During my recent blogging hiatus, I realized I had failed to give some basic qualifications for my comments. Who am I to be talking about the trials and tribulations of cub reporters, right? Well, here ’tis – the origins story.

First Taste: My move to journalism started at the old CBC Radio building in St. John’s. At the end of high school, I signed on to do a  pilot media camp called FRAMED, where I had a few lessons in radio drama, documentary and even marketing from CBCers Glen Tilley and Terry Winsor.

The camp has now moved to a video-production focus, but I personally enjoyed learning more about radio. (For a better feel of the camp, watch this video from another camp student, Jillian Dollimont. Note: Windows/RealTime, runs approx. 5 1/2 Mins.)

University: I went from high school to Memorial University of Newfoundland for a BA. I was going crazy for a while, until I discovered that I could volunteer with the student radio station (CHMR) and the student paper (The Muse).

At the radio station, I was on a show run by a friend of mine and did some co-hosting, but mostly movie reviews… really terrible movie reviews. The show was called After the Movies and it’s one of those things I hope no one ever digs up.

At The Muse, I did a few pieces. I was a drop in member of the paper, as in I would drop in and get an assignment, or deliver a finished piece, and then disappear again. The problem with that is you don’t really learn much that way… but here’s a sampling of what came out:

Rock Stars From Rocky Places (Musician Denielle Hann tries out for CBS show Rock Star)

All Roads Point to Magnetic North (National theatre festival comes to St. John’s)

Film/Television: As I worked away on my BA, I ended up doing a bunch of volunteer projects that included some video/media work. I also completed the First Time Filmmaker program at the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers’ Co-operative (NIFCO) and finished a short film. That got me thinking about film/documentary work, which I picked up again at J-School.

MUN Diploma: Before I finished with my BA, I started simultaneously working on a Diploma in Performance and Communications Media.

Amy Joy in an ad pic for the Diploma in Performance and Communications Media at MUN. Sorry for using this picture Amy, but you look great in it! ;)

 There was no J-School at MUN, but this got me interested enough to later go away for school. The diploma included a class in documentary with journalist Bob Wakeham and classes in television/video production, one of which was completed with working journalists at CBC television in St. John’s. I finished the diploma with a internship at CBC St. John’s.

University of King’s College: Heading to J-School was the best choice I ever made and I forever thankful to all the profs at King’s for making it not simply a good, but also a beneficial experience. My understanding of journalism is lightyears beyond where I was before starting at King’s. Brilliant program. 

At King’s I wrote and taped and edited and learned. Here’s some of what came out:

Gay Rights In Iran A Complex Battle  (NovaNewsNet Story)

Future Ministers Learn Language of Emotion (Transcript Story)

The ‘Fax (Television news, episode from Nov. 2007)

Land & Sea: Atlantic (Internship, worked to generate future stories and in taping story on Nova Scotia Apples. Television docs) 

The Western Star: Taking me in straight from school, the team at The Western Star were teachers themselves. I worked out of my own ’satellite’ office in Deer Lake, Newfoundland covering topics from rug hooking to the seal hunt to highway accidents. Here’s a few samples:

 Water filled with asbestos: residents (One of two stories with timeline and multiple sidebars on Baie Verte asbestos site)

Trap shooting event helps keep memory of Bud Nichols alive (Sports feature with well-known local figure)

Roadside camps empty (The loss of several gravel pit camp sites in Howley, NL ran through multiple stories)

Etc.Etc…

The Telegram: I’m currently filling for a maternity leave and writing mainly Arts news.

And that’s where I am so far. Like I’ve said before, I can’t say I feel like I’m really a ‘journalist’ just yet, despite what the degree says. Truthfully- I’m absolutely, positively still learning. But that’s what it is to be a cub.

So I abandoned this blogging venture for some the last month or so. The reason behind that was a move from one paper (The Western Star – Corner Brook, NL, Canada) to another (The Telegram – St. John’s, NL, Canada).

I’ve also been grappling with the ‘what can I say?/what can’t I say?’ bloggers’ debate. This, of course, becomes much trickier when you’re meant to be a journalist by trade, and what you say one day is thrown back at you as a proof of personal bias the next.

I’m still not sure exactly how secure I am in all this, but I’ve decided to keep going anyway and see what happens.

I’m working on photo galleries and video entries to add more material here. We’ll see how all that goes.

I was in the town of Woody Point a little while back to look in on a cruise ship stop in the area of Gros Morne National Park.

The report leading up to the cruise ship’s visit is available at The Western Star website, but the photos taken of the actual ship in the bay are the best (printed in and available through the W. Star).

While I was watching the ship leave the bay, along with hundreds of waving residents from nearby small communities who came to see the boat off, I noticed a little girl behind us who seemed genuinely sad to see the ship sail away. Her name is Chelsea Burden and she had spent the day out with her mother, April.

Photo by Ashley Fitzpatrick. 2009. All rights reserved.

It’s a spoof on child–sponsorship ads.

Funny? Offensive? Still, the point is made I suppose.

  Today — CBC Radio 1 — dead air from 1:48 to 1:52 Newfoundland time (or thereabouts).

  Well, dead except for the clearly audible: “Oh my God, what’d I do wrong?”

C’mon. It’s endearing really to here it every now and then. And it happens to all the big networks, not just the public broadcaster. It happens in the United States too — in Iceland or Thailand for that matter.

 The lesson: If going to the tape leads to dead air, don’t worry. It won’t mean the end of your job (unless you end up specializing in the sounds of silence like no one ever has before). BUT- also realize that in a studio there is always a mic. If the audience is not hearing the tape, they’re probably hearing you… “Oh my God.” ;)

Ok- so reporters mess up. If anyone says otherwise, they’re wrong… or maybe they write a single story every month year election cycle. But the real truth is, it happens. In what I’ve seen, it’s a small amount (although maybe a little more ‘oops’ moments for the cub reporters), but it happens. 

Why say this? Well, the topic of reporter mistakes recently bounced back into the limelight, as the New Brunswick Telegraph–Journal posted a front–page retraction for a story they printed. The story (on “wafergate”- make me cry- who suggested this?) incorrectly suggested Prime Minister Stephen Harper had pocketed a communion wafer at a funeral.

The only problem with the retraction? The reporters didn’t make the suggestion! Here’s an excerpt:

“The Telegraph-Journal sincerely apologizes to the prime minister for the harm that this inaccurate story has caused. We also apologize to reporters Rob Linke and Adam Huras and to our readers for our failure to meet our own standards of responsible journalism and accuracy in reporting.”

Linke and Huras wrote the story. I assume they wrote a solid story and didn’t even misspell ‘Harper’ or anything. It’s right to apologize to them.

The suggestion was added by an editor, the apology says. The editor decided to slip a line in about the communion wafer, yet the correction talks about “responsible journalism” and “accuracy in reporting.” What?!? 

I’m sorry, but from what I understand the journalism was responsible and the reporting was accurate. So seriously, terrible choice of words.  

Yes, I know they were talking in the larger sense, of the ‘entity’ of the newspaper’s commitment to journalism… but let’s get real. Most people aren’t going to read that closely enough to get anything aside from ‘paper- bad, reporters- bad, journalism-bad.’

STOP. Scratch “most people” from that. What I mean to say is some people. And that, of course, is an assumption. 

In any case, more importantly in all this, the question remains on how this editor isn’t being strung up in the full floodlights of day. This wasn’t a misspelled name, this was an outright accusation against the Prime Minister, stating he in essence thumbed his nose at the Catholic church. (By the by, that bit about the wafer being called a host- terrible writing- did we really need to include that?)

But it had to be a deliberate act by this editor, yes? It couldn’t have come from an assumption. What would they have thought? ”Wait- Where did that wafer thing go? I can’t see it in the photo. He must have shoved it in his pocket for a late–night snack…. let’s put that in there. Yeah.”

Sorry. Editors don’t work that way from what I’ve seen.

Just so people know, in my own experience, editors don’t just throw stuff into stories. My editors generally call me if they’re changing or adding anything (usually for clarity). They check to see if it makes sense, is appropriate and is accurate.

So shame on the editor in this case. I can’t tell you the editor’s name, because the editor’s name was not mentioned within the version of the apology I read. So they’re forever “the editor.”

And here, we finally get to my point: while the editor (or editors- more than one is possible) name(s) were not mentioned in the apology, the names of the reporters were mentioned twice. each.

…’reporters- bad, journalism-bad’…

Grrr.

              Photo by Ashley Fitzpatrick. 2009. Copies available through The Western Star. 

I have trouble with lots of detail. When there’s more than one debate happening on an issue, or if there’s lots of background, I find it hard getting it all in and together and organized and coherent. Ok, I admit it. It’s something I’m working on and is HUGE as a daily news journalist.

Still, my deficiency got me into some trouble today when I took several hours to put together a piece I already had all the notes for… eesh. 

I’ve been trying to get faster, but more importantly better, at the whole Pulitzer — tell them briefly — thing.

But, should I just abandon daily news? Or is this an “all in good time, grasshopper” moment?

I think I’ll stick it out and keep working on it. Still, I’m very impressed at those of you out there who have the natural news sense.

YouTube popped this up when I did a search for “news Canada”:

Naked News Canada

As a female reporter working just as hard as my male counterparts to find and deliver stories, I find the concept of “naked news” pretty repulsive. And I think a lot of the female broadcast personalities would share those feelings.

It’s not that we wouldn’t like seeing a little more of, say, George Stroumboulopoulos. It’s that I could never picture a producer walking up to George and saying: “No, that whole live segment was great, but we’re thinking maybe re-doing some noddies for the Suzuki interview. What? No, it was all great. Great. It just needs a little more… well… SEXY.”

So I went into this job with the delusion that the facts of the daily news stories were always the centre of attention in a newspaper.

I had the belief that readers would pick over every detail I wrote and discuss the news with intent — like bibliophiles attacking the latest Ian Rankin mystery, to find out whodunnit.   …Then I began working.

I soon realized that I could make no greater error than to misspell the name of a grandchild in a photo caption. I also discovered the online comment boards where readers often forego the story to instead talk to — and about — each other.

Here’s a gem of an example. It’s a three-line brief from The Telegram today that led to user Donny Dooley being tagged again and again. 

Not that it means the facts of the story aren’t important. Quite the contrary. It just means not everyone has the story at their centre of attention.

The lesson: Focus on getting the details right, but don’t be put down if the only response to all your hard work is no response at all — it might be a good thing considering some of the alternatives.