A day in the life of a tri-media volunteer
By Ilana van der Merwe, September 30 2025—
The Gauntlet, CJSW and NUTV have come together to offer students a unique experience through volunteer membership in the form of the Tri-Media alliance. Let’s step into a day in the life of a tri-media volunteer.
You get to campus after a long commute and decide the first steps to a productive day would be to review some lecture notes and write another paragraph of your next article for the Gauntlet — maybe an opinion piece on your experience with the C-Train? Your last article had upwards of 400 reads and you’re hoping this one does just as well. You find a clean and quiet volunteer desk at the Gauntlet and log into your Gauntlet volunteer wifi and work away in peace while jamming out to The Strokes with your headphones on.
Once you get out of your morning lecture, you head up to CJSW to work away at a music review you are prepping for on-air programming. You take the time while in the CJSW office to ask about a production training session — something you are looking forward to as you build the skills required for some live broadcasting time. Your mentor has comments that you have completed enough time in office tasks to start your own mic-training. You start brainstorming fun ideas for segments and potential podcasts of your own!
You head down one flight of stairs to pick up a slice of pizza for lunch then head back upstairs to NUTV for a browse of their video library. Maybe tonight is the night you rent out a DVD. While there, you sign up for a stop motion workshop to practice the art form featured in some of your favourite children’s movies. In this workshop, you get to establish key skills that also provide you with the prerequisites that let you work as a volunteer on NUTV-hosted video shoots.
After an interruption to attend class in Craigie Hall, you are back at the Gauntlet office. You find yourself at a workshop with six other students working on your interviewing skills. You practice writing probing questions and concise note-taking. After making a cup of tea at the Gauntlet, you and some other workshop goers head over to NUTV that night to attend a late-night social at NUTV to watch a screening of Isle of Dogs.
On your commute home, you stream a new podcast recorded through CJSW earlier in the week. You ask your editor at the Gauntlet if you can write a review on this podcast. You think this piece will provide useful insights to the student body. Your article pitch is approved, so you start working on your new piece while the NUTV DVD you borrowed plays in the background.
To volunteer at the Gauntlet: volunteer@thegauntlet.ca
To volunteer at CJSW: volunteer@cjsw.com
To volunteer at NUTV: create@nutv.ca