Between Stories: A New Video Series

Journalists tell stories for a living, but much of what they experience is left on the editing room floor, reserved for late-night dinner conversations or over a drink. These untold stories are often about how they got their stories, and what makes them tick. They are the stories of adventure and happenstance, and are insights from storytellers whose profession plays an important role in a functioning civil society. 

Our new video series, Between Stories, is about those anecdotes and observations. Two of our journalists, removed from both studio and script, swap stories from the frontlines and discuss questions of the day. It's a chance to pull the mask back, and get to know the people who bring Canadians the stories that matter.

In this first episode, David Common, host of World Report on Radio One, and Adrienne Arsenault, correspondent for CBC News, share stories about fixers and the role of serendipity from their time reporting in the Middle East.

In Part 1, Adrienne and David talk about their fixers in Iraq and Gaza. Fixers are often the bloodline for journalists working abroad - they're locals who help connect journalists to the community. In Gaza, Adrienne's driver abandoned her crew in the middle of a gun fight, while David's Kurdish Peshmerga driver in Kirkuk held his ground during a bank robbery.

In Part 2, Adrienne and David talk about chance and its relationship to success while working in a foreign land. David happens to run into a friendly and Canada-loving U.S. Army General outside of Saddam's palace in Tikrit, while Adrienne attempts to sneak a turkey over the Ramallah border in an effort to save Canadian Thanksgiving in Jerusalem.

Before you press play, a warning that there's some off-colour language in their conversation.