Michelle Gamage
Michelle Gamage reports at the intersection of health, environment and local research, using detailed evidence to show how policy and industry decisions turn into everyday risk. She is a health reporter with The Tyee and a freelance environmental journalist whose work also appears on CHEK News. Her stories tend to follow the chain from scientific findings and regulatory gaps to concrete consequences for patients, communities and ecosystems.
Climate Stress, Health Systems and Extreme Events
Gamage’s environment coverage often centres on how climate stress tests health systems and public infrastructure rather than on weather alone. In her reporting on B.C. not being ready for the next heat wave, she focuses on doctors’ warnings, clinical experience and preparedness gaps, framing extreme heat primarily as a health emergency rather than a meteorological event.
She extends this approach in work that has highlighted people who lost their homes in wildfires, tying personal displacement to broader questions about risk mapping and long-term resilience.
Her stories on future flood scenarios, including mapping how a major flood could impact the Lower Mainland, draw directly on modelling and research to make abstract forecasts understandable and urgent. Across these pieces she treats climate change as a system-wide pressure on housing, health care and community safety, not a standalone environmental topic.
Public Health Threats and Local Research
Much of Gamage’s recent work for CHEK News focuses on public health threats that are rising quickly but remain underexplained for general audiences. Her coverage of infectious syphilis tracks a sharp rise in cases over little more than a decade, using epidemiological data and expert voices to spell out why the change is “dramatic” and what it means for clinical practice and prevention. In a separate feature on how chicken eggs can help fight childhood cancers, she follows local researchers developing novel therapies, explaining complex science in plain language while keeping the focus on what new treatments could mean for families. Her reporting on health is reinforced by her role as The Tyee’s health reporter, where she regularly covers biodiversity and environmental issues alongside medicine and public health. She describes her beat as grounded in local research and the many different ways people can be harmed or killed, from disease to environmental exposures, which gives her work a clear, risk-mapping through-line.
Toxic Drug Supply and Harm Reduction
Gamage devotes sustained attention to the toxic drug supply and the policies that shape harm reduction services. In a CHEK News story on a rally supporting a Vancouver compassion club that provides tested drugs, she traces how criminal charges against organizers intersect with public health goals, emphasizing the practical effects on people who rely on the club to avoid poisoned substances. Her broader description of her beat includes toxic drugs and sex, signalling a willingness to report on stigmatized subjects with a clinical, evidence-first lens. The result is coverage that treats drug toxicity as a structural problem rooted in regulation, supply chains and enforcement rather than individual morality, while still foregrounding the lived experience of people using substances.
Industrial Activity, Biodiversity and Everyday Environments
On the environmental side, Gamage often focuses on how industrial activity reshapes small communities and local ecosystems. She has reported on ship breaking, including work referenced in CHEK News coverage of major ship-breaking events in Union Bay, where she examined what happens to vessels “when they die” and how dismantling operations affect surrounding land and water.
Her Tyee bio notes stories highlighting underregulated industrial operations in small communities, underscoring a focus on enforcement gaps and environmental justice rather than only large-scale climate narratives.
She also writes about biodiversity and everyday access to food, including reporting on local, affordable fresh food options, which situates environmental issues in the routines of daily life. Across these subjects she tends to pair investigations of corporate or regulatory behaviour with concrete examples of how those decisions show up in people’s homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods.
Solutions-Focused, Long-Form Reporting Style
Gamage favours longer-form, deeply reported stories that build from data to on-the-ground detail. She describes having a “weak spot” for solutions reporting, and her portfolio backs that up with pieces that identify practical interventions, whether in cancer research, harm reduction, food systems or climate preparedness. Her work as a freelance environmental journalist and regular contributor to outlets like The Tyee and Hakai Magazine reflects a consistent focus on environmentalism and exploring answers to serious social and ecological problems.
Across health and environment, her coverage is characterised by clear prose, strong use of expert sources and an emphasis on how research and policy can be turned into concrete protections for people and places.
4 more environment journalists.
Adam Kovac
Adam Kovac is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American who explains fast-moving stories where science, climate and public policy intersect. His beat spans climate-driven extremes, El Niño, energy, infrastructure, space, mathematics and public health. He has written about super El Niño, extreme weather, ozone recovery, diesel prices, electric rain, peeling paint, wine chemistry, lunar craters, space missions, NASA telescopes, vaccines, IVF treatments, TikTok remedies and AI-created viruses. He also covers regulation, political campaigns and pressures on scientific institutions. His stories are fast-turn news features and explainers. He uses expert quotes and clear descriptions of underlying mechanisms to show why developments matter. He connects technical details to practical stakes, including risks to ecosystems, economies, patients, public safety, technology and long-term scientific work.
Angela Capobianco
Angela Capobianco stands out for reporting how policy, infrastructure and environmental decisions translate into concrete effects for workers, residents and vulnerable communities. She is a digital broadcast journalist at Global News and works as a general assignment video journalist with a focus on environmental reporting, municipal affairs, housing and labour. Her stories cover labour protections, municipal governance, environmental conflicts and social policy. She reports on how land use, climate and regulatory choices affect communities, from glyphosate spraying fears in Bear River to extreme heat and support for people sleeping rough. She also covers workers’ rights, long-term care strikes, municipal budgets, ferry service delays, heritage designation, housing reuse, and bridge replacement plans, with close attention to negotiations, official decisions and on-the-ground impact.
Arrthy Thayaparan
Arrthy Thayaparan is a CBC News reporter who shows how government decisions affect daily life. She covers climate, transportation, education, community issues, trade, tariffs and the cost of living. Her reporting examines how policy changes affect prices, public services, employers, workers, consumers and families. She has written about Ontario businesses facing tariff pressures, ticket resale rules, tariff support funding, transit changes after the Scarborough RT derailment, highway speed limits, education union talks and mandatory school platforms. She also covers public-service work rules, community-service funding, municipal campaigns, tenant protections and the economic effects of major events. Thayaparan reports through concrete numbers, program details and timelines. She gives space to governments, unions, workers, businesses and residents, and traces decisions from political debate to their effects on commutes, classrooms, budgets, workplaces and neighbourhoods.
Bianca McKeown
Bianca McKeown stands out for reporting the everyday consequences of climate change, infrastructure decisions, social policy and Indigenous governance in northern communities. She reports for CBC North across television, radio and digital. Her work focuses on how weather shifts, wildlife changes and development projects affect daily life, travel, safety and local economies. She covers large infrastructure and energy proposals, foster parent payments, cost of living, vulnerable families and Indigenous leadership. She also reports on national reconciliation efforts and the role of Inuit voices in decision-making. Her stories rely on practical details, community voices, interviews and clear descriptions of what residents, officials and advocates face on the ground. Her coverage is direct and descriptive, and it connects policy decisions to lived reality.