here in the Cariboo.
• 1:40
  Riley: Chief Leah Stump is seeking a fourth term as chief of the Nazko First Nation. Her two opponents are Evan Clement and Nick Clement, so the chief's seat is contested. Ten people are running for two councillor seats, and Evan Clement is among them, which means the councillor race is contested as well. Candidates can withdraw until November 8th. Voting is December 15th, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Chuntezni'ai Hall, which is the Nazko community hall. There is also a polling location in Quesnel for members who live closer to Quesnel than to the hall.
• 2:14
  Casey: Withdrawals close November 8th, so the ballot could still shrink before December 15th.
• 2:21
  Casey: Quesnel's Ice Breaker Bonspiel wrapped up at the Quesnel Curling Centre. Twenty-four curlers on six teams played the three-day event, which ran October 23rd to 25th. Event A went to Blair Hedden, Elodianne Browning, Roxanne Menzies and Jenna Craigmyle. Event B went to Allan Sand, Lynda Sales, Brian Bennett and Beth Russell. Event C went to Sam Cork, Myrna Christenson, Terry Berg and Ian Nugent. The club also added a new eight-ender hall of fame entry for Gayle Campbell, Fay Pethick, Sharon Bennett and Erin Nugent. For a town of about 9,000 people, a bonspiel means a full weekend of volunteers at the rink, and the write-up credits every one of the players by name.
• 3:01
  Riley: Australia's government has introduced a Digital Duty of Care bill to regulate AI chatbots. The bill is also designed to shield social media users from content that promotes misogyny, terrorism and suicide. It has been introduced and has not passed. Because the chatbot rules and the social media rules sit in the same piece of legislation, the bill reaches further than the headline suggests.
• 3:27
  Casey: The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow has taken human remains off display. The removed items include the remains of an ancient Egyptian priest, a mummified hand, a mummified head and a mummified foot. The museum put up a small sign saying the removal was a mark of respect, and the headline frames the decision as a question of consent from the dead. Any collection that holds human remains has to answer who was consulted before a display went up, and who gets to say when it comes down.
• 3:56
  Riley: The Tyee's podcast features labour reporter Isaac Phan Nay on the data centres coming to towns and what residents can do about them. The Tyee's own appeal to readers, published October 30th, says publishers are seeing sharp drops in web visits as AI scrapes their work into chatbots, often without credit to the journalists who did the reporting. The outlet says reader contributions make up roughly half its budget, from more than 10,000 members. It says its journalism team has more than doubled over the past decade, and that more people read it now than at any point in its 23-year history. For a town weighing a data centre, the question is who gets paid to ask what it will cost.
• 4:39
  Casey: The half-the-budget figure comes from the outlet asking for money, so it's checkable but not independent.
• 4:47
  Casey: İsmail Arı, an Ankara-based reporter for the leftist daily BirGün, was summoned by Ankara police on October 20th. The summons followed a complaint from Ebubekir Şahin, a former chair of Turkey's broadcasting regulator. Arı was taken into custody when he arrived to testify. A court arrested him on October 21st pending trial, on suspicion of publicly spreading disinformation. The Committee to Protect Journalists says he has already spent more than two months in jail this year over what it calls a baseless claim, and that the disinformation law is being used as a weapon against independent reporting.
• 5:21
  Riley: The complaint came from a former regulator chair, which tells you who has the access to file one.
• 5:28
  Riley: Open Culture has a piece on the Sagrada Família, Gaudí's church in Barcelona, which has been under construction for 144 years. Its construction has outlived Gaudí by a century. The article says the building draws steady attention from YouTube channels covering history, travel, religion and architecture, the most recent being The B1M, a construction channel. Open Culture has previously posted B1M videos on the Flatiron Building, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the work of Zaha Hadid and New York skyscrapers. A long project keeps its audience by turning up on many channels at once.
• 6:05
  Casey: A tower that old gets the views easily; keeping the work funded is the hard part.
• 6:11
  Casey: Tom Hegen has spent six years travelling the world to document communities bearing the brunt of mining for the minerals the green transition needs. His new book, The Mineral Age, is built on his signature aerial photographs. ClimateWorks estimates the world will need to mine 6.5 billion tons of cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel and other materials before 2050. Much of that comes from places such as Chile's Atacama Desert, Indonesia's nickel reserves and the cobalt deposits of the Democratic Republic of Congo, places already facing the worst of the climate crisis.
• 6:45
  Riley: Resource towns here know that picture from the inside, and the book asks them who carries the cost.
• 6:53
  Riley: Country Life visits Church Rate Corner in Cambridge, home of Michael Nedo and Gillian Moore. The house is a lovingly maintained example of Arts and Crafts design, shaped by the domestic ideals of the architect Baillie Scott. The story notes that Baillie Scott married Florence Kate Nash in February 1889, and that the couple went to the Isle of Man for their honeymoon and stayed for twelve years. A house kept this carefully is cultural infrastructure in private hands, which leaves open who keeps it going once its owners are gone.
• 7:28
  Casey: Several thousand people protested in Prague's Old Town Square on Sunday, October 25th, against a Czech plan to replace household licence fees for public radio and television with state budget allocations. The lower house fast-tracked the bill in an overnight vote the day before, limiting the opposition's time to debate it. The upper house still has to pass it, and the opposition has pledged a constitutional court challenge. The plan would cut public media funding by about 15 percent, possibly as early as next year. Protesters demanded the bill be withdrawn, and they accused the coalition, which includes two far-right parties, of threatening press freedom.
• 8:06
  Riley: Fifteen percent sounds small until it's the reporter you don't replace.
• 8:12
  Riley: Fast Company asks whether AI could give older creatives a second act. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2025 the median age of ad industry workers was 39, against 42 for the broader workforce. A World Advertising Research Center estimate puts only 5 to 10 percent of ad budgets toward older consumers. Brands chase Gen Z on newer platforms like TikTok, and the people who built the previous era are being pushed aside. The story asks who makes the work as much as who sees it.
• 8:45
  Casey: Five to ten percent of the budget is a targeting problem before it's a talent problem.
• 8:51
  Casey: A newsletter from Podcasthon asks podcasters to join what it calls the world's biggest charity event in podcasting.
• 8:59
  Riley: Columbia Journalism Review talked with Fatima Khan, a 29-year-old independent journalist in New Delhi, who says press freedom is diminishing in India but that she has hope in Gen Z. Earlier this year, young people protested after leaked questions forced millions of students to retake a medical-school entry exam. The protest movement took its name, the Cockroach Janta Party, from a comment by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Those protests led India's education minister to resign. This month, protests resumed over the removal of more than 130 million people from India's voter rolls.
• 9:37
  Casey: A hundred and thirty million names turns a press story into a voting story as well.
• 9:43
  Casey: Toronto studio Williamson Williamson reworked a 19th-century dogtrot house into DogTrot Magnetawan. The original dogtrot is an open-air design built for the heat of the American South. The new version is a 1,500-square-foot prefab cottage on a wooded site overlooking a lake in Magnetawan, Ontario, wrapped in Eastern white cedar. It has a highly insulated envelope, and its layout shrinks during the colder months. The house extends over a steep slope instead of being dug into the hill. For a cabin site in the Cariboo, the practical test is whether a prefab shell arrives with someone who can finish it.
• 10:19
  Riley: A Popular Woodworking writer who teaches live edge classes makes the case for America's craft schools as some of the best places to study the discipline. The piece is Part 1 of a series, and it features the writer's own Mulberry Trio, a live edge mulberry top set against a white neoclassical base.
• 10:40
  Casey: Press Forward, a US nonprofit working to mobilise philanthropy for local news, gave unrestricted funding to small newsrooms with annual budgets under a million dollars. Almost 1,000 applied. Press Forward distributed $20 million to 205 outlets, and most received $100,000, split over two years. Nieman Lab spoke with more than 30 grantees, representing every US state, about how they spent it. The money helped outlets plug holes and try new things, but two $50,000 grants only went so far, especially when it came to hiring.
• 11:13
  Riley: A grant can cover a year, and a hire has to outlast it.
• 11:17
  Riley: The Committee to Protect Journalists and more than 100 organizations condemned the conviction of Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian outlet. A New Cairo court convicted her on October 27th of managing an unlicensed website. It imposed the maximum penalty, a fine of 3 million Egyptian pounds, about US$54,000, and ordered the outlet's website closed. Attalah was taken into custody inside the courthouse and released later. A licensing rule was enough to close one of Egypt's last independent newsrooms.
• 11:53
  Casey: And from the workshop: to drill a centred hole in a sphere, clamp a scrap board to your table and counterbore it with a Forstner or spade bit about half the sphere's diameter. Switch to a brad point bit, nest the sphere in the counterbore, and drill. The counterbore does the centring. I'd try it on a Saturday.
• 12:11
  Riley: That's the news for this Monday. Before the main conversation, a word about Cariboo Chilcotin Partners for Literacy.
• 12:18
  Riley: Cariboo Chilcotin Partners for Literacy runs free adult literacy, ESL, and digital literacy programs across the Cariboo Chilcotin. Maybe you want to read with more confidence, write a cover letter, or finally get through the online forms that so much of daily life now runs through. Any of those is a good reason to get in touch. You'll find them at caribooliteracy dot com.
• 12:41
  Casey: Free, for adults, and close to home. Hard to find all three in one place.
• 12:45
  Casey: Now to a Williams Lake council chamber, and the record a small outlet made of its last meeting.
• 12:51
  Riley: At the end of the Tuesday, October 27th meeting in Williams Lake, four outgoing councillors each got a last word in the Roundtable Discussion period. Sheila Boehm, Angie Delainey, Joan Flaspohler and Jazmyn Lyons used it to reflect on four years and to thank residents and city staff. My Cariboo Now ran it as a short story the next day. So the question is what that story is. When a recap of a council's last meeting carries only the departing members' thank-yous, have residents been handed a record they can use, or only a courtesy? And what does a small outlet owe those last words once nobody can test them?
• 13:28
  Casey: It's a record of the mood. Nothing in that story says what any of the four voted for, pushed for, or left unfinished. It reads like a card.
• 13:36
  Riley: It holds more than a card would. Four councillors leaving after a four-year term, and Boehm after eight. Lyons saying she was proud of the sheer amount of funds the council managed to secure. Those are claims, and claims can be checked.
• 13:50
  Casey: Checked by whom?
• 13:51
  Riley: By anyone with the minutes. A motion has a mover, a seconder and a vote count, and those survive the farewell.
• 13:57
  Casey: Motions survive. The thank-yous don't, except in this recap. The minutes can tell you what the council voted for. They can't tell you whether the funds Lyons is proud of came from the council's decisions or from somebody else's budget.
• 14:11
  Riley: So you compare. Put Lyons's claim beside the motions from her term. If the council moved the money, the vote is on the record. If it didn't, the reader sees that too.
• 14:20
  Casey: That takes a reporter with time and the minutes open. Recaps get written at the table, between the Roundtable and the adjournment.
• 14:28
  Riley: Which is why the quote itself matters. On the night, quoting people in their own words is the job, and the outlet did it. Challenging Lyons at her goodbye turns a farewell into a cross-examination, and a small outlet needs the goodwill of everyone still in that building next year.
• 14:45
  Casey: Nobody wants an ambush at a goodbye. I'm asking about the weeks after, when nobody on that dais has to answer for anything.
• 14:53
  Riley: Then look at what the recap contains that could be checked. Lyons said she was very grateful to everyone who put their names forward to run for council, because that is huge. Boehm called her eight years a great run. Those are statements about service and about the election itself, and the election left paperwork behind.
• 15:12
  Casey: Which paperwork? Name it.
• 15:14
  Riley: The nomination record. Whoever filed to run, whichever seats were contested, whoever was acclaimed. When Lyons thanks the people who put their names forward, a reader can see exactly who she means. That piece of the farewell is testable the morning after.
• 15:30
  Casey: The thank-you is the testable part. Thanking candidates is the least controversial thing a councillor can say. The funding line is the one with something at stake, and it's the line the nomination file can't touch.
• 15:42
  Riley: Agreed. One claim the record answers easily, one it answers only if somebody does the work.
• 15:48
  Casey: Compare the Quesnel bonspiel write-up. Every winning player named, nobody asking for a reason.
• 15:54
  Riley: Because a curling result is a fact. The scoreboard is the record. A councillor's goodbye is an opinion about a term, and the outlet has to handle it differently.
• 16:04
  Casey: Nobody can argue a curling result after the fact. Nobody can score a farewell, and that's why I don't trust a recap to hold one up without help.
• 16:11
  Riley: Then the outlet should write the farewell more like a result. Who spoke, which part of the meeting, what each one said about the work, and what the minutes show for the same term. That's four lines of extra reporting, and it turns the courtesy into a record.
• 16:27
  Casey: I'd sign that version. Still, four lines is a deadline problem. A small outlet has the reporter who can write them on Tuesday night. Who writes them in the weeks after, when the council that made the motions has gone?
• 16:39
  Riley: I'd put that to the outlet in an email. Once the members leave, their last words stay in the record, and the people answerable for them do not. The new council has its own agenda and staff. A small outlet can't re-audit a departed council. I'd settle for a dated follow-up on the motions each departing member sponsored.
• 17:00
  Casey: And it still asks a paper with a few reporters to do the job of an archive. Four councillors walking out in one meeting is a lot of institutional memory leaving at once. The city keeps the minutes. Nobody keeps what those four knew about why a motion took the shape it did.
• 17:15
  Riley: Which is why the recap is the first draft of the record, and a first draft beats an empty file.
• 17:21
  Casey: Plain recaps are what's left after the reporter leaves. Plenty of small weeklies used to have someone in the council room every month, because their whole job was to be there. When that person goes, the recap is what residents have, and only the people who were in the room can check it against what was said.
• 17:39
  Riley: So the recap does real work. It names who spoke, which meeting, and what they said about the term. The city already keeps the check: it publishes Council Highlights for the October 27th meeting on its own website, separate from the formal minutes. The outlet's job is to link the two.
• 17:56
  Casey: Linking two records is the cheap part. Who maintains the link in year two, when the reporter who built it has a different beat?
• 18:04
  Riley: A person whose job it is, written into a budget line. A volunteer who got interested in the topic drifts off by spring. A part-time role with a line in somebody's budget is still there in March.
• 18:15
  Casey: Still there in year two is the whole test. Nobody has passed it yet, and a grant won't pass it either.
• 18:22
  Riley: The Press Forward grantees are the evidence for your side there. Real money, and it still ran short on hiring. A short recap can't close a staffing gap like that on its own.
• 18:32
  Casey: Capacity leaves when the reporter does. So the recap's gaps matter more. A story can say what it leaves out, but that only helps if the outlet keeps doing the follow-up. A note that promises a fuller account and never delivers tells residents a record exists when it doesn't. That's worse than a plain recap.
• 18:50
  Riley: A broken promise is worse, so promise less. One line saying the next council's first meeting will be covered, and then cover it.
• 18:57
  Casey: That I can live with. Cheap to write, expensive to keep.
• 19:01
  Riley: A podcast is another route into the same record. Somebody explains what a council did, on the record, in a format people choose to hear while they drive between Williams Lake and Quesnel.
• 19:13
  Casey: Podcasts stop when the host gets busy. I'd want to know who's still making it in the spring, and whether it covers the new council or only the one that left.
• 19:22
  Riley: So who owns the follow-up? The outlet that reported the meeting has the best seat for it. The city holds the minutes, the highlights and the vote record. Residents were in the room, and some of them remember the speeches better than the recap does.
• 19:37
  Casey: And each one can assume the other two have it covered. Nobody would be lying. They'd just be waiting for somebody else to start.
• 19:45
  Riley: I still say the outlet starts. Imperfect, but good enough to act on. Write the line, keep a running list of motions by sponsor, and ask the clerk how the minutes record a roundtable of farewells. If the answer is that they don't, that's a gap the city can fix too.
• 20:01
  Casey: The clerk should answer. I'm not convinced the answer fixes the reporter's gap. Minutes say what was decided. They don't say what a councillor learned, or what they'd do differently, and those are the things a resident would actually want to test.
• 20:15
  Riley: Then test those against the votes. Put the farewell next to the motions from the same term, and a reader can compare a claim to a motion in five minutes.
• 20:24
  Casey: Five minutes, if the motions are online and the reader knows which term to look at. Most people don't. So the outlet's one line matters more than the minutes do.
• 20:33
  Riley: Then I'll land on that line. An outlet that writes it, a city that posts its highlights, and a reader who spends five minutes with both have enough to tell whether Lyons's funding claim holds up. If you were in the room on October 27th, or you know how Williams Lake records a roundtable, send it to feedback at cariboo signals dot c-a.
• 20:55
  Casey: And I'll hold the other end open. Nobody has shown me who keeps that line going once the reporter moves on, or once the new council's first meeting gives everyone something fresher to cover. Until the outlet, the city or the residents in the room claims it, those four goodbyes are the last word on that council.
• 21:13
  Riley: Which makes the next council's first meeting the one to watch. Thanks for listening to Cariboo Signals, and have a good start to your week.