With the loss of local journalists, we have even fewer people left asking tough questions
announced this week: 1,300 positions eliminated, many in the Bell Media division, to begin with. The closure of foreign bureaus and the loss of so much talent. The complete shutdown of six radio stations, which once made important contributions to their communities. And the sale of another three, including Hamilton’s CKOC, which I grew up listening to from Toronto – and later worked for.
We worked so hard and were paid so very little. But we learned: How to do interviews. How to write news stories – what to put at the top, what to include, what to leave out. What made a good clip or quote. And how to do it fast, too: we delivered two or more newscasts an hour. Maybe sports, too. I learned a lot about sports in those jobs.
Doug Farraway, my news director in Hamilton, recalled a day when our then-bustling newsroom covered no fewer than 13 local stories. “For us to go to those 13 events, we connected with people. You not only connected, but you made contacts. That person might have called you back and said: ‘Do you know that there’s a fire?’ All that stuff is being totally lost,” he said.
I had the luxury of making these mistakes in small markets . I learned from them and grew, so that when I hit the big time – Toronto! – I had some experience and a tiny bit of confidence. But I kept learning. I am still learning. There was a lot of laughter as we recalled these stories, but they didn’t seem funny at the time. We were so earnest, hard-working, ambitious. We were sponges, learning from the more senior people we were fortunate to work with.
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