Kate Otterbein
Kate Otterbein focuses on everyday stories that show how policy, policing, borders and local culture shape life in her community, often bringing a human, sometimes pop‑culture, angle to hard news and public‑service coverage. She works as a multimedia journalist for the CTV News local newsroom, where she covers music and arts alongside general assignment news.
Border, policing and public-safety coverage
Much of Otterbein’s recent work tracks how law enforcement and border agencies affect residents’ day-to-day lives. She reports on cross-border traffic and enforcement, including longer-than-normal wait times at the Ambassador Bridge for Canada-bound traffic and the seizure of $35,000 in undeclared U.S. cash at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel. She covers high-impact policing files such as a five-hour standoff involving a suspect armed with a butcher knife and the arrest of a man after repeated hate-motivated communications directed at Jewish organizations. Her crime reporting also includes detailed accounts of a 154-kilogram cocaine seizure near the Ambassador Bridge and calls for public assistance after a break-and-enter in south Windsor, where she includes specific time windows, locations and request lines for tips. She applies the same methodical approach to serious workplace incidents, such as a construction worker’s life-altering fall at a site in Southgate Township, where she notes the height of the fall, emergency response timeline and the formal investigation underway.
City services, infrastructure and environmental action
Otterbein regularly explains how municipal services and infrastructure changes will affect residents, emphasising practical details. She has broken down a diaper-disposal pilot program tied to a shift to bi-weekly garbage collection, laying out how to enroll, what can be placed at the curb and the timeline for the program’s evaluation. She has guided residents through disrupted services, including how to obtain and pay delayed water bills in LaSalle during a postal strike, listing in-person and online options and contact points for questions. Her infrastructure reporting ranges from traffic at existing crossings to progress on major projects, including visual updates on the new Gordie Howe International Bridge through progress photos. She also highlights local environmental performance, noting Windsor’s place on the CDP Cities A List for environmental action and spelling out that the city has maintained that status for multiple years.
Community life, culture and human-interest stories
Alongside hard news, Otterbein spends significant time on community institutions, culture and lighter, people-focused stories. She has covered the unveiling of a second bookmobile for the Windsor Public Library, explaining how it replaces the original vehicle that broke down in 2020 and providing route details so residents know where it will be and when. Her community reporting extends to youth services, such as a $20,000 gift to the Boys and Girls Club of London from corporate donors, where she emphasizes how the funding will support safe and enriching programming for kids. She also covers local winners and good-news moments, such as a $100,000 Lotto Max ticket sold in Elgin County, urging residents to check their tickets. Her human-interest work includes reality-TV adjacent storytelling, such as a feature on a Windsor mother–son duo competing on Amazing Race Canada, where she frames the national platform through the lens of local pride. In addition to text pieces, she files video segments for television and social platforms, including reports on library initiatives and crime and court stories.
Role, format and career background
Otterbein works as a multimedia journalist with CTV’s Windsor newsroom, contributing daily news stories, television hits and digital video. Her work spans straight news, service journalism and short feature pieces, typically built around clear nuts-and-bolts information: dates, times, program rules, routes, hotlines and agency quotes. Before joining the CTV newsroom in 2024, she worked as a morning news anchor in radio, covering several regional counties, which gives her experience distilling complex local issues into concise, on-air updates. Across beats—from policing and border enforcement to community programming and arts and culture—her reporting is grounded in practical detail with a consistent focus on how decisions and events land on ordinary people.
4 more music journalists.
Aisling Murphy
Aisling Murphy is the theatre reporter and critic at The Globe and Mail. She stands out for writing about theatre as both art and infrastructure, with coverage that links new Canadian stage work, awards culture, and pop-inflected criticism. She covers theatre, music, and pop culture in a detailed, conversational style, moving between reviews, reported features, and analysis of the systems that shape what gets produced. Her beat includes the Dora Awards, Toronto stages, new writing, intimate productions, and smaller venues, as well as controversy where artistic decisions meet politics and community response. Before The Globe, she was senior editor of Intermission Magazine, and her bylines include The New York Times, Toronto Star, CBC Arts, and the Baltimore Sun.
Alex Hudson
Alex Hudson is Editor-in-Chief of Exclaim! and leads coverage of music’s links to sports, literature, and technology, with a strong focus on Canadian artists. Hudson reports on how music intersects with other fields, not as a separate industry. Recent coverage has included Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer on how playing piano saved his career, Ottawa Bluesfest’s Canada-wide soccer watch party, Lakes of Canada’s Margaret Atwood-inspired album Transgressions, Hannah Mary McKinnon on The Beaches influencing her rock-themed novel, and Alexander Nilsson’s 1001 Albums Generator as a tool for broadening music discovery beyond algorithmic recommendations.
Alexis Mikulski Ruiz
Alexis Mikulski Ruiz is a commerce writer whose distinct focus is the buying and streaming side of music, entertainment and lifestyle, helping readers decide how to watch major events and what to purchase around them. She is an e-commerce specialist at Rolling Stone, covering products, platforms and deals tied to award shows, festivals, sports and everyday culture. Her beat blends music streaming guides with shopping and product recommendations across fashion, beauty, tech, food, wellness and drinks. She reports through experience-focused service journalism, using lists, comparison roundups and step-by-step guides to answer concrete questions about how to stream major cultural moments, where to shop and which products to choose. Her background includes commerce and lifestyle writing for consumer publications such as Esquire, Men’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Daily, Women’s Wear Daily and Billboard.
Allie Gregory
Allie Gregory maps how audiences encounter new music by tracking the practical pathways of releases, tours, festivals, platforms and projects. She is a managing editor and news writer at Exclaim!, where she is a primary editorial contact for forthcoming releases and news tips and helps shape the outlet’s daily agenda around new music and its broader entertainment context. Her reporting centres on timely album and tour announcements, live logistics and festival programming across indie, metal, country, pop and adjacent film and streaming news. She writes direct, information-heavy pieces that foreground calendars, support acts, set times and programming structures, while also producing longer-form interviews, cultural stories and staff-pick recommendations that connect artists’ work, controversy and creative campaigns to how audiences encounter music and entertainment on the road, at festivals and on screens.