Meet the new guy, meet the new ink-stained wretch

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Photo by Donna Wilson

Photo by Donna Wilson

The noon hour arrives, and I get ready to leave the newsroom for a quick lunch. Suddenly, the general manager appears with a story assignment that absolutely had to be done in the next few hours, no excuses. At last, I thought, the four years and countless thousands of dollars given to a university had paid off—finally I’m a real journalist.

OK, so that’s not quite how it happened. The quick lunch was actually a ham-and-cheese sandwich I was going to eat in my office. The general manager was the Citizen’s Donna Wilson, and her tone wasn’t demanding in the least. I got to eat my lunch before I went back to work. And the assignment? The Thompson equivalent of a “drop-what-you’re-doing-we-need-this-before-we-go-to-press” emergency? “Write a 500-word story about yourself, introducing yourself to our readers.”

That’s what I like about Thompson, and about the Citizen. In the short time I’ve been here—about a week and a half by the time you read this—I’ve already discovered that everybody I meet is friendly and welcoming, interested in me and in what I’m doing. And that’s exactly the sort of thing I’m trying to reciprocate as a reporter – I’m not that interested in tearing people up and ruining their reputations, I’m here to talk about the things that are going on in Thompson and the North, the things you’re talking about over coffee, or would be talking about if you knew about them. I’m here to tell your stories, to get people interested in you and the interesting things you do.

Maybe it’s not the same sort of reporting I’d do in Toronto or Ottawa, but that’s OK. Journalism isn’t just about plane crashes, big numbers, and corruption. For all the talk about traditional media being killed off by the Internet, it’s community newspapers in smaller cities that are actually going in the opposite direction—you can use the Internet to find out what’s important to the whole country or the whole world, but good luck getting news on Northern Manitoba from the same websites.

I guess somewhere in here I should actually talk about me, so here goes. I was born in Kitchener, Ont., and lived there until I started studying journalism and contemporary studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in nearby Brantford. I graduated in June, and the Citizen was nice enough to hire me right out of school. I’m still getting settled in Thompson—finding an apartment, looking for furniture, things like that—but I’m looking forward to exploring all this area has to offer. I’m not much of a fisherman, but I’m second-guessing that now that I’ve lost count of how many people have told me that I have to take it up now that I’m here.

So if you see me out somewhere, taking pictures or furiously scribbling down notes, feel free to stop and say hello. And if you have to do it two or three times before I remember you, that’s my fault (unlike most people, I’m a lot better with names than I am with faces). But if there’s one thing I can say for sure, it’s that I’m excited to be here, and looking forward to sharing some of Thompson’s best stories with you.

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