"There are a lot of natives here, but if a black person or somebody else comes to town its like, big news. This is about the whitest town in Canada." - Ken, my editor.
"First rule here - don't listen to anything anybody says." - Ken
Today was my first day of qausi-work. Really all it consisted of was frightening the community news reporter Kristy, getting a quick tour of the office, going for a beer with the editor and one of the receptionist who is actually the editor's fiancee. Then I quickly met the junior 'B' hockey coach before getting a whirlwind tour of Peace River. Tomorrow, Sunday, is another quick day of work - midget hockey game at 12:30 then write about it, and possibly a column - nothing major. Then Monday is a layout day - and the real reporting starts on Tuesday I suppose. Kristy, the community reporter, is leaving at the end of the week, leaving the community news to be covered by Ken and I, which I guess is okay, although I can't even remember the last time I wrote a hard news story - I guess I'll have to take the shrinkwrap off all those textbooks from Shawn Thompson's classes. Or maybe I'll just wing it.
Ken is a very cool guy - he's about 26 or 27, and likes Matthew Good, The Goonies, and Film Festival-type movies. And then there is Jessica, his fiancee, who is from the Lower Mainland, dislikes the cold as much as I do, and loves the Canucks. We'll get along just fine.
**edit: Day 2**
Today was monday, production day. And as such, there wasn't much for me to do. I finished up my first column - it was basically an intro-type column saying "Hello town, this is who I am." Not very exciting. Then I wrote a story (that my editor called "Wicked") about the midget AAA hockey game I went to on Sunday afternoon. At first, when I heard "midget game" i assumed it was just another crappy minor hockey game - but I was wrong. Midget AAA hockey in Alberta is big business - teams have fancy, glossy schedules, their own permanent dressing room in the rink, greyhound buses for roadtrips. Crazy stuff.
Everyone in the office is pretty nice, although they all gave me flak about the Canucks flag I pinned to my wall beside my desk.
"Canucks? What the hell is this? Welcome to Alberta!" - Deb, the publisher.
So that was basically my day. And in a few minutes I'm off to some tiny town called Weberville to take a quick grip-and-grin photo of some firefighters. Bo-ring.
No comments:
Post a Comment