Emma Convey
Emma Convey reports for CTV News Atlantic, covering Nova Scotia stories where institutional decisions and community resources translate directly into everyday impacts on students and residents. Her recent work on rising demand at Nova Scotia university food banks and the growing number of young people diagnosed with anxiety keeps pressure on the realities facing students and young people at the centre of her coverage. Alongside education-focused reporting, including the financial challenges facing the University of King’s College and their implications for campus staffing, she consistently returns to community services, local infrastructure and public spaces as they change around the people who use them.
She is listed as a reporter for CTVNewsAtlantic.ca on the Atlantic newsroom’s staff page and works as a video journalist with CTV News, combining field reporting with digital coverage for the Atlantic desk. Her bylines and contributions span standalone stories and collaborative reporting, including pieces that carry her written work, on-the-ground visuals and supporting footage. The through-line across that mix is a focus on how institutional shifts, social supports and public amenities affect the daily experience of students, vulnerable residents and local communities.
University coverage and student wellbeing
Convey’s education coverage concentrates on post-secondary campuses and the pressures faced by the people who study and work there.
In a recent piece on Nova Scotia university food banks, she reports on increased demand across campus food support programs, drawing attention to how more students are relying on those services and what that says about affordability and food insecurity in the province. Her reporting on youth anxiety diagnoses, highlighted in a national mental health research organization’s media centre, documents a sharp rise in children and young people being diagnosed with anxiety and features expert voices to frame that trend and its consequences.
That focus on student wellbeing extends to institutional finances and staffing, as in her coverage of the University of King’s College’s financial difficulties and the expectation of fewer staff and faculty members. By pairing stories about campus support systems like food banks with pieces on mental health and institutional resourcing, Convey builds a picture of student life that is defined not just by classrooms but by the support networks and stability that make education possible. The beat is defined less by policy abstractions and more by the concrete pressures on students and young people as they navigate housing, food costs, mental health and the continuity of their programs.
Community services and vulnerable residents
Beyond campus boundaries, Convey regularly covers community services and how they serve people living with health challenges or in precarious conditions.
In her story on the Epilepsy Association of the Maritimes opening a new space in Halifax, she focuses on the significance of a dedicated physical environment for people with epilepsy and their families, documenting the opening event and what the organization says the space will offer. Her photography credit underscores that she is present on site, capturing visuals that situate the story in the lived environment of the people it affects.
Her reporting on Halifax encampment residents during a heat wave follows a similar pattern of staying close to vulnerable people and the services around them.
That piece shines a light on how extreme heat compounds the challenges of living in an encampment and includes imagery of local support organizations such as Soul’s Harbour Rescue Mission, positioning community agencies as key actors in the response. Taken together, these stories show Convey turning back repeatedly to how front-line charities and community spaces operate, and how the conditions in which vulnerable residents live - whether health-related or housing-related - shape the urgency and tone of her coverage.
Local institutions, infrastructure and environment
Convey’s work also tracks changes to local institutions and public infrastructure, with an emphasis on access, disruption and environmental context. In her coverage of the Museum of Natural History in Halifax closing for two weeks of renovations, she reports on a temporary shutdown of a public cultural institution and explains the scope and timing of the renovations, signalling how families and visitors will be affected.
Her contributions to a story on a biodiversity aquarium opening in Halifax with more than 30 exhibits similarly highlight the arrival of a new educational and environmental attraction and the breadth of exhibits on offer.
She is credited with files on a story about Canada Post pulling mail services from a street in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, due to health and safety concerns, adding reporting to a piece about basic infrastructure being interrupted and what that means for residents who rely on door-to-door delivery. In another collaborative piece, she contributes to coverage of a survey finding that nearly half of Atlantic Canadian drivers are open to buying an electric vehicle, helping document attitudes toward EV adoption and the regional shift in transportation preferences.
These stories show her engaging with infrastructure and environment not in isolation, but as systems that shape how communities access services, participate in cultural life and respond to broad transitions like electrification.
Sports and community celebration
Convey’s portfolio includes sports coverage that is closely tied to community identity and celebration. In her story on PWHL head coach Kori Cheverie bringing the Walter Cup to her hometown of New Glasgow, she documents a local event where a national women’s hockey achievement is brought back to a Nova Scotia community, capturing autograph signings and public festivities. The emphasis is on how major league success resonates at the local level, and how community members - particularly young fans - interact with high-level women’s sports when it is made present in their own town.
Across these sports and feature stories, Convey treats athletics as part of the broader fabric of community life rather than as a standalone beat, connecting elite competition to grassroots pride and participation. That approach matches the rest of her work: institutions, services and events are covered in terms of what they mean for the people who live, study and work in Nova Scotia, making her coverage particularly useful when a story has clear implications for students, vulnerable residents or local communities navigating change.
4 more education journalists.
Abby Russchen
Abby Russchen ties education, community institutions and individual stories together, showing how policies and decisions register in people’s lives. She reports for CBC on education and community life, working across text, video and photography for different CBC platforms. Her education coverage centres student achievement, provincial and national test results, classroom technology and the forces shaping learning conditions, connecting policy language and expert analysis to observable changes in performance. She treats AI, screens and digital tools as part of the education beat, focusing on their impact on student well-being. She also reports on community institutions and local services, from bank closures and changing city status to small-business growth. Her human-interest features follow people, public memory and recognition, and her long-form background supports detailed, fact-grounded narratives across formats.
Alexa Phillips
Alexa Phillips reports on education as a financial system, tracing who pays, who benefits and who bears the risk when policy changes reshape schools and universities. She covers education policy, funding and regulation for The i Paper, with a consistent focus on money, power and their impact on students and staff. Her reporting follows fees, budgets and reform into classrooms and lecture halls, using concrete figures to show how tax changes, funding mechanisms and loan reforms translate into course cuts, job losses and access. Phillips brings wider experience on public services and regulation, including work on gambling oversight and healthcare access, so education sits in a larger accountability story. She writes straightforward, reported news pieces that combine policy detail, financial data and case studies, built from official records and regular call‑outs to readers affected by the systems she covers.
Alexandra Holyk
Alexandra Holyk is a multi-skilled journalist at CTV News who reports on education and youth issues through the daily lives of students, families, and local communities. She covers school and campus decisions, student safety, youth behaviour, and neighbourhood incidents, with a focus on how they affect the people directly involved. Her work includes stories on graduation choices, concerns about Black students in a school board, federal research funding at the University of Waterloo, and students who helped after a cyclist collision. She also covers vandalism and other local disruptions around schools and neighbourhoods. Holyk pitches, researches, shoots, writes, edits, and presents stories for broadcast and digital platforms. Her previous work includes video journalism for provincial coverage, along with reporting for campus and regional outlets and major Canadian newspapers and business media.
Annabelle Olivier
Annabelle Olivier ties system-level themes in Quebec’s school system to the immediate realities of parents and students, treating education as a lived experience rather than an abstract policy field. She is a digital journalist with CBC News, covering education and related public policy. Her work spans data breaches and digital privacy in schools, institutional conflicts and labour disputes that disrupt study plans, education on the campaign trail, and school infrastructure and land use. She reports on incidents like mass emails exposing sensitive parent data, suspended classes that leave students feeling like bargaining chips, and proposals to turn racetracks into schools. Her background in digital production at another major Canadian broadcaster shapes an online-first reporting style, grounded in specific incidents, clear descriptions, and detailed, verifiable facts drawn from documents, statements and interviews.