Fouldsy's Kamloops Blog: Inside the Newspaper

The shorts heard 'round the world

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:09:00 +0000

The province is burning, the provincial government’s HST will increase the cost of living, Convergys is saying goodbye to Kamloops — and the story that has the most tongues wagging is the tale of Mohd Abdullah and his short shorts.
Kamloops This Week was the media outlet to first report on Adbullah’s ongoing debate with the city’s Tournament Capital Centre as to whether the shorts he prefers are a tad too skimpy for the public gym.
When Abdullah walked into the newsroom of KTW last week and gave us a synopsis of his tale, it was obvious his ongoing disagreement with TCC manager Clint Andersen would be a news story of interest.
But little did we realize how far and wide Abdullah’s clothing contretemps would travel.
The story was carried by local media. It was picked up on by the provincial media.
It was covered by the national media. It was the subject of ink in dozens of other newspapers from coast to coast.
Then there are the countless blogs and other websites that have linked to our original story.
The day the story ran on our website at kamloopsthisweek.com — that would be eight days ago — the editor of this newspaper received a phone call from Fox News in New York City, requesting permission to use our photo of Abdullah.
Then there was an e-mail query from a reporter in Perth, Australia . . .
The short story of Mohd Abdullah and his brief(s) battle is the stuff of water-cooler legend and can spread like the fires now engulfing B.C.
It speaks to the nature of the story and to the power of the Internet, which can and often does transform a cute local story and photo into an international debate.As for those shorts?
They are eyebrow-raising, to be sure, but nothing a good-quality jockstrap wouldn’t cure.javascript:void(0)

Verify, verify and, when you have — verify some more!

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:47:00 +0000

The death of Michael Jackson proved again the immediacy of the web in reporting news.
It also illustrated how susceptible even news organizations can be in believing a report before independently verifying it to be true.
When reports broke that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital in Los Angeles, the race was on between traditional media outlets — most notable the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times and CNN — and their cyberspace peers — most notable TMZ.com and myriad Twitter users — to be the first to declare Jackson dead or confirm a recovery.
As far as I can tell, TMZ.com was first to report the demise of the King of Pop, which is not surprising since TMZ has evolved from a celebrity-gossip website fighting with sites such as Defamer to becoming the leader in celebrity scoops.
Even as TMZ was reporting Jackson's death at the age of 50, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post were working on independent verification and had, at the same time as TMZ's declaration, Jackson in a coma.
From my viewpoint, it appeared as though the three organizations did what is supposed to be done in journalism — verify before publishing.
TMZ's focus is solely on celebrities; therefore, it stands to reason it would be ahead of the pack in reporting on celebrities since it likely has unparalleled sources in the field. The Times and Post, of course, are news organizations with a far more widespread mandate. If the story was a political scandal, TMZ wouldn't even be participating (providing the scandal was bereft of lewdness and any connection to Hollywood), while the Post and Times and various others would be on the case.
Now, so farm so good.
A celebrity icon falls ill and dies and new and old media are covering it the old-fashioned way, working contacts and publishing online by the minute as new information is gleaned.
However, amid this frenzy were what I would call Twidiots, those among us with Twitter accounts who began posting false reports of other celebrities dying this day.
Just before Jackson was rushed to hospital, Farrah Fawcett's death from cancer was announced, leaving June 25 as a momentous day in celebrity obituaries. Earlier in the week, Ed McMahon, the legendary sidekick to Johnny Carson, died.
Perhaps this trifecta of tragic news was too much for some Twidiots as word spread virally that actor Jeff Goldblum had died following a fall while filming a movie in New Zealand.
The odd thing is this rumour was quickly being reported as a rumour on various sites compiled by the Google news aggregator.
Harrison Ford was then offered up as dying and the whole thing got out of control.
Turns out Goldblum and Ford were and are very much alive and safely at home in America.
But the frenzied competition online means spurious rumours can become a line or two that resembles fact.
But such eagerness to not fall behind isn't limited to the web.
Our paper was caught in a similar situation this week concerning a story about a man who was assaulted and dropped off at Royal Inland Hospital here in Kamloops.
Details were scarce. All we knew was the man was in serious condition with head injuries, that a truck had been seized from the parking lot of a former strip club and that two people were being questioned by police.
Word soon got out that the man may have been shot in the head. Though the police would not comment on the nature of the man;s injuries, our reporter heard from some sources that the man had been shot, so we reported what we called an "apparent shooting."
Turns out the man had been beaten about the head, and not shot.
Even though we qualified the injury in our story by adding "apparent" to shooting, my headline stated it was a shooting.
And that's not good enough.
Sometimes in this business, with a deadline staring at you, you take a chance.
As the Chicago Tribune realized in 1948, Dewey did not defeat Truman.
And, as I found that this week, a beating is not a shooting.
You live and learn, and what we learned here is that verification will trump all else.

Kamloops (Twice) This Week

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:35:00 +0000

So, it has happened.
Our community newspaper in Kamloops, one that was born in 1988 as a weekly and grew to a thrice-weekly publication in 1991, is taking a step back.
As of June 14, 2009, Kamloops This Week will become a twice-weekly publication as the Sunday edition is jettisoned.
This is not a surprise, as I have been awaiting this decision for months.
No, I did not have inside information. Heck, I was on vacation when I got the word.
But, when a number of other papers have done likewise and, so far, avoided massive revenue loss, it was, in my opinion, only a matter of time until the powers-that-be decided to add Kamloops This Week to the roster of papers that are now twice-weekly entities.
These include the largest community paper in the chain, the Surrey Leader, along with the Peace Arch (White Rock) News, Chilliwack Progress, Tri-City (Coquitlam) News and Penticton Western News.
It has been stated in our paper this decision will better position KTW as the newspaper industry continues its path through a very tumultuous time.
Maybe so, but the decision saddens me nonetheless.
To be clear, there are wiser minds than mine who make the big decisions in Black Press, and they obviously see this move as being necessary.
The cost of newsprint has essentially doubled in the past year, while the remaining costs of getting the newspaper to 30,000 homes in Kamloops is expensive.
But I grew up with ink on my hands.
Newspapers are in my marrow.
As a 14-year-old, I couldn't sleep on the night of Aug. 1, 1983, as I was anticipating with glee the arrival the next morning of the very first tabloid Province newspaper.
I would rush home twice a week to grab my local Abbotsford News, just to devour the headlines and stories and smell the newspaper ink, which to this day still offers my nose a waft reminiscent of potato chips.
I could recite, word for word, Jim Taylor's hilarious prose from his sports columns in the Vancouver Province and would pray to the almighty to spare me one-tenth of the talent that flowed from Denny Boyd's brain.
I was fortunate enough to land a job with that Abbotsford paper upon my graduation from journalism school in Edmonton.
And I was there when the paper jumped to three times a week from its twice-weekly mandate.
So, when your very passion is contracted, regardless of the reasons given, it is not, in my opinion, a positive.
It may be necessary, and it's a damn sight preferable to shutting down the entire operation, but it's still disappointing on so many levels.
This is simply common sense.
When the Rocky Mountain News closed, it was horrible news. When Heart could not find a buyer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and killed the print edition, leaving an online news presence with very few journalists, it was horrible news.
As it has been when the two Detroit daily papers decided to cut back home delivery to three times a week, and when the National Post announced a summer stint without its Monday edition, and when the venerable Victoria Times-Colonist decided to axe its Monday product for good.
Not healthy signs, for certain.
Cutting back on publishing dates while newspaper owners and managers the world over try to find a way to make an online newspaper profitable and hope the recession fades away and brings about more advertising revenue?
Well, maybe a step back here and there is necessary if the spawn of Gutenberg's invention is to resume galloping among those who crave a good lede, a great photo, pertinent information from city council, a recap of a sports team's triumph and a column that will stir all sorts of emotions within.
As usual, our staff will focus on turning out the best papers we can twice a week, along with continued constant stories, photos and video posted to our website at kamloopsthisweek.com.
We live in interesting times.

A puzzling election-night Brownout

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:33:00 +0000

Was he being petulant or proud — or was he pouting?
Whatever the reason, Kamloops-North Thompson NDP candidate Doug Brown was acting mighty odd on election night for someone who wanted to represent the people.
The man who would be MLA, the man who carried the flag of the party long known as that which champions the ordinary voter, essentially shut out the public throughout the day and night, refusing to speak to reporters and only granting his supporters a concession speech as the clock inched toward 11 at night.
Perhaps Brown was simply heeding the advice of Salomé Cerqueira and the rest of the campaign staff from Ontario as he watched Liberal Terry Lake ride to victory.
This would be the political gang that couldn’t shoot straight, as evidenced by its inability to discern between a mill that had burned down and one that had been closed due to economic conditions.
Whatever the reason for Brown’s reluctance to interact with those he wished to represent, it was a poor decision.
And it was an attitude highlighted even more by the gracious demeanour offered by Tom Friedman, the Kamloops-South Thompson NDP candidate who lost to Liberal Kevin Krueger.
While Brown became the reclusive political spider, Friedman offered a wide web of access, inviting KTW into his living room as Krueger’s lead increased and making sure to be at Krueger’s campaign headquarters at a decent hour to offer congratulations and his help.
The tale of two candidates was instructive — the margin of victory doesn’t account for the margin of error in simple human behaviour.

Dealing with deadlines and an election

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:17:00 +0000

As usual, the date of an election and our deadline conspired to make for a difficult day.
We are a thrice-weekly newspaper, publishing Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The deadlines for those editions are horrible, but out of our control.
Deadline for Wednesday is Tuesday at 11 a.m.; deadline for Friday is Thursday at 11 a.m.; deadline for Sunday is end of day Friday.
This is because our paper is printed in Vernon - an hour and a bit away - then trucked back to Kamloops to be delivered to 30,000 homes.
And so the dilemma we face each time there is an election.
Of course, we have a fantastic website (kamloopsthisweek.com) to which we post breaking news, photos and video all day and all night.
But I am focusing our our newspaper here, the print version.
This year's provincial election fell on a Tuesday, which meant we could not have results in Wednesday's paper, considering we went to press while the polls were still open for ninr more hours.
What to do. What to do.
We hit the same challenge in last fall's federal election and we confront the same problem every three years, when municipal elections are held on a Saturday in November.
This is a longwinded way to explain why our day-after-election paper featured Kevin Krueger on the cover, casting his ballot.
Since we cannot have results of the election in our paper (though we did manage to have updated results on our webiste, along with quotes from candidates, in real time on election night), we decided again to at least include an election-themed component for the cover.
I chose Krueger because, quite frankly, I felt he was the surest bet to win a seat.
This time, we were correct; Krueger romped to victory in Kamloops-South Thompson and it was good to see we put a victor on the cover.
We weren't so lucky back in the fall, when I decided to get a shot of NDP candidate Michael Crawford casting a ballot and toss it on the front page of the day-after-election paper.
Again, I felt he was going to win.
Of course, he didn't. Conservative Cathy McLeod triumphed.
So, we are 1-1 in post-election cover shots taken before the polls close.
Yes, it is this tough planning when you are a thrice-weekly competing with a daily newspaper, local TV News and five radio stations.

The aftermath of an accident

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:14:00 +0000

The horrific April 24 accident on Highway 1 in east Kamloops that claimed the life of 39-year-old cyclist Michael Dunn offers a textbook example of how covering a public tragedy can elicit varying responses from readers and viewers of our newspaper and website.
Dunn, an experienced cyclist and avid outdoorsman, was doing everything right that day, riding on the shoulder with the traffic. The driver of a dump truck approaching Dunn was also doing everything right, even pulling out a bit as he was about to pass by Dunn.
Unfortunately and tragically, it is believed a tire on Dunn's tire blew, forcing his bike into the path of the truck.
In our newsroom, I heard the call on the scanner — fragmented information about a cyclist and truck and the approximate location.
Our photographer and reporter were out of the newsroom on separate assignment, but both were contacted and made their way to the accident scene.
Our photographer, Dave Eagles, arrived first and did what he knows best — he started taking photos and shooting video for our website.
Our reporter, Tim Petruk, was there to gather information and quotes.
When looking at Eagles' photos later in the day, we examined dozens and decided on three that we felt told the story with the least amount of graphic shock. Many photos were simply too raw and disturbing to publish in the paper or on the website.
Granted, all the photos contained an element of the carnage that occurred, but the three photos we decided to publish were, I felt, as tasteful as possible while still conveying the seriousness of the accident.
None of the photos contained a clear image of Dunn's body, thought one did include police officers holding a sheet around the accident scene, and the sheet had a few spots of blood on it.
The video included a bit more graphic material, and even a few images that, on retrospect, were likely too much for friends and family of Dunn.
However, while compiling all this on April 24, near deadline and with a lot of work to do, it did not dawn on me that the story, photos and video would cause as much anguish as they did among the friends and family of Dunn.
One reader took issue with a line in our story. The line referred to "a bloody mess." I considered the reader's argument and read the story without the line included. It did not alter the story at all and I decided to remove it from the website story. The remainder of the piece was left intact.
Dunn's brother e-mailed and actually thanked us for posting the video as it gave family members an opportunity to grasp visually what had happened to Michael. He was, however, extremely upset with a portion of the video that showed a group of people — I believe they were victims services volunteers, though I am not certain.
That portion of the video, comprising a few seconds, showed three or four people drinking coffee and talking, with one or two smiling or laughing.
Obviously, they were not laughing in connection with the tragedy nearby. I have been at more than enough similar scenes to know stress can take varying effects on people. Sometimes you will find yourself shaking at what you have seen. And you might shake your head and smile as you discuss it with another person, though you have no idea you are doing so.
I have also seen officials chatting as they wait to be called over to help. They are at a terrible accident scene. They are waiting. They have each other to speak with an nobody else. At times like this, small talk can ensue, if only to take the mind off the horrible scene in which you find yourself.
Nevertheless, including that short portion in the video was poor editing on our part, and Michael's brother has a valid point.
It was for that reason I decided to take the video off our website.
The video as a whole, as Michael's father said, was not the problem; it was that particular portion.
Perhaps if we find time this week to edit the video, we can post it again; however, even images of Michael's bike under the dump truck and emergency officials investigating the crash proved traumatizing to some of Michael's friends, who e-mailed me their thoughts.
It is very difficult when approaching such a story. The public has the right to know what happened, and to see what happened. But how far does that right extend? Is it enough to grab a photo of a police officer, with no image whatsoever of the accident? Should I base part of my decision to alter images and words on the website on feelings expressed by family and friends of the victim?
This is not the first time we have been confronted with such a situation, nor will it be the last.
There have been times in the past when I have acted in a similar manner; there have been times when I did not change anything. It really is a case-specific decision to be made.
As I was pondering the half-dozen or so calls and e-mails I had received on the matter, my phone rang today (April 27) at about 2 p.m. It was a truck driver who used to be an accident-scene investigator. He wanted to tell me he thought our paper's coverage was as good as it could be under the circumstances. He felt the photos told the take without being gratuitous and he felt the story (in particular the "bloody mess" line) described the accident without being too graphic.
I suppose it all depends on how close one is to the story.

The immediacy of the web

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:22:00 +0000

Doug Wittal called me a few hours after I posted the previous item regarding honouring off-the-record information, only to see some of the information elsewhere.
Turns out Wittal did indeed e-mail the briefest of announcements to city media on Thursday, April 2 — unfortunately, for some reason, the message never arrived in my inbox.
Nevertheless, the press release was sparse on details and only referred to a major announcement regarding a tourism destination project in Kamloops.
The press conference today (Wednesday, April 8) revealed a monumental project — a $250-million vision that will feature Canada's largest water park, a few hotels, a convention centre and a 3,000-seat arena with a retractable roof.
You can read all about it at kamloopsthisweek.com
In fact, that we have the most complete website of any media outlet in the city is a huge benefit.
We were able to post the full story by 10:45 a.m. only 45 minutes after the press conference began, easily becoming the first to report the news in its entirety.
We were able to add photos moments later and video of the event by noon.
While we remain a newspaper in the traditional sense, delivering our product to doorsteps three times a week, our website —and those of the rest of our papers in chain of 100-plus Black Press papers — is the place to turn to for breaking news and video.
Plenty of work has gone into it and we now are posting constantly, as often as we can.
It will only become more current as we progress, with stories as they happen, updates as we get them, photos, photo galleries, thumbshots of our front pages, archives of past stories and video of various news events.

Off the record and into another paper's pages

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:12:00 +0000

I have previously written about off-the-record conversations and background material and how we interpret and use such material.
Essentially, off-the-record is just that — off the record, meaning we cannot use what we have been told.
Sometimes, we can source the information from another person and report on it, without attributing the original source from whom we received the information. But that depends on the agreement made (if there was one) with the original source.
This week offers a tangible example of the off-the-record dynamic.
On Wednesday, April 8 (two days from now as I type this), Doug Wittal, owner of DW Builders, a Kamloops construction company, plans to hold a press conference at Thompson Rivers University to announce a major development project. Beyond that, Wittal won't say a word.
However, we know much of what it entails — but we cannot report anything because it was told to us off-the-record completely.
If we were to confirm this information with a second party involved in the project, we might very well ruin our relationship with the original source.
And we agreed to wait until the press conference before reporting on it as the information was relayed to one of our reporters during a conversation last month at an unrelated event.
Needless to say, a month is a long time for rumours to spread and they have.
On Saturday, our competition, the Kamloops Daily News, had brief about Wednesday's announcement, essentially reporting it was being held and that it may involved a number of scenarios included in the whispered rumours about town.
The Daily News mentioned Wittal had sent a press release out last Thursday, but I haven't seen it, which is why I was a bit perturbed to see any mention of the project in the media, considering we agreed to hold off on such reporting.
I called Wittal today but, as of 4 p.m., hadn't heard back.
It is situations such as these that can make a reporter or editor think twice about off-the-record conversations.
When you know you have plenty of good information, yet you hold onto it because you have given your word, then you see nuggets of that information in another paper, it can create a bit of a stir, to be sure.

About that April Fool's story

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:06:00 +0000

The calls started coming in not long after our Wednesday edition hit the streets.
We got calls. Lots and lots and lots of calls. I think I may owe the ladies at the front desk a present or two.
We even received a couple of letters to the editor.
Those letter writers — and some of the callers — were mad as hell and vowed to never pay a toll to cross a Kamloops bridge.
Most of those callers then paused and laughed out loud when told our page A3 article on April 1, the story about the city deciding to toll the Overlanders and Halston bridges, was indeed an April Fool’s Day hoax.
And the calls kept coming.
Lots of readers guessed the story was a joke and said they loved it.
It made their day. It lightened their load. It was believable enough to make them think it could be a real news story.
On the other hand, lots of other readers guessed the story was a joke and said they hated it. It created unnecessary stress among those who have to use the bridge. It had no place in a newspaper.
One caller even questioned why we would mock global warming, referring to the fact we predicated the implementation of the tolls on the cost to the city of the provincial carbon tax.
For the record, we were not making light of climate change; we were mocking the carbon tax, an unnecessary tax that will cost all of us more without doing anything to mitigate what it purports to fight.
By the end of Wednesday, the considerable number of calls had broke down to about 70 per cent in favour of the prank and 30 per cent opposed.
Of course, the intent of an April Fool’s news story is to fool the reader into believing the article is real, and to keep that reader believing it is true for as long as possible.
But good April Fool’s Day newspaper pranks should have an element within them to allow the reader the opportunity to discern the hoax.
In our story, there were three subtle clues and one huge hint.
The first letter of each paragraph spelled it out and, if one was to scan the article and zoom in on those first letters, they would see it reads:
A-P-R-I-L-F-O-O-L-S-D-A-Y.
Granted, that’s a bit under the radar (even with the fact we shaded those letters ever so slightly so they were 25 per cent lighter than the rest of the body copy).
There was the name of the spokesman attached to the fictional environment group. His name is Sidd Finch — which happens to be the moniker attached to the character in the best sports story hoax of all time, the legendary 1985 Sports Illustrated article by George Plimpton about a pitcher who threw 168 m.p.h fastballs.
Then there was the final quote attributed to City of Kamloops CAO Randy Diehl (Diehl granted permission to use his name in the spoof, though “his” words were ours), in which he noted “the real reason can be found in the paragraphs of the story.”
Finally, we decided to get a bit mischievous and include our competition, the Kamloops Daily News, in the prank by listing their newsroom phone number as the hotline for information on the bridge tolling decision.
A bit below the belt? Perhaps.
But we trust our colleagues have a good sense of humour and are now plotting their revenge for next year.
Many callers who did not like our prank pointed to the tough economic times as reason enough not to pull such hoaxes.
On the contrary.
With gloomy economic news permeating our life — and we are in the newspaper business, the virtual eye of this maelstrom — we need a laugh, we need to be fooled, we need to have our anger rise, only to be tempered by the realization we have been had.
As one caller said, “it’s good for the soul.”
And we were hardly alone.
Media pranks on April 1 are an industry staple.
Radio NL pulled off a masterful prank as its morning show convinced many that surfing non-Canadian websites will soon cost money.
Country 103 recruited Coun. Tina Lange to help with a hoax involving farm animals in the city.
Even our competition did a piece on Mayor Peter Milobar buying a plane at taxpayer expense.
Our story, all the stories, were done in good fun and should have brought smiles to many faces in these bleak times.
Those who cannot turn that frown upside down may need to get their funny bone X-rayed.

THE APRIL'S FOOL STORY:
By Christopher Foulds
KTW editor
editor@kamloopsthisweek.com
At the end of this month, Kamloops commuters will have to pay to cross the Thompson River in their vehicles as toll booths are introduced on the Overlanders and Halston bridges.
Pointing to the provincial carbon tax and its heavier-than-expected effect on the City of Kamloops’ 2009-2010 budgeting process, city officials held an extraordinary meeting yesterday, pursuant to section 315.3 of the Local Government Act.
Realizing the net effect of the carbon tax would push property-tax increases to the double-digits, the city has decided instead to install toll booths on two of the city’s busiest crossings to mitigate the fiscal burden. Effective April 30, drivers will pay $1 to cross each bridge in both directions, with an additional 25 cents being charged for every passenger in a vehicle. The total charged will not exceed the number of seatbelts in a car, truck or van.
In opting for tolls on the two bridges, city officials point out the expected reduction in vehicular traffic will result in carbon credits from Victoria, which will help offset carbon tax penalties the city is now facing.
“Look, we know this may be unpopular for those who drive across these bridges on a daily basis, but we have an obligation to our taxpayers and to the environment,” City of Kamloops CAO Randy Diehl told KTW.
“Fortunately, we will be offering alternatives to the tolls, which will include a dedicated lane on each bridge for cyclists and pedestrians.”
Officials say the decision to eliminate one lane on each bridge for vehicles and reserve it for cyclists and pedestrians will see the city realize bonus carbon-credits from the provincial government, which will further reduce Kamloops’ total carbon-tax bill for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
On that note, city crews will begin tomorrow to construct large parking lots at the west end of Riverside Park and at the east end of Halston Bridge to accommodate those drivers who wish to park their vehicles and cross the bridges on foot or on two wheels.
Leaving vehicles in the new parking lots — to be dubbed “carbon-catching lots” — will cost $1 per day, which is a bargain, according to the Kamloops Coalition for a Pavement-Free City.
“Say what you will about this being another tax,” group spokesman Sidd Finch said. “It isn’t. It’s all about spending peanuts to save Mother Earth. Besides, a buck a day is nothing compared to what it takes to operate a car every day when fuel, insurance and maintenance are factored in.”
Details of the introduction of the toll booths and the payment-recovery method are expected to be released in the coming days. In addition, Kamloops Transit, bike shops and carpool groups are bracing for an increase in service.
“At the end of the day, we have to do what we can to address global warming and to protect our taxpayers from unexpected tax increases due to measures such as the carbon tax,” said Diehl.
“Yes, we are aware there may be some backlash, but we are confident Kamloopsians are progressive enough in their thinking to embrace a minor inconvenience and a paltry hit on the wallet for the greater good. And the real lesson in all of this can be found in the paragraphs of this very story.”

Lament for The Rocky

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:44:00 +0000

When the Rocky Mountain News closed forever on Friday (Feb. 27), it was with a huge lump in my throat that I read the news and watched the video and slideshow of the announcement in the Denver paper's newsroom.
The "Rocky," as they call it in Colorado, was 150 years old and had covered the state and region well, winning Pulitzer Prizes and kudos for its varied coverage.
During the Denver Broncos' surge to two Super Bowls with John Elway in the late 1990s, I would go online and read all about it on the Rocky's website (and that of its competitor, the Denver Post, though I always preferred the Rocky's).
When that bizarre and disturbing tale regarding the murder of JonBenet Ramsey occurred in Colorado, the Rocky had a site within its website dedicated to updates.
It was a good paper.
And now it's dead and its death is monumental in that the Rocky is the first major daily to go under as the Great Depression 2 hovers over us all — and over the newspaper/media industry with an intense focus.
The Seattle P.I., the San Francisco Chronicle, the Tucson Citizen are all on the brink of closing, just three in a long, long list of newspapers either winding down for good or going through unprecedented changes.
Myriad papers in the United States have responded to the recession and sky-high newsprint prices (they are almost doubt per tonne today than they were a year ago) by cutting back on publishing days, home delivery and staff.
Detroit's two dailies — the Free Press and News — have gone to thrice-weekly home delivery. In Madision, the capital of Wisconsin and a huge university town, one daily (State Journal) remains in printed form, while the second daily (Capital Times) decided in April 2008 to become an online paper.
In Philadelphia, the owner of that city's two dailies (Inquirer and Daily News) have filed for bankruptcy protection, which has been the status of the Tribune Company (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times) for some time.
And the reports from Newfoundland to B.C., down to California and across to Florida, and back up to Maine are the same — a trail of downsized newspapers, shut-down newspapers, smaller-format newspapers.
British Columbia and Canada are not immune, either.
The challenges facing Canwest (publisher of the Vancouver Sun and Province) are well-known. CTV just this week announced staggering losses of $100-million-plus among its TV stations. Quebecor is struggling. And even the stalwart Globe and Mail continues with its plan to cut 10 per cent of its staff.
I work for Black Press, which is owned by David Black (no relation to Conrad Black). Torstar Corporation (which published the Toronto Star, a host of community papers in Ontario and Harlequin Books) has a 19 per cent stake in the company.
TorStar is in tough, and reported losses of $4.5 million with Black Press last year. It has been reported that the bulk of the losses stem from Black Press's ownership of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal.
Nor surprisingly, even our company is making hard decisions.
A few papers (Surrey Leader, Peace Arch News, Chilliwack Progress and Penticton Western News) have gone to twice-a-week publishing from three-times-a-week.
Staff cuts have occurred (at KTW, attrition was employed in not replacing a reporting position after a reporter left voluntarily).
Essentially, we are in the same boat as everyone else whose livelihood relies on advertising.
There are small, bright spots amid the carnage — we have managed to hold onto a summer reporter position this year.
Newspapers are my lifeblood and they will never go away entirely. But the traditional ink-on-paper model?
Two years ago, I would have said they would never die.
Today? I am less certain than I ever have been.
And I would be very worried if I was a journalism student midway through his studies because, by the time this mess shakes out, the Rocky will be known as the first in a long line of newspaper dominos that have fallen.

What's wrong with journalism? Look in the mirror

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:40:00 +0000

The following essay was penned by Alan Bass, an assistant professor at the Thompson Rivers University School of Journalism and editor of the Findings section of jsource.ca.
This essay was originally posted at jsource.ca.
It is an intersesting look at journalism and media — two different beasts.

Prepare yourself. If 2008 was a crappy year for the news business, 2009 is likely to be a lot worse. We’re going to see more journalists lose jobs and more news organizations fail. Some are questioning the future of journalism itself.
But this could also be the year that launches journalism’s rebirth. That is, if we as journalists are finally ready to admit that the main problem with journalism is – us.
Yes, you read that right. What’s wrong with journalism – what’s been eating away at it for some time – isn’t Canwest or Quebecor. It isn’t satellite television or the Internet. It’s isn’t the shift of advertising money away from newspapers and network TV to video games and social media. It isn’t spin doctoring or public relations. It isn’t conservatism or liberalism or capitalism or socialism. It isn’t even the recession.
It’s us – the people who call ourselves journalists. We are responsible for the position we find ourselves in today. And if journalism is to survive the structural crisis wreaking havoc in the news business, it will because of what we did or did not do in response.

Journalism’s challenge:
What makes talking about the future of journalism so difficult – if not downright futile – is that so few journalists are willing to acknowledge and address the disconnect between the mission of journalism and the commercial evolution of the media business. Until we do, journalism’s future will remain out of our hands.
Journalists still use phrases like “the press”, “the newspaper business” or “broadcasting” as if they were synonyms for journalism. We often speak and act as if we are the media, but we are not and have not been for a long time – at least since the birth of the penny press in the 1800s, when the core mission of the media business shifted from providing information to citizens to building audiences for advertisers. Since then, the one constant in the evolution of the media business – as newspapers diversified their content beyond news and comment, as radio and television became drivers of the entertainment industry and as the Internet today becomes a medium capable of mediating virtually any human activity – is the extent to which the media business is increasingly not about journalism.
The future of journalism does not and cannot depend solely on the wellbeing of existing newspaper or broadcasting companies. It cannot depend on the wellbeing of the business of media, period, because the business of media is not journalism.
If journalism is to thrive in the future, it is going to have to do it on its own merits. The future depends on our ability to persuade citizens to share our conviction that even in a world of participatory media, society needs people who work full-time as intelligence agents for the public, keeping independent watch on all of society’s institutions and reporting our findings back to citizens without fear or favour (to borrow a powerful phrase). The future is going to depend on our ability to persuade citizens that society needs journalism.
If citizens are to believe that, they need a clear understanding of what journalists do and how the public benefits from it. Journalists need to clearly articulate what journalism is; how it differs from entertainment, marketing and public relations; and why that difference matters. Then we need to find a way to identify the people who do journalism, so the public can trust their work as something that is journalism and not just something someone calls journalism.
But how? As the media world reshapes, as newsrooms shrink and news businesses fail, what can journalists do?

What is to be done:
The newsroom is the mechanism by which we traditionally define journalistic work and hold journalists accountable, but its success is debatable.
During the halcyon days, media businesses poured resources into newsrooms. Employers even tolerated journalists articulating a concept of journalism as a public service and declaring the newsroom’s “independence” from the commercial side of the operation. This inspired journalism to be better, to articulate codes of ethics, to improve journalism education and develop new methods. But even while talking independence, journalists made choices that compromised it. Newspaper newsrooms grew jobs by taking on responsibility for all non-advertising content. Broadcast newsrooms grew jobs by developing peak time “shows” designed to entertain more than inform. Without acknowledging it openly, journalists gave in to employer pressure to redefine their function to include building audience through entertainment. The distinctions that built the so-called wall between editorial and the rest of the media business became difficult to discern.
Even when times were good, these contradictions mattered. People noticed them, even if many journalists didn’t. Public opinion surveys charted a steep decline in public trust for journalists. Book after book was published excoriating what journalism had become. In popular movies, when the hero’s spouse punched out the reporter’s teeth, audiences cheered.
Let’s be honest, newsroom practices are part of journalism’s challenge. That’s not to say there aren’t solid newsrooms out there that do good journalism. Of course there are. But newsroom practices vary greatly. Some protect the independence of journalists, but others force journalists to write promotional material for advertisers. Some expect their journalists to investigate the truth of all claims, others expect journalists to rewrite press releases without so much as a phone call. Some demand journalists avoid conflicts of interest, others don’t care when journalists moonlight for the organizations they cover. Ultimately, newsroom practices are determined by employers, not journalists.
As news organizations become increasingly unstable financially, the pressure on many newsrooms to cut corners and compromise journalistic integrity is only getting stronger. Witness the growing tendency for journalists to cross-promote their employers’ entertainment products as news. Witness too how newsroom managers work to protect the market value of their employer’s brand by publicly labelling coverage and personnel reductions as improvements in journalism.
These inconsistencies and our failure as journalists to stand up for journalism’s brand contribute greatly to tarnishing journalism’s reputation. As journalists, we tend to define journalism according to best newsroom practices, but much of the public defines journalism by the worst.
The other traditional mechanism journalism has to protect itself is the integrity of individual journalists. All journalists take pride in their professional integrity (including many who shouldn’t). But the old heroic rubric about journalists being ready to quit before they’ll compromise their ethics is wearing thin in practice, especially when respect and support for journalism within the media business is so precarious and when the next newsroom is likely run by the same people running the one the ethical journalist would like to quit.
The logic of this mechanism is that eventually all the journalists with integrity walk away. What will be left then? The journalism we deserve? There will always be an audience of some kind for news and comment and that means that whatever the media system of the future looks like, people who call themselves journalists will continue to work within it. But what kind of journalism will they practice?
And so we circle back to futility. We can criticize and theorize and proselytize about journalism as much as we like, we can huff and complain among ourselves about being abandoned by irresponsible employers as they struggle to preserve their businesses, but until we develop a functioning mechanism under our own control to protect the ability of all journalists to actually practice journalism and assure the public that this is so by holding each other accountable, it’s just so much hot air and whining.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that a model of professionalization – self-regulation of the practice of journalism by journalists themselves - offers concrete hope for the future. When I first started this article, I intended to briefly restate that argument. But as I started writing I realized that before journalists can discuss creating any specific mechanism to protect and enhance the practice of journalism in the future, they must first be persuaded that a new mechanism is needed. Before they can open their minds to a consideration of new practices, they must be persuaded that it’s time to diverge from the old. Before anything can be done, journalists must be persuaded that they themselves, as an occupational group with a definable mission and shared methodologies, can and should accept real responsibility for journalism’s future.
I know many find the idea of professionalizing journalism scary, if not downright inconceivable. After all, wouldn’t it mean licensing or some other form of credentialing? Wouldn’t that be a gross violation of freedom of the press?
I ask you, would Milton or Locke even think so if they were alive during a time when anyone with Internet access can publish and broadcast anything they like?
Journalism practiced without fear or favour cannot exist without freedom of the press, obviously. But freedom of the press also means the “press” is free not to support journalism. I would suggest the critical question facing journalists today is: How will journalism survive despite freedom of the press? Until we open our minds enough to ask this question – and hopefully answer it – journalism’s future looks bleak.

The Media Is Dying — Or Is It Just Changing?

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:10:00 +0000

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
All three are daily paid-circulation newspapers in large two-paper towns.
And it's a good bet some if not all of the above-noted newspapers will be extinct sometime this year.
Anyone who has even a cursory interest in the media in general and in newspapers in particular will know this is not a great time to be in the business.
Go to this interesting if depressing site and you can track the carnage — newspapers that are closing, cancelling home delivery, going online exclusively, downsizing the number of days they publish, reducing the size of the paper used.
There are various other sites that follow the economic meltdown in the media — Editor and Publisher, The Poynter Institute and Canadian Journalism Projectare but a few.
Couple this with daily headlines on cutbacks — CanWest stock is in freefall (I know this all too well, having taken some of my RRSP money in the fall of 2008 and buying some shares, convinced this media behemoth couldn't possibly limbo lower than $2.50 a share. Last I checked, it was at about 50 cents.) and the company laid off five per cent (560 people) of his workforce last year.
Quebecor, publisher of the Sun chain of newspapers that extend west to Calgary and Edmonton, also announced significant layoffs in that chain, with 600 axed.
Even the Globe and Mail, a relative stable entity in the media pool in Canada, is downsizing by between 80 and 90 people.
Some may point to this bleak landscape as being the beginning of the end for print newspapers, which have long been the subject of dire predictions — from the invention of radio, through the advent of television and into the age of the Internet.
It seems that last threat has had the most impact, offering as it does so many different ways for people to get news and views.
And this is why the large, daily paid-circ papers are hurting — because there are literally hundreds (thousands?) of websites that can offer the same information on national, international and, to a lesser degree, state and provincial matters.
Where the Internet has not (yet) been able to seriously impact journalism is at the local level.
if you want to know what happened at city council in Kamloops, the best source of information remains the two newspapers, the city's TV station and its radio outlets.
It's the same with satellite radio. It's great for accessing all kinds of music, sports and talk, but it is not local.
It cannot hope to compete with Radio NL for drawing listeners who want to know what happened on Fortune Road last night.
Even so, the Internet is progressing everywhere at light speed, which is why my employer, Black Press, has decided to complement its vast roster of newspapers with websites offering the same news and photos, along with videos and longer stories and other articles and columns that cannot make it into print for reasons relating to time and space.
It is depressing as hell to read, day after day after day, of newspapers slowly dying, of journalists packing boxes, of great publications like the Chicago Tribune entering bankruptcy protection or the Los Angeles Times cutting more jobs as it scrambles yet again with a remake to save its soul.
Many have asked if I think this is the end of the newspaper as we know it.
I don't think so. Not now.
It will be, however, known as the time in which newspapers went through a metamorphosis.
I was chatting with a reporter from the Kamloops Daily News recently about the tenuous business we inhabit.
We agreed that news will be published always, in some form or another.
And news companies will always need reporters to gather the news, editors to edit it and photographers to capture the scene.
Whether that continues to be done and land on your doorstep as a newsprint publication like Kamloops This Week, or as an online newspaper (is that a redundant phrase?) only — such as what the Christian Science Monitor decided to do last year, shutting down its print publication to become an exclusively online newspaper — remains to be seen.

The Christmas Crunch

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:15:00 +0000

While most workers look forward to long weekend and associated holidays, such breaks in the newspaper business tend to mean far more work in a shorter period of time, leading to very stressful situations throughout the year.
I have come to despise long weekends in that, as editor, I do not enjoy the time off.
Any time a long weekend includes the Monday as holiday means I am at work on that Monday, making sure enough of the paper gets edited and laid out to ensure we make the deadline of 11 a.m. on Tuesday, which, as I have noted before, is the epitome of ridiculous.
But we are servants of the presses.
This past week or so has been the annual Christmas crunch, in which we are charged with putting out a number of papers in a short period of time.
This week, we put out papers on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Monday, we did the Wednesday, Dec. 24 paper by 5 p.m.; on Tuesday, we did the Friday, Dec. 26 paper by 5 p.m.; on Wednesday, we did the Sunday, Dec. 28 paper by noon.
Three papers in two-and-a-half days.
This is why breaking news will not be found in the Boxing Day or Dec. 28 newspapers as they are written, edited and laid out days earlier, due to the holiday deadlines.
This is why you will normally find more featurish and timeless stories at this time of year.
For example, our Dec. 24 edition consisted almost exclusively of children's Christmas drawings and an assortment of Christmas memories of local newsmakers.
This is done because:
a) The deadline dilemma and
b) Christmas Eve and the following week is a time where the focus of readers is on many things other than local news. I know I tend to peruse, rather than, devour newspapers at this time of year, simply because there is so much happening.
This time discrepancy between press deadline and when the paper arrives in the doorstep is frustrating, to be sure, but less so today with the advent of the Internet.
Our three papers for the week were done and all the KTW staff was at home Christmas Eve afternoon when tragic news came down from Paul Lake.
A 55-year-old woman had died in a house fire, a blaze that damaged two adjacent homes.
Too late to get this into the hard copy of the newspaper, but we were able to get the story online as soon as possible.
Our photographer, Dave Eagles, got a call from an acquaintance who lives in Paul Lake and who helped fight the fire and recover the body.
Eagles then called me at home on Christmas morning with the news about the fire.
He gave me the number of his acquaintance, who I called. I then called the police department and cobbled together enough information for the story that appeared online.
We have one more holiday before the long, two-month bleak winter stretch ahead of us.
New Year's Day is Thursday, which means another short deadline – and another paper that will be lighter than normal in terms of subject matter.
After that? Back to normal, we hope.

I

That "source" is none of your business

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 07:17:00 +0000

For those interested in how the media (or, at least KTW with me as editor) approaches sources of information, refer to the lone December post of 2007.
It touched on off the record, background information and how we deal with it.
That post is relevant here as I briefly discuss a situation in which one of our reporters was asked about a source for a story.
Melissa Lampman covers education and health for our paper and recently wrote a story on the election of Kathleen Karpuk to the board of education ("school board" to those of us not yet comfortable with the B.C, Liberals' Americanization of the lexicon involving the politics of education in B.C.).
Karpuk won a seat to become one of two new trustees for the Kamloops-Thompson School District.
The hook is that Karpuk's brother-in-law is the vice-president of the Kamloops-Thompson Teachers' Association, the local chapter of the B.C. Teachers' Federation.
Now, I had no idea this was the case until Melissa informed me.
As an editor of a thrice-weekly newspaper, it is a rare day indeed I even emerge from the cave that is my office,
Nevertheless, Melissa learned of this connection and told me.
After being informed, I actually was given the same tidbit of information by someone unrelated to the school district or the teachers' union while at a dinner party.
Obviously, people were talking about the connection and, even if it was in a conversational tone, it warranted a story to clarify the situation.
So, Melissa talked to Karpuk, spoke to the school district, touched base with the teachers' union and wrote a story explaining that Karpuk was not in a conflict-of-interest as the familial link did not breach conflict guidelines.
Had the teachers' union vice-president been Karpuk's brother, however, she would not be eligible to sit as a trustee.
This was all explained in the article, which appeared on page A5.
And so it was this past week (Dec. 8) that Melissa was approached by a union rep at the board of education's inaugural meeting and asked for her "source" in the story.
Melissa — of course — told him her "source" was none of his business.
He argued the story "smeared" Karpuk.
It did not.
It was fair, balanced and necessary — and Karpuk herself said she had researched the conflict guidelines before running for office precisely because of her brother-in-law's position in the teachers' union.
And, if we aimed to "smear" someone, we certainly wouldn't bury it on page A5.

About that letter to the editor (3)

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:28:00 +0000

A reader questioned my decision to run a letter last week from Joyce Blair, who ran for council and lost.
Blair heard fellow candidate Denis Walsh (he was among the eight elected on Nov. 15) muse about the need to restrict or eliminate campaign signs in future elections.
This after Walsh gained significant publicity by hammering campaign signs in tracks of grass throughout the city.
Blair was obviously pissed to hear what she considered hyporcrisy coming from Walsh's moutn and spoke out via a letter to Kamloops This Week. Her letter was critical of Walsh's seemingly about-face and I ran it prominently, along with photos of Blair and Walsh
You can read it here: Blair letter">Blairletter
Not long after Blair's letter was published defenders of Walsh emerged and confronted Blair, via the vibrant letters page, on her "attack" on Walsh.
Reader Margaret Huff weighed in (read it here: Huffletter
and was critical of Blairs "sour grapes."
It was Huff's letter that prompted another reader to wonder why I ran it.
The reader felt Huff's letter was a personal attack on Blair (to be clear, the reader is a friend of both Blair and Walsh) and, perhaps, should not have run.
As I have stated on this blog before, I publish virtually every letter I receive, save for missives of questionable legality and authorship.
I am of the view that, if a civic-election candidate puts pen to paper and takes on a fellow candidate, then he or she has opened the door to an offensive to come his or her way.
Criticize? Absolutely. But stand in there take the shots coming your way.
The letter from Huff, in my opinion as editor, was fair and within bounds of what Blair had initiated.
Unlike our concerned reader, I do not see it as a personal attack.
There is another letter on the matter appearing in the Wednesday, Nov. 26 edition of KTW, and yet again the letter writer takes Blair to task.
All is fair in love and war — and municipal politics.
A final note: Blair has not contacted KTW to comment on letters her original entry elicited from readers, which tells me she knows how the game is played and is a big enough girl to handle any and all criticism.

Post-election thoughts

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:35:00 +0000

As far as nail-biters go, Saturday’s civic election in Kamloops was a manicurist’s nightmare business scenario — few cuticles to correct, aside from a few on the hands of Jim Harker and Peter Sharp.
“This is driving me nuts!” Harker said as his eyes remained fixed on the screen in council chambers at city hall that tallied the votes poll by poll.
“I knew it would be touch and go.”
The incumbent councillor never left the edge of his seat and was visibly relieved when, after the 21st and final poll results were added to the count, he had fended off former councillor Sharp by a mere 80 votes.
And that two-man race for the eighth and final spot on city council was the sum total of intrigue on election night.
The noteworthy aspect of Saturday night is that the election results, as less-than-thrilling that they are, were actually more interesting than the 2005 numbers.
You remember 2005, when a major mayoral battle saw Terry Lake take on Al McNair and Pete Backus for the mayor’s chair? The campaign then was intense and at times bitter, and the trio vying for the city’s top political job poured far more money into the effort than did the three candidates this year.
(McNair spent $51,220 and finished third, Lake spent about $38,560 en route to victory and Backus shelled out $25,260 on his way to a second-place finish.)
In this campaign, mayor-elect Peter Milobar estimates he spent up to $22,000, which is likely more than challengers Murphy Kennedy and Brian Alexander spent cumulatively.
But, while the 2005 mayoral race was considered a toss-up between Lake and McNair, the results showed a landslide victory not unlike that enjoyed this past weekend by Milobar.
Lake’s 11, 727 votes were more than that received by Backus (4,525) and McNair (4,416) combined.
So, the mayoral races in 2005 and 2008 were identical in the results.
As for city council, the results were again similar to 2005.
Three years ago, two incumbents — Sharon Frissell and Sharp — were tossed and three new faces added (including one to replace Lake, who abandoned his council seat to run for mayor) — Harker, Ajrun Singh and Tina Lange.
Exact same scenario this year, with two incumbents — Singh and Joe Leong — being replaced by three newcomers (including one to replace Milobar, who abandoned his council seat to seek the mayor’s chair) — Marg Spina, Denis Walsh and Nancy Bepple.
But it is Sharp whose pain this week can only be described by using his surname.
The former councillor finished ninth, within 80 votes of returning to city hall. In 2005, he also finished ninth, a mere 228 votes from the promised land.
As fans of the B.C. Lions can attest after watching that agonizing game on election day, sometimes being blown out is preferable to coming so close and failing by the slightest of margins.
Sharp may wish to call Wally Buono and commiserate.
Meanwhile, much is being made about the rather low voter turnout, but I would argue 28.4 per cent is damn impressive considering the mind-numbing electioneering with which we have been bombarded.
We were assaulted daily with a riveting U.S. election, we trekked to the federal polls in October and we are already in a provincial election campaign (who among us has not received a call from a pollster, asking how much we love the work Kamloops MLA Kevin Krueger is doing?).
Add to that equation a busy Saturday with myriad mundane things to do, and the turnout is not at all surprising.
Municipal elections generally attract 30 to 35 per cent of voters, so hitting 28 per cent at this time — and with no real mayoral “race” at stake — was to be expected.
• As predicted, my predictions were about as accurate as an Enron accounting ledger.
But I did nail the exact finish of Merv Hanson!

Finally, the final election is nigh!

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:29:00 +0000

As I type this, it is 9:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14 and I am watching the legendary Bill Cosby dazzle them on the Late Show with David Letterman (the miracle of PVRs and time-shifting channels).
So, this is it — Friday night and I am typing in a blog and watching a talk show, such is the life of danger I lead.
The civic election is but hours away and, for the first time since I became a reporter back in 1992, I will cast a vote.
I have always believed journalists should not vote ,a non-practice that would help bolster the stated goal of objectivity.
Of course, I have since learned objectivity is a myth. After all, as long as we have opinions, we do not have objectivity. The real goal, I have realized, is simply to strive to be fair and to do well in separating personal views from news stories that should not carry opinion.
(That I did not vote mattered little in provincial and federal elections, for the most part, as I spent the majority of my adult life in Abbotsford, where the provincial Socreds/Liberals and federal Conservatives will always win, even if they stick a party pin on a potato and sent it to an all-candidates meeting. I suppose my vote could have bolstered a municipal candidate here or there, but I can honestly say my absence from the ballot box has never occurred in a one-vote margin of victory).
That has been my belief, that journalists should not vote.
But I am slowly coming around to the idea that we can indeed vote and manage to not compromise our duties in the profession.
I do, after all, have politicians at all levels that I admire, that I am ambivalent toward and that I seethe when thinking of the tax dollars being spent to maintain ineptitude.
So, on Saturday, Nov. 15, I will walk into my neighbourhood school and mark three names on the councillor ballot, two names on the school trustee ballot and one name on the mayoral ballot.
I will have done my democratic duty.
While I will not reveal for whom I am voting (we do have to work with those elected), I will reveal my picks in a small office pool, About five of us predicted, in order from 1-26, the order of finish in the councillor race.
Here are my predictions for all three offices:
Remember, these are predictions, not preferences.
And keep in mind I have a track record that predicted victories by Al Gore, John Kerry, the Red Sox in 1986 and Kelly Pavlik in last month's great boxing match with the ageless Bernard Hopkins.
In other words, prognostication is not my forté.
In any event, here are my predictions for councillors on Nov. 15:
1) Pat Wallace
2) John O'Fee
3) Tina Lange
4) Jim Harker
5) Joe Leong
6) Tim Larose
7) Ken McClelland
8) Arjun Singh
9) Nancy Bepple
10) John De Cicco
11) Denis Walsh
12)Susanne Flukiner
13) Pete Sharp
14) Marg Spina
15) Wayne Vollrath
16) Kevin Skrepnek
17) Joyce Blair
18) Merv Hanson
19) Bill McQuarrie
20) Abdul Rasheed
21) James Willford
22) George Dersch
23) Kim Jensen
24) Barbara Garett
25) Ben James
26) Curtis Friesen

Mayor:
1) Peter Milobar
2) Murphy Kennedy
3) Brian Alexander

Trustees:
1) Ken Christian
2) Gerald Watson
3) Annetee Glover
4) Joan Cowden
5) Meghan Wade
6) Kathleen Karpuk
7) Nelson Grant
8) Steven Holm

Here's why that photo ran

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:45:00 +0000

It is truly amazing how many readers of Kamloops This Week are blessed with extra-sensory perception.
I never knew how many readers knew — without meeting me, without speaking to me — precisely why and how I decide which stories and photos to run or not run.
Case in point? This just completed federal-election campaign, which culminated in the election of Conservative candidate Cathy McLeod here in the Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo riding,
On the night of the election, we had reporters at the campaign headquarters of all four candidates.
We also had our staff photographer, Dave Eagles, roaming the four locations.
Eagles had specific instructions to get pics from all four campaign locales, but to ensure he is near the Conservative and New Democrat offices as it was widely assumed our next MP would be either McLeod or NDP flag-bearer Michael Crawford.
I was ensconsed in my office at KTW (as usual) on election night, tasked with receiving calls from our newsroom staff in the field and writing up stories and updates for our Kamloops This Week Daily newspaper and our website (kamloopsthisweek.com).
As the election results came in, it became apparent very soon that McLeod was on her to victory.
We all knew it would be a race between McLeod and Crawford, but the margin of the triumph — more than 5,000 votes — likely surprised every political pundit from Kamloops to 100 Mile House.
So, once it became clear where the election was heading locally, I called Eagles and told him to try to get a good, honest, as-it-happens shot of McLeod showing her exuberance in winning. I also told Eagles we needed a shot of Crawford walking into McLeod's HQ with the traditional concession/congratulation visit.
Of course, I didn't need to tell Eagles this as he has covered enough elections and is too talented a photographer not to know what needs to be done.
The challenge, though, was that we had a deadline of about 9:30 p.m. in order to have a story and photo hit the presses for our KTW Dailt paper.
(Aggravating as it is, our regular thrice-weekly KTW paper had a ridiculous deadline of 11 a.m. Tuesday, which meant no coverage of the election whatsoever in the next day's paper).
So, Eagles got back in time to download some photos. I chose one that showed Crawford visiting McLeod, packaged it with a 200-word story I cobbled together from quotes called in from the field, and shipped it to our KTW Daily people down in Richmond.
Now, the next KTW community paper that would have election coverage would be Friday's paper, three days after election night.
A new angle is needed. Different focus, different photos.
I perused the photos Eagles had taken and chose a great, spontaenous shot showing McLeod in a state of euphoria, a smile as wide as the riding playing across her face as she knew, RIGHT THEN, that she would be the next MP.
I ran the photo large on the front page, alongside a story that focused on reaction to her election.
Not long after that photo appeared (it can be viewed here: http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_thompson_nicola/kamloopsthisweek/news/31127374.html), a reader e-mailed me, accusing yours truly of intentionally running a photo that made Mcleod look bad, accusing me of doing anything to discredit McLeod and the Tories, accusing me of making a mockery of KTW's political independence.
Of course, this is all nonsense.
Editors do not choose photos based on whether the subject will "look good." Nor do we choose photos based on what conspiracy theorists like my e-mail pal charges.
We make decisions based on which photo is the best available, which photo best sums up the story.
Eagles took plenty of good photos that night, and many ran in KTW on Oct. 17 and Oct. 19.
But the one pic he took that said "MCLEOD WINS" better than the rest was the one I chose to run.
And, contrary to the man who e-mailed, I think McLeod looks beautiful in her exuberance.
Perhaps my e-mail pal is a tad superficial.
On a last note: I have yet to hear kudos from my conspiracy-theory correspondent regarding the front-page photo of McLeod I ran in the very next edition (Sunday, Oct. 19), the portrait shot (seen here: http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_thompson_nicola/kamloopsthisweek/news/31292989.html) that accompanies a profile of our new MP, penned by Jeremy Deutsch.
Believe it or not, it is rare indeed the newspaper that decides placement of stories based on the political beliefs of the editor.
Maybe in the bizarro world of conspiracy theorists, but not in reality.

Oh, the changes you will see!

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:46:00 +0000

I took an extremely rare morning off from work on Sept. 19 to attend a panel discussion on journalism at Thompson Rivers University.
Media outlets from across Kamloops were represented as we spoke on various issues facing our business before taking questions from TRU journalism students.
The discussion centred mainly on the future of journalism, particularly as it pertains to formerly single-minded media entities (newspapers) becoming multi-faceted as technology expands (newspapers+websites+video+interactivity between hard copy and cyberspace).
The one question posed to me that resonated the most: What type of skill-sets do you see students needing as they leave school and enter the newspaper field?
My answer: Everything — writing, reporting, analyzing (reports, etc.), photography and video skills and complete knowledge of layout (InDesign and QuarkXpress).
No longer will it be enough to simply report on stories. Sure, we still have reporters that are only reporters, but with every new hire, those who can do many things will always trump those who can only write and report, no matter how good they are.
The demands of the job today are just too great for us to afford staff who can only do one or two things.
As a newspaper junkie since I was eight, and as a journalist since 1992, I can state that I do not like the way the industry is changing.
I am old-school. I like newspapers. Period. I do not get excited about website innovations, video online, photo galleries online.
Quite simply, it means a lot more work for us, but no extra time to do that work.
I like a paper on my doorstop, some ink on my hands and a lead that makes me sit up and get excited.
Yet I understand why we are going full tilt into expanding our newspapers into what the brass call "media content providers."
It's all about surviving this intensely competitive business. It's all about embracing change and keeping up with what is new.
And so one must set aside the wistfulness and dive in fully clothed and always remember that we need to take on these new challenges if we wish to have a job tomorrow.
And that means newcomers entering newsrooms might just be a bit shellshocked to learn how much work they will be responsible for.
Trust me, reporters today are far more complex and far busier than they ever were when I first entered the business in the year Bill Clinton was elected to his first term as president of the U.S.
And to those rookies coming our way, I can say: I feel your pain.

About that letter to the editor (2)

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:47:00 +0000

The call was made to my office phone at precisely 3:12 a.m. on a weeknight.
I know this because of a technological marvel called voice mail.
I arrived at work on morning to see the message light on my phone blinking its annoying red blink.
I checked my messages.
There was one.
It was a guy, possessing a whiny voice, complaining that I had not yet published a letter to the editor he had submitted in response to photos we had published.
The photos were those showing former mayoral candidate Pete Backus scuffling with a wheelchair-bound man named John Gibbons.
The photos were dynamite and showed again why KTW photographer Dave Eagles is the best news photographer in the region. Any issue of KTW will prove as much.'
So, Eagles' soon-to-be award-winning photos were published, created a storm of media and public attention and prompted a police investigation.
And in came the letters to the editor, the majority of which I simply cannot print for legal reasons.
Now, back to our caller, whose courage is non-existent (hence the timing of the call and the fact he left no name or contact number).
He complained we hadn't run his letter. He mocked us for being too cozy with cops and ex-cops.
Yet the fact we ran the Backus/Gibbons photos in the first place would tend to demonstrate the opposite.
Nevertheless, my anonymous caller could not understand why his letter did not run.
Well, we received about a dozen letters in response to the jarring photos and story that accompanied them.
I decided to print about six of them. But the rest just could not be printed without significant editing that would have seriously altered the letter's intent.
Letters writers need to know they cannot state as fact things that are allegations. For example, they cannot state an assault took place based on the photos.
Letter writers need know they cannot assume the mindset of those in the photos. For example, they cannot state as fact that one of the subjects has a mental illness and the other has a history of violence.
Letter writers cannot surmise what happened, state it as fact, then admit they were not at the scene of the incident.
And letter writers cannot attempt a direct dialogue with the subject of story through our letters page.
Finally (and this is a point that has been repeated and bears repeating), it behooves letter writers and witching-hour callers to stand up, find their spines and state their names.
After all, if we in the media stand behind the names on our stories, columns, editorials and photographs, is it too much to ask our readers to do likewise with their opinions?

This competitive media town

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:05:00 +0000

I see the editor of our competitor has started a blog.
Mel Rothenburger, editor of Kamloops Daily News, now joins myself, Barry Baker and a host of others whose Kamloops blogs focus more or less on media in this town.
I welcome Mel to cyberspace, to which I am also a latecomer.
I came across a particular entry over at Mel's blog (armchairmayor.wordpress.com)that focused on how Kamloops media treat one another when it comes to recognizing each other's existence.
And while this is a seriously ferocious media market (I was on the phone with a contact from Vancouver, who could not believe a city this small has a daily newspaper, a thrice-weekly, a TV station, five radio stations, not to mention a couple of magazines), I agree with Mel when he writes that it is silly to pretend other media outlets don't exist.
Which is why it should be noted that we rarely if ever shy away from naming the competition when it makes perfect sense to do so.
In fact, in the three years since I've been editor at KTW, we have mentioned Kamloops Daily News 33 times somewhere in news stories or letters to the editor.
Granted, some of those pertained to stories involving Mel when he was mayor in 2005; still, that sheer number of references would seem to take KTW out of any such accusation that we play what Mel calls the media's "fetish" of not naming competitors.
In fact, check out page A7 of our Friday, Aug. 29 paper. The man to the right of Kevin Skrepnek? Yep, that's Mel.
(Of course, we do not call it the KDN Boogie the Bridge as that is more of an advertising/promotion handle; just as the Daily News wouldn't refer to Deepak Chopra's upcoming visit as being sponsored by KTW).
Yes, the Daily News is a competitor of ours in all aspects of the business, but the staffers on the two papers get along, as far as I can tell, quite well.
Just this week, Daily News city editor Susan Duncan dropped me an e-mail, complimenting our photographer, Dave Eagles, on his photos of the Pete Backus fracas downtown.
And I know e-mails have been sent to Duncan from our reporters when they like a column she has written.
There is also talk, I hear, of resurrecting a weekly ritual known as "media beers," at which the bar carries no nameplate and all reporters and editors work for one boss: journalism.
The real battle, I would argue, is for market share and revenue between our owner, Black Press and the Daily News' new owner, Glacier.
What is interesting is the fact Black Press and Glacier are two financially healthy media companies, which only benefits readers and advertisers in Kamloops and beyond.
As for the other media in town, the same applies.
They are competitors to a lesser degree due to the different journalism platforms, but we certainly acknowledge their existence, which is why I assigned Dale Bass to do feature stories when Jim Harrison at Radio NL and Doug Collins at the Broadcast Centre received major journalism honours recently.
And we work with CFJC-TV in a way that benefits both of us without "scooping" each other. I agreed to provide them with photos of the Backus incident (after we published them) and they have allowed us to see or listen to information they have already broadcast, for use in a KTW story.
This is indeed a seriously competitive media market, which is why Black Press has gone big on its websites, with breaking news, video and additional stories that do not appear in print.
There are more innovations on the way, which is the nature of this evolving business.
Keep reading!

We are owned by that other Black

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:13:00 +0000

Kamloops This Week is part of a vast chain of newspapers and other publications — some 171 at last count — owned by David Black of Oak Bay. TorStar also owns 19 per cent of Black Press.
I think it is safe to say Black Press is the largest chain of newspapers in Canada today, and counts community papers as its bread and butter.
Community papers are those published three times a week, twice a week and once a week.
(Kamloops This Week is a thrice-weekly paper).
But Black Press also owns some large papers, including the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, and made a serious play in 2006 for the two Philadelphia dailies — the Inquirer and Daily News.
In addition, Black Press produces about 19 free dailies, newspapers that are published on a daily basis in 19 different cities in B.C., containing an assortment of local, provincial, national and international news, relying on its Black Press newspapers (KTW included) and the Reuters wire service to deliver these free dailies to a select audience in the 19 cities.
And, while each paper will have its own banner on the front (Kamloops This Week Daily, Abbotsford News Daily, Kelowna Capital News Daily, etc.), the copy is identical in all papers.
In fact, these newspapers are put together in Surrey, and the local staff at KTW (and the 18 other cities with a free daily) have little to do with their production, save for supplying copy and photos that will also appear in the main community newspaper.
Although it has been repeatedly pointed out, the confusion remains, so here is yet another reminder: David Black is not Conrad Black and has no connection to the imprisoned former press baron.
Black Press is a privately held company, and David Black is a quiet guy who shuns the spotlight.
He does, however, make it to each of his B.C. newspapers at least once a year and dropped by the Kamloops office this past spring to chat with employees.
He does, however, grant the occasional interview, and here is one he gave to Seattle Weekly, a Emerald City publication that focused on Black's growing newspaper empire in the Seattle region:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-07-16/news/betting-on-black/

A newspaper plus ....

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 06:53:00 +0000

Newspapers have always been an obsession of mine.
I was seven when I first started grabbing the Vancouver Sun. when it was an afternoon paper, and turning to the kids' page, which included comics, Canadian facts and contests.
By the time I was nine, I was devouring the sports section, having become obsessed with hockey, as was every boy of my era, be it via the paper, the CBC or O-PEE-CHEE and TOPPS hockey cards.
In Grade 6, when I was 11, my mom bought me a baby blue Eaton 400 manual typewriter.
To this day, it sits in my office at Kamloops This Week, sans ribbon.
With that typewriter, I would watch Hockey Night in Canada.
Back then, there was only one game each Saturday night, at 5 p.m. sharp. Back then, we had Peter Puck and the Shootout competition between periods. Heck, back then, we had the Hockey Night in Canada theme, something my seven-year-old son won't grow up with due to idiocy at the CBC.
But I digress.
I would watch the HNIC game. After the final whistle, I would bang out a game summary on my Eaton 400, then compare my prose to that written in the Province the next morning.
Newspapers have been my life forever. The ink. The smell. The crisp pages as I separate the sections.
I read the afternoon Sun every day after school. I read the morning Province every day before classes.
In fact, I have the very last broadsheet Province newspaper (July 31, 1983) and the very first Province tab (Aug. 1, 1983) in my collection of papers.
I remember waiting up all night for the new tab to drop on my doorstep. To me, it was the most exciting thing to happen.
And so I ended up in the business, and cannot think of anything else I can possibly do.
The death of the newspaper has been a warning heralded for as long as I can remember.
Having read books on and by Jimmy Breslin, Damon Runyon and Arthur Gelb, among others, I know the "death of the newspaper" chant has persisted for far longer than I have been on the planet.
Silent pictures, talking movies, radio, television and the Internet have all been tabbed as the newspaper's assassin, and none has succeeded. And they never will. There is nothing on the Internet that can replace the ritual of picking up a newspaper and carrying it with you for the day, rolling up and unravelling as you march through the day, skimming the news and finding a lunch hour to devour a feature.
It just cannot be done the same way on a computer while attached to a website. It can be done, yes, but the intimacy will never be there.
Nevertheless, that does not mean the newspaper industry isn't evolving.
It is.
And, as anybody who has followed Kamloops This Week and the roster of 100-plus Black Press papers can attest, the evolution is in full swing.
While our newspapers continue to dominate most markets, our websites have become major players unto themselves, and the attention we are giving the web is unparalleled among newspapers in B.C.
We have gone big time into video, into photo galleries and into web-exclusive stories.
The Sunday, June 8 edition of KTW is perhaps one of the finest papers we have put together in the three years I have been editor of the thrice-weekly paper. This is due to the breadth and variety of the stories, to be sure, but also due to the synergy created by the plethora of videos that accompany the various news and sports stories, with the quartet of videos on the homeless in Kamloops illustrating this new wave of journalism in the strongest way possible.
At KTW, we have also introduced a brand new look, so the changes to our particular paper and its presence on the web are even more dramatic.
The emphasis on video, and on posting stories to the website as they happen, rather than waiting for the publication date to arrive, has created challenges, to be sure. There is so much more to do, with the same number of staff members, so nerves can be frayed at KTW now that we are more than a newspaper.
We are, for all intent and purpose, a multimedia outlet now - and no longer simply a newspaper.
And the primary driving force behind the video charge in Kamloops is Dave Eagles, our staff photographer.
He gets award-winning pics on a regular basis; now, he is shooting top-quality video - and managing to do it all without pushing deadline amid my profane requests that he focus a tad less on video and a tad more on photography.
I think the past month has seen a major shift in the way we are covering news in Kamloops. It has become a fluid situation, where we are no longer working only to three print deadlines per week, but to daily deadlines, whether we are filing to the web or to our Kamloops This week Daily paper.
It will only grow from here. And while it can create much stress, when we see how far we have come with breaking news on the web, exclusive web-only stories, video and our traditional newspaper that lands on the doorsteps of Kamloops homes, we know we are blazing a trail that will only improve day by day by day.

In bed with the cops? Nope. Just helping a hooker leave the street

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:13:00 +0000

As Scott Wilson summed it up Thursday afternoon at the Kamloops RCMP’s Battle Street headquarters, nobody is expecting the media to be in bed with the cops.

But, as the media-relations officer for the detachment added, the media in Kamloops do have an interest in the city being a safe place to live and work.

And why wouldn’t we?

As editor of Kamloops This Week, I live in the city, as does every one of the reporters in our newsroom. I would imagine the vast majority of reporters and editors at the other media outlets in Kamloops live in or near the city.

Why wouldn’t they desire a safe place to live and work?

This is relevant in that it is connected to the prostitution sting undertaken this past week by local Mounties, who used undercover cops to target hookers on both sides of the river.

But this sting has a far greater underlying purpose. It wasn’t the usual sting, in which prostitutes are rounded up, charged, forced to make a court appearance, then released — for the most part back to the streets, where they need to turn tricks to pay for drugs, food and a place to live.

This sting was different.

It targeted hookers, with the focus on finding out which of these women of the street would be willing to take a chance and turn their life around.

As is reported elsewhere in today’s paper, the sting resulted in the arrest of eight women, but three — and perhaps as many as six — will get a chance to go straight by agreeing to enter rehab, detox, whatever it is that will help them eliminate the root cause of why they need to walk the streets and sell their bodies for cash.

The diversion program has been created by the Kamloops RCMP, the City of Kamloops (through community safety supervisor Mark Huhn) and various social-service agencies.

Here’s where the media connection enters the picture.

When two of the women were set to appear in court on Thursday, the RCMP deduced that the undercover operation could be compromised if a reporter happened upon their appearance and listened to the details of their arrest.

The cops wanted to continue the sting for another day, so Wilson contacted media outlets — ours included — explained the situation and asked if we would hold off reporting on the court appearances of the two women (and the circumstances surrounding their arrests) until Monday, when a full press conference would be held to discuss in detail the sting and diversion project.

On the grand scale of things, delaying by a couple of days reporting on the arrests of a few prostitutes isn’t that great a deal.

In fact, it made sense when one realized another day on the street could have resulted in far more addicted and abused women getting that rare second chance at snatching their lives back from misery.

We were told why the request was being made, and it made sense to us.

If we could help in the smallest of ways by agreeing to let a police probe run its course, why wouldn’t we?

It was unique enough to consider and in no way suggested we would automatically accede to such a request in the future.

In more than a decade of covering the police beat, the paper for which I wrote was approached more than a few times with similar requests.

Far more often than not, we declined to take part.

However, the Kamloops RCMP request spoke to a greater good and apparently made sense to every media outlet in Kamloops but one, for reasons to which I am not privy.

That one media outlet nixed the request does not surprise Wilson.

He understands the media’s link to issues of freedom of information and freedom of speech.

“The media has a role to play in the community,” Wilson says.

“They can’t be in bed with the police. We understand that. But the media in this town does care about the city, and the media can work with the police in making this town safer.

“We’re all interlinked.”

And because one media outlet decided it was more important to run the story immediately, the press conference planned for Monday was hastily arranged and held three days ago, on Thursday afternoon.

All the information was released that day, and all the city’s media outlets learned of it at precisely the same time.

What likely won’t be reported elsewhere is how a simple request by the police that made sense somehow became an issue of, perhaps, press freedom and other self-important nonsense that led to far fewer women getting a chance to join the ranks of normal society.

Covering a murder

cjfoulds@gmail.com (Christopher Foulds) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:56:00 +0000

When a murder occurs, reporters get excited.
Those who don't are likely poor reporters.
But when the murders involve three children, such as that occurred April 6 in Merritt, that excitement for "the story" is tempered severely by myriad feelings that come with being human.
I have covered many, many horrible crimes, the investigation and the graphic trials that follow.
There was the Abbotsford Killer case of 1995-1996, during which Terry Driver randomly attacked two teenage girls on an Abbotsford street at about midnight, killing Tanya Smith and nearly killing her friend, Misty Cockerill.
Driver then began taunting police with phone calls, ultimately ripping Smith's headstone from her grave scrawling threats to Cockerill and dumping the granite slab on a car in the middle of Abbotsford in the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon.
He was finally caught when his mom and brother recognized his voice as being that of the killer.
His trial was disturbing, and I still dream about the entire case.
Driver is now serving a life sentence.
A second case that I cannot shake in my head concerns Glenn Franz, an Abbotsford man who choked his estranged wife, Jodi-Lee Franz, into unconsciousness, then dragged her body to a manure pit on a farm. He proceeded to chop off her arms and legs and head, tossing all but the cranium into the manure pit.
Franz had helped build the pit years earlier. And he knew manure was a perfect acidic compound if one was looking to make bones and flesh disappear.
He then jumped into his truck and drove 50 minutes east, to a bridge overlooking the Harrison River. There, he stopped the truck, looked at his wife's head on the passenger seat, grabbed it by the hair and tossed it into the murky wake.
A half-decade later, and Franz was still a free man.
No body. No evidence.
And he would still be free today had he not been obtuse enough to become snared in one of those predictable RCMP "Mr. Big" stings, where cops pose as underworld characters and lure the suspect into a fake world of a fake criminal organization.
Eventually, they got Franz to confess to killing his wife. It was on tape and he is now a prison-mate of Driver.
Those are two of many horrible crimes I have covered from beginning to end.
But I think they would pale in comparison to covering the murders of three little kids.
The Merritt murders claim their own spot in the annals of crimes that defy explanation.
Our crime reporter, Cassidy Olivier, covered the murders as the probe was beginning,
I leave it to him to explain to readers how a reporter approaches such a tough, tough assignment.
Here is Olivier's column from the April 13, 2008 edition of KTW:

WAITING FOR THE NUMBNESS SO THE FRENZY CAN BEGIN
I was settling into a quiet Sunday afternoon when Heather Thomson called to tell me three kids had just been murdered about 10 minutes away from where I live in Merritt.
Heather and I used to work together at the Merritt Herald (she was my boss) and I immediately recognized the mixture of horror and excitement contained in her voice.
Horror because she is human. Excitement because, like me, she is a journalist. We’d be lying if we said otherwise.
As I plugged her for details, my stomach began cycling through the regular emotions it goes through when I’m preparing to cover a crime story: fear, guilt, rage, anticipation, empathy and, yes, excitement.
My stomach will do this until it reaches a kind of numb state, similar to what an athlete might feel right before a big game.
At this point, I don’t feel anything at all.
That’s when I know I am ready.
But on Sunday, my stomach kept doing its thing because I wasn’t anticipating having to cover the story.
While I still live in Merritt, I no longer work there.
In the world of reporting, this means, from a news perspective, it wasn’t my story to tell — even though the papers we write for belong to the same company.
It belonged to Heather and Colin Oswin, her reporter.
Somewhat relieved, I thanked her for the heads-up and agreed to help her out if I could.
I stopped being a reporter and found my fiancée and told her the tragic news.
We shook our heads well into the night as people do when they are trying to understand how it is life can throw something this incompressible their way.
Three kids murdered?
Unbelievable.
Less than 24 hours later, disbelief would take on a whole new meaning.
By Monday morning, the story had gained momentum — popping up on most major domestic media networks and even some international ones.
Reporters from the big dailies and TV stations from the Coast were already in town knocking on doors and interviewing locals.
Their very presence suddenly made Merritt, a small town, seem much, much bigger than it is.
It didn’t take a newspaperman to understand it was going to get very big, very fast — and it just happened to be breaking when the Merritt Herald, the weekly where Heather serves as editor, was preparing to go to press.
An extraordinary task to pull off in a normal week, it would be near impossible to do while also covering a major story such as the one that was unfolding.
Suffice to say, they had their hands full.
I was only a few sips into my morning coffee and getting ready for what I believed would amount to a relatively uneventful day on the Kamloops crime beat when Christopher Foulds, my editor, pulled me into his office.
A phone was attached to his ear.
“I think I’m going to send you to Merritt,” he said.
“They need some help.”
My stomach was numb by the time I arrived back in the Nicola Valley 45 minutes later.
Trying to explain the character of a news story to someone outside the media circle is a difficult thing.
While each one is unique, they all pull from a shared well, meaning, in most cases, they often end up expressing themselves in the same way.
This is particularly true for crime stories where you will have your expected cast of characters — bad guys, good guys, victims, distraught family members — as well as the expected components of motive, setting and plot.
Their nature and life, therefore, become somewhat predictable.
As a consequence, the reporters covering them become experts at knowing how and where to find the pieces of the puzzle that will complete their story.
As reporting is competitive in nature (and often very nasty), the speed at which this is done becomes paramount, as opposed to how or why it is done.
Fundamentals of reporting, such as facts, accuracy and decency, often take a back seat.
Unfortunately, this turns many, many of us into shameless mounds of mud. A more common analogy is vultures.
And in the end, this is what comes across in our work.
By the time I arrived in Merritt, just before 10 a.m., all the major media networks had set up shop outside the crime scene.
Cameras were rolling and the Internet was exploding with stories.
Total pandemonium broke out 30 minutes later when police named the father as the prime suspect who had been arrested by police just last week.
As far as stories go, that was massive.
By the time I filed my first story to the Web, the crime scene had morphed into a circus. Watching from the curb, I saw camera crews attack elementary school students — friends of the deceased — as they dropped flowers and stuffed toys onto the growing memorial.
It was terrible, vile stuff to watch, but, in the end, it was also why I had been sent there.
I also needed the quotes.
Particularly disturbing were scenes of reporters sifting through the piles of flowers and cards in search of that next piece to the puzzle. One, whom I know personally, joked he was going to burn in hell for doing that.
He later defined a quote he had extracted from a young girl as “gold.”
By Tuesday, what would be my last day on the story, the media had found most of the big pieces to the puzzle it needed and were hungry for more.
Attention quickly shifted to blame and instead of trying to elicit grief, questions tried to rouse anger. The focus changed and new life was breathed into the story as it appeared the police “may” have been at fault.
Such speculation, of course, was largely unfounded.
As the day progressed, stories took on a contemptuous nature as hearsay and rumour began appearing as fact.
By mid-week, many stories had become farcical, as the sails slackened under the passing storm.
As I sit here writing this, the mayor of Merritt has publicly asked the media to leave the town of 7,000 so it can properly begin the healing processes.
These comments were quickly picked up by the major media, while a native healing circle, staged Thursday in a park for the benefit of the community, was ignored.
Only Heather wrote about it.
If you ask a reporter to explain what it is like to cover such a story, it is unlikely they will be able to paint you a clear picture.
There is an extreme amount of pressure involved and, for the most part, we are acting on our own set of instincts — the same instincts that will later determine how we look at ourselves in the mirror when the job is done.
Personally, I still don’t know exactly, definitively, what happened in Merritt.
It is unlikely anyone will for some time.
As it stands, the facts are very sparse and most of what is floating out there is pertinent only as theory.
But it is only now, as my stomach begins to loosen, and I stare — and I mean really stare — at the pictures of the three dead children that I begin to gain some sort of understanding.
And that is the real story.