Charles Brockman
Charles Brockman is a multimedia journalist and digital team lead at CityNews Vancouver who covers business and labour stories with a focus on how decisions by employers and unions affect daily life in Metro Vancouver. His reporting centres on the intersection of transit operations, worker rights, and public safety, using clear, straight-ahead coverage of breaking developments and the people living through them.
Transit labour and union negotiations
Brockman’s most distinctive work follows labour tensions around transit, particularly contract talks between Unifor and Coast Mountain Bus Company. In his coverage of unionized bus drivers and SeaBus operators moving toward a strike mandate after negotiations broke down, he reports the overwhelming support for strike action, the unions’ wage and safety demands, and the formal process of delivering a bargaining mandate. He brings out specific details such as vote results and the role of Unifor’s Western leadership, giving readers a precise sense of how close the system is to disruption and what workers are asking for.
Across these transit labour stories, the emphasis is on the mechanics of collective bargaining and the concrete implications for service rather than opinion or commentary. He connects the business side — contract terms, employer positions, and operational risks — with the lived realities of bus operators and SeaBus crews, treating union votes and strike mandates as major business decisions in the region’s transportation network. This makes his coverage useful for anyone who needs to understand not just that a dispute is happening, but who is involved, what is at stake in dollars and conditions, and how close the situation is to escalation.
Public safety and policing
Brockman also reports on public safety incidents, including police interventions and resulting charges. In his story on a man charged after an in-progress break-in at a West Vancouver home, he focuses on the essential facts: the location, the police response, the timeline of the incident, and the charges laid. The piece is tightly structured as a news update, drawing on official information to outline what happened without dramatic language or speculation.
That approach reflects a broader pattern in his work on policing: straightforward accounts that document events, actions taken by law enforcement, and legal outcomes. He treats these stories as part of the region’s risk landscape, linking them to concerns about property crime and neighbourhood security while keeping the framing factual and concise. For organizations working around public safety or justice issues, his style prioritizes verified detail over narrative flourish.
Disasters and lived experience
When covering disasters, Brockman often uses individual voices to explain conditions on the ground. In his piece on wildfires near Los Angeles, he centres a former Vancouver resident who describes living just outside the affected area and calls it a terrifying place to be as heavy winds drive the fires. By letting the subject speak directly about fear, smoke, and uncertainty, he turns a distant fire story into a relatable account of what it means to stay in a threatened community.
This disaster reporting blends basic situational context — fires driven by wind, damage to the county — with personal testimony. The combination gives readers both a factual understanding of the event and an emotional sense of its impact, without veering into commentary. It also shows his interest in cross-border stories where people with ties to his audience are caught up in events elsewhere, a useful angle for stories that straddle different jurisdictions or markets.
Digital-first reporting and visual background
Brockman’s current role combines editorial responsibility with digital leadership, reflecting a career that began with a decade in graphic design before shifting into journalism. He has held senior design responsibilities and now works as a digital team lead while writing and editing news coverage, bringing a visual and platform-aware perspective to how stories are presented. He describes himself as a writer at CityNews Vancouver with prior experience at CBC, indicating time spent in both local and national news environments.
That background informs a clearly digital-first reporting style: short, direct headlines, concise leads that capture the main development, and stories built for quick reading on screens. The multimedia aspect of his role means he can move between text and other formats as needed, but his written work is consistently focused on clarity — what happened, who is involved, and what might happen next. For business and labour stories in particular, he is a fit where the key need is accurate, timely reporting on negotiations, operational risks, and how those choices touch workers and the public.
4 more business journalists.
Aarjavee Raaj
Aarjavee Raaj focuses on how corporate decisions, government warnings and economic trends affect everyday Canadians, using clear, data-driven business and related news coverage. She is a CTVNews.ca journalist with experience reporting on arts, culture, business and more, and her name is pronounced Aar-Za-Vee. Her work links institutional and corporate developments to practical consequences for workers, consumers and families, including corporate losses, retail restructuring, tax schemes and compliance warnings. She reports on workplace trends, economic strain, consumer recalls and health impacts, using survey data, charity reports, regulatory notices and clinical stories to show how macroeconomic and policy issues touch daily life. A digital journalist, she keeps to tight headlines, clear summaries of official statements or data, and a steady focus on what developments mean for people who work, shop and rely on public services.
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams reports human interest stories that follow how sudden conflict, loss and long-running mysteries reshape the lives of ordinary people in everyday settings. She is a writer-reporter on PEOPLE’s Human Interest team, a role she has held since joining the brand in June 2021. Her work centers on routine days that turn into major events, giving equal weight to what happened and the human cost. She covers minor disputes and errands that end in tragedy, sudden accidents, law enforcement and public safety incidents, and missing-person cases with new developments after years of uncertainty. Her reporting is concise, event-led and built around individual lives, often framed with clear emotional cues while staying grounded in verified facts. Business and workplace contexts appear as backdrops, but the person and their circle remain at the heart of the story.
Akshay Kulkarni
Akshay Kulkarni is a data-led reporter who explains how economic, policy and social forces play out in British Columbia through concrete numbers, records and local case histories. He has worked as a journalist at CBC British Columbia since 2021, focusing on business, labour and resource developments, including tariffs, trade rules, corporate strategies and regulatory decisions. His coverage of critical minerals, Amazon’s impact on jobs and wages, and responsible investment links market shifts to the lived experience of workers, consumers and small businesses. He also reports on infrastructure, energy and land use, such as the Site C project and high-value property disputes, and on policy and social systems, including Indigenous deaths in custody, social media use in harm reduction, and mandatory inquests. His stories are built around original interviews and quantitative detail that show how systems affect communities on the ground.
Allison Stephen
Allison Stephen stands out for connecting everyday life with money, work, and the built environment through vivid local examples instead of abstract business coverage. She is a staff writer at Daily Hive, where she covers how jobs, housing, major projects, and consumer experiences shape economic reality on the ground. Housing and real estate are central to her work, including detailed, accessible stories on distinctive homes, high-end rentals, and monthly shifts in home prices and cost of living. She regularly covers employment, especially public-sector and institutional hiring, highlighting well-paid roles and urging readers to act on new opportunities. Her reporting on major civic and recreational projects explains what is being built, how much it costs, and where it stands in approvals. She also writes about local businesses, food, and attractions, using concrete numbers, specific locations, and direct calls to action.