Call me a homer, but I nearly always listen to CBC radio – I prefer intelligent talk to music, and there are a lot of great programs on CBC. The Current with my pal Anna-Maria Tremonti being the big favourite.

Most of my year is spent preparing stories for Marketplace. Some of them have taken months of work, others have come together much more quickly. I work quite intensively with the producers and researchers to decide what stories we want to cover.  Then I  help direct the research that often goes on for months – investigative journalism takes a lot of time!

When that’s done, the researcher will give me a large binder of homework. Then, together with the producer we figure out who we want to interview, who we want to hold accountable and how we want to show it.

After the interviews are done, I work with the producer on a script and the edit begins. We then go through a long and painful process of reworking the piece until it becomes as strong as it can be. Sometimes during this process we are also dealing with unhappy businesses or companies that aren’t pleased we are about to reveal their practices on Marketplace!

Outside of Marketplace, I sometimes fill in for Peter Mansbridge on The National. You usually can’t predict the next day’s events, so it all happens in a day. The senior editors (including the anchor) all join on a conference call at 9 am to discuss and choose the stories that will be assigned that day.

Usually, when I’m filling in, I’m also working for Marketplace all day. So, I just keep an eye on the news, and don’t plug in fully until the 5 pm meeting where we discuss the progress of the stories the reporters and producers have been working on. Then we try to decide which ones will lead the newscast and which will come later.

From then on we start putting the show together, watching the reports as they come in from the field, and working with the show writers on the “intros” the anchor reads in studio. That’s a slow day. When big news breaks, the day can get extremely hairy as we decide how to handle our coverage, and sometimes I do interviews live into the show.

This month, I also hosted Test The Nation, Canada Eh? This was a week-long immersion program – with the focus for me being more on presentation than content. (I got to ask the questions, it didn’t matter if I knew the answers!).

Other than basic grooming and dress, I try not to think about my appearance when it comes to TV. I hope people are watching for other reasons.

When I started out, I was nervous and awkward and overly serious like every other journalist starting out. Confidence comes with time in the field, with knowledge of what you’re talking about. You can tell the anchors or hosts who have not paid their dues in the field. It’s all a performance.

I don’t like to watch myself on TV. I was there, I know what happened, why would I need to watch it again! I know there are coaches who tell TV people to gesture more or less, or lean their head on their hands or whatever, but if it’s planned, it looks fake, and people can tell.

I still get nervous before a big interview for Marketplace or before doing a big live show like on election night for The National. If you never get nervous, you’re not learning anything new.

The Marketplace documentaries are a series of stories I’ve done challenging sacred cows and encouraging people to think more critically. Sometimes, as with the ‘Chasing The Cancer Answer’ piece, the stories are more personal, but I prefer to see myself as a crusader against deception in general.

I really don’t want to be seen as “cancer girl”. That documentary was not about me. It was about the almost one in two of us that will be diagnosed with some form of cancer at some point in our life.

When I was diagnosed, a senior executive at Canada’s biggest cancer hospital told me that cancer had just surpassed heart disease as the biggest killer in this country, and that the odds of getting it were almost one in two. This was during the SARS scare, and I wondered: “Why is this never in the headlines”?

The more I looked into it, the more I realized that 90% of the most common cancers are not hereditary, but caused by environmental factors – the things we eat, drink and breathe. In other words, many cancers can be prevented. The big question I asked in that documentary is why aren’t we doing more on the prevention front?

There is no upside to being diagnosed with cancer. When I was first diagnosed I was asked if it would change my life. I was sure it would, that I would stop sweating the small stuff. But you don’t get a personality transplant with the chemo. We are who we are, I like my work and I’ve always made lots of room for family and friends. I didn’t need the prospect of death to make me appreciate life. Cancer just sucks.

I don’t want to tell people what to do with regard to fighting or coping with cancer – other than inform yourselves and be careful of what you put into your body.

What time I leave work depends on the day. On a slow day, I work 9 to 5 – but there aren’t  a lot of slow days in the news business!

Work takes up so much of my week that I don’t have time for many social activities  outside of close family and friends. I usually head straight home after work, enjoy a glass of wine with my husband, then have dinner with him and my daughter.

I try to get my work done at the office so that when I’m home, I’m home. Outside of the news, I  don’t watch much television (don’t tell anyone!). I’m a huge fan of Jon Stewart but he’s on too late for me to see him much.

I love to read. Right now I’m reading  a book called One River by Wade Davis. He’s an ethnobotanist, and weaves a tale about politics, intrigue, commerce and friendship through his account of the mysteries of the Amazon.

My favourite movie of the year is Wall-E – the animated film about a robot who’s cleaning up Earth after all the humans have had to abandon ship. It’s a story about two fundamental themes; love of the planet, and our need to have someone to hold our hand.

If I were to pick two major issues that most occupy my mind at the moment, it would be the state of the environment and the state of journalism. One is crucial to our long-term survival, the other is crucial for awareness. And both are in trouble.

Bedtime depends on assignments. There is no time to say no in the news business, and sometimes when I travel for Marketplace we work 18-hour days. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen very often. Usually, I’m in bed around 11 pm.