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Personal blog on daily musings about life, current events, movies, philosophy, politics, economics--the works when the urge arises.
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Saturday, May 29, 2004
TV Journalism Intern, Week 4
It has been a long time since I updated my blog, mainly because I didn't have the time to write something being busy both at work in my three-month internship at a major Canadian broadcaster, and in my other community activities. There is never enough time in the day for me, and so the blog is a casualty of my so-called busy life.
Initially, I wanted this to be a continuous endeavour, but like many projects, the newest ones are always the most difficult to maintain in the midst of several other, more mature projects. But I have been inspired by other blogs to keep at it, as sporadic as it has been ever since I started last year.
I'm quite amazed, even dismayed, that May has come and gone so quickly. I've already spent four weeks in my internship, and while I have learned a heck of a lot in a relatively short period of time, I don't know where all the time has gone.
This week was the start of the Canadian federal election, and it's been very eventful trying to juggle daily news requirements, background election research, and a small current affairs series I'm working on that will air for two weeks in the middle of June.
It is interesting to note that the timing of the federal election isn't the best because of the Stanley Cup finals. By the time the finals end--which is expected next week--two-fifths of the election time will have passed, with over half of Canadians undecided on their vote, and the vast majority of them caring more about who will win the Stanley Cup than who will form the next federal government.
Voter apathy is at an all time high, and is expected to grow in this election--and the NHL hockey finals aren't helping the situation.
Many people have asked why voters have become more apathetic about the election. While I'm in no position to give "the" reason, I think the growing distrust of federal politicians is a major source of disillusionment for the voter. The 2000 election saw the largest drop in voter turnout, from 67 per cent in the 1997 election to 61 per cent in 2000. Since confederation, voter turnout hovered around the lower 70 per cent mark, dropping one or two points in each election, but there had never been a six per cent drop from one election to the next.
Distrust and disillusionment is probably caused by the growing number of scandals the federal government has had to endure in the past four years. In 2000, the Liberals faced the billion-dollar-boondoggle in Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC). Then there was the gun registry scandal, and now the sponsorship scandal. Despite the federal government maintaining balanced budgets and modest tax cuts in the past few years, the fact that the Liberals (or at least bureaucrats), are wasting billions of dollars erases a lot of the people's trust in government.
This isn't something that has been talked about in election coverage to my knowledge, but it's a real issue that I think is making people feel less inclined to exercise their democratic right to vote.
I don't yet have hard and fast proof to back-up my suspicions, but if I were a 20-something (as I am), remembering all the wasted money the government has spent on irrelevant projects would make me disillusioned--especially when the alternatives to the Liberals are less than appealing.
11:29 AM
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Taking an Unstatutory Holiday
I'm not sure who invented Reading Break for post-secondary students, but it's the best creation since I found kettle pop corn.
Reading Break, like kettle corn, provides the perfect balance of indulgence and restraint. Every year around February, there's the obligatory news story that questions whether or not British Columbians need a statutory holiday between New Years Day in January and Easter in April. Now, I can't speak for the those in the working world who may crave a holiday from their economic slavedrivers called bosses, but for students, we definitely need a break, if only because the stresses students face in the Spring term is more than that faced in the fall.
Case in point: one's final year in school before graduation. Not only do you have to worry about doing well in your last semester of courses, but you also have to think about and apply for graduation, worry about whether you'll finally get that job that will launch your career that you spent two-four years studying for, and also prepare for a fallback plan in case nothing you hope for pans out. And you have to think about all of this by the time February rolls around.
As a student who will be facing this a second time (first when I finished my BA in 2000), it's become more apparent that a holiday is called for, because there is only so much stress and anxiety, and worry, and panic a student can take before your brain shuts down.
For students, Reading Break is the right prescription for a stressed out mind. It is first, and foremost, a break--a time to not worry about classes at least, and take the time to find productive solutions to the other areas of your life. It's the time to recharge, because the only other time to do that is in April, and by then, final exams will be here, and the amplified stresses only get worse before they disappear in May.
Until then, I'll be enjoying my Reading Break, and indulging my insatiable craving for kettle corn--pop corn that is neither buttery, or salty, but a perfect balance of salty and sweet--with zero the fat.
1:36 PM
Saturday, December 06, 2003
End of a Productive Journalism Semester
It was very anti-climactic on Friday--my last day this semester in journalism school.
I had gone on a tour of the BC Provincial Court building in downtown Vancouver at 9:30am--half an hour late after commuting for over an hour and then spending 20 minutes looking for parking, then running around looking for where my instructor was. Going to court--for instructive reasons--was worthwhile as it removed any stigma related to the courthouse. Our instructor was very emphatic when he said the courthouse was "our house"--ours being the public's. Any citizen has the right to come and look around, ask for court records, and sit in on a court case. We then went on a short tour to the BC Utilities Commission which decides on all the important costs consumers must pay for everything from electricity, natural gas, and now auto insurance.
After that we went back to school to finish up on a couple other final projects, one a photojournalism project and another final news project.
If anything, Friday felt like the last scene in the new version of "Ocean's Eleven" when everyone is slowly walking away, going on their separate ways after finishing their latest caper. One by one, our class dispursed as they finished their projects, all of us wishing each other a happy holidays before leaving. There was certainly a combination of relief from finishing this semester, which challenged a lot of us and pushed our limits in many ways. Some handled it better than others. But in the end, we all finished what we had to do, and now we were off to the rest of our lives for the next few weeks until the new year.
Personally, this was one of the most productive and dynamic semesters of school I've ever had. Never before had I ever felt such a strong sense of purpose and drive to complete something. I'm not sure whether it was because I was working on articles that were getting published, or whether it was just the thrill of contacting people for information on important, interesting and immediate issues. I had to get the information, whether it was from an academic, an artist, or someone from the government. And for the most part, I got my information, which was itself a thrill. Until now, I never thought I'd be able to do half the things I did this semester.
Who would have thought I could be front and centre at an NDP convention as a photojournalist, oblivious to everyone there, including the other reporters and photographers from big media outlets like CBC, Global, the Vancouver Sun, and the Globe and Mail? Who would have thought I could go into the heart of the downtown Eastside and find a gem of an organization that was successfully helping the poor living there--without needing government money? Who would have thought I'd meet some incredibly creating artists in the downtown Eastside? And who would have thought I could do this all in one weekend?
It's been a thrilling November 2003. And while I deserve a break from it all, deep down, I want to keep going, to keep contacting people and finding out new things about what's going on. While it will help to develop my skills and experience, it's the fact that I'll be discovering new things in the process that interests me most. My perception of the community has changed so much in the past few months, not because of anything I've learned, but because of everyone I have met and talked to in the community. We always hear about the big things that happen in the world, province and country, but there are so many facinating and dynamic things happening in the local community that ordinary people miss because it's not reported on in the media.
There are scoops all around us as reporters if we take the time to discover them--which is hard to do when on assignment for the "important news" of the day. But these gems make all the difference in the world.
11:57 AM
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Day in the Life of a Newspaper Editor
For some odd reason, I've always wanted to be an editor of a newspaper. I've been in the position before in other school publications before, but for some reason, being editor of the school newspaper now was different. There was more troubleshooting involved, more issue resolution, more content issues than I ever imagined I'd have to deal with. But ultimately, it was probably so difficult because there was a looming deadline that approached ever so quickly as the day sped along.
Thursday was the first time I was editor of the school newspaper for Kwantlen University College. We usually rotate every three issues and in the first rotation, myself and another fellow were selected by our instructor to carry out the job. At first I was pretty happy about it, but I quickly realized the amount of preparation and work I'd have to put in to make sure our newspaper would turn out to be as good as we all hoped in our class.
Our production schedule starts at 8 a.m. Monday when we have our first news meeting and figure out what everyone has in terms of content. After we flesh that out, we have another news meeting at 8 a.m. the next day before our story deadline of 3 p.m. Wednesday. Thursday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. is production day when we put the paper together and layout the pages and figure out what will be our cover.
Thursday was my most stressful day since it's ultimately up to the editors to get the paper finished by the 3 p.m. deadline, after which we send the paper to the printers. It was perhaps the most stressful because, by 11 a.m. we still had a lot of work to do to complete the paper; over half the pages weren't complete yet so they couldn't be copy edited; looking at all the photos, we realized we didn't have a strong image for a full-page cover photo (which is the design of our cover), and virtually everyone was having little technical problems here and there. While I enjoyed helping everyone and making sure things were getting done, it was stressful nonetheless to have 12 pages unfinished after half the day was already gone. Twenty reporters, making 12 pages, working on our fourth issue, with a 3 p.m. deadline. That's what I was dealing with--and I only had one break.
By 2 p.m. the computer lab was a mad house with other people along with myself stressing out about finalizing all the pages. I barely managed to copy edit and find layout problems on three or four pages before it was 2:30 p.m., at which time we had to print our final copies of our pages before sending them off to the printers.
Of course, deadlines being what they are, all of us managed to finish our pages on time, and they were off to the printers at 3 p.m. sharp. It's a credit to our journalism class to get everything done on time and finish things in a crunch (which is something most students learn to handle anyway).
But being the perfectionist I am, I had copies of all the final pages and decided to look at the final pages after they were sent to print, and lo and behold, I found a dozen or so minor mistakes in stories and in the page layout. I sometimes wonder why I put myself through that little torture of finding mistakes after-the-fact, since there's nothing I can do about it. But, fortunately, there is something I can do about it for next week's issue of the paper, and hopefully I'll remember to note these mistakes and let everyone know.
And then next Thursday afternoon, I'll find more...
Such is the life of a perfectionist newspaper editor.
11:19 AM
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Three Long, Hard, Fun Weeks
It's hard to imagine that hard and little-to-no-pay work can be considered fun, but heading back to journalism school after a four-month reprieve, I got my journalism legs back as soon as I entered our production room.
I'm not sure whether it was seeing all my old class collegues again, or simply being in a journalistic environment, but despite all the hard work we have ahead of us, I truly feel at ease in the middle of a frenzied newsroom.
I'm not sure if it's because I have a personal interest in anything journalistic--photography (of the news sort), writing, research, interviews and newspaper layout--but whatever I have done so far, it's been a lot of fun, in addition to being a great learning experience.
While some may think being a reporter is a stressful job (especially photo journalists who have to get the shot no matter what, because it'll never come again), I think of the stress as a motivator than anything else. It pushes me to do better, look harder, write cleaner, layout faster--all of which are necessary attributes in the real world of journalism. No matter what audience you are sharing your stories to, your work needs to come to life, and nothing brings a story to life than the energy a journalist puts into his or her work.
Personally, I could have been a behind-the-scenes researcher for some think tank and have my work possibly reported on in the media. But instead, I chose to use those same skills I learned in university for something far more tangible and applicable to the general public: the news.
I feel such a strong sense of satisfaction knowing that the story I wrote will have been a meaningful one to someone, even if it's only for a minute or two. In our age of constantly breaking news, I'm lucky if I get a couple minutes of attention. But the satisfaction doesn't come from being read by the public, but by implicitly informing them and influencing their opinions on issues and topics of the day. It's a subtle art, appreciated by very few, but carried out by a dedicated profession that must play a huge balancing act between independent news gathering and corporate ownership.
It's a difficult profession, but as some people have said, it's the difficult thing that are worth doing.
10:29 PM
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