Is there hope for TV journos?

Having worked as a reporter for a good part of my professional life, I'm always curious to see how journalists are portrayed on TV shows and movies. I recall growing up, the depiction of ambulance-chasing hacks always elicited an eye-roll and a heavy sigh from my dad. And if a fake reporter asked the dreaded question - "How do you feel?" - immediately after a tragedy, it would usually prompt a succinct rant from him.

So it was interesting to see how reporters were played in two of my favourite shows this week. First, it was Glee. For those of you who don't watch it, a magazine reporter visited the school, assigned to write a story on the Cheerios, the cheerleading squad. In fact, he was going to write an expose on the show's villain, the squad coach played with venomous perfection by Jane Lynch. However, he may have been hoodwinked into thinking she was in fact an inclusive, groundbreaking breath of fresh air. He promised her a glowing review.

Now I'm hoping his whole, "This story is going to change your career," promise (don't hate me if I'm not getting it word for word - my memory isn't what it once was) could mean he will indeed change it for the worse. Fingers crossed. She's the bad guy after all. It would be a cool opportunity to put that rotten Sue Sylvester in her place. And that's what a real journalist would do. Only time will tell, I guess.

Then it was on to V. Yeah, I watch musicals and sci fi. I'm weird that way. Scott Wolf plays the douchey TV reporter, Chad Decker. Each episode has me wondering if he's really kissing some major alien ass or if he'll end up becoming part of team humans/Fifth Column that try to bring the V down. He plays the part of the vain TV reporter really well, but every now and then he shows a glimmer that there's more going on in his head than dreams of ratings or brain damage from all that hair product. Whether he has a true interest in doing what's best for humanity or just wants a really juicy story remains to be seen.

Anyway, my point is it's pretty cool to see some potential for how journos are played in our entertainment sources and see them break out of the, "How does it feel?" box. Keep it up.

Summer memories reignited

Grandma & Me, 2004, by gscameraworks.

So I spoke with my mom on the weekend. My grandma isn't doing very well. She fell again and the doctor wants her to use a wheelchair. In fact, he doesn't want her trying to leave the wheelchair without help. This formidable woman who her younger sisters always lauded as the smart one is now mentally confined by dementia.

I wrote this story several years ago as part of a series based on my memories of the summers I spent on grandma and grandpa's farm. This one was her favorite.

That Beautiful Place

It was the middle of summer and the dreams were growing more frequent. I guess it’s only natural that I’d dream of the one place I spent so many summers growing up – the farm.

Sometimes the dreams were so real, I’d nearly cry when I woke up, angry that my beautiful trip had been interrupted by the alarm clock. Other times, the dreams were more abstract, almost like a Picasso painting – I knew where I was, but nothing was where I’d expect it to be, all a little off.

When I was a kid, I wished the house was the same, yet different. Always snooping around, I was forever hoping I’d find a secret stairwell to an unknown room full of, well, something exciting. Not money or anything so crass – rather I wanted to discover anything from generations past – old clothing, records, books, anything that could document times gone by. Sure, there was always the old storage room, but I was looking for…more.

Even though I never did find that secret room, I can remember the house had a very palpable soul – something that in hindsight, was way better than any jackpots I could have found. It certainly wasn’t haunted, not in the least. Rather there was a good old soul that had been there and seen everything through three generations. It was comforting.

Anyway, back to the dreams that got me thinking about that beautiful place. It’s funny, it’s not the big events that took place there that stand out. It’s all the small details that are etched in my mind. Like waking up before anyone except Grandpa – who almost always seemed to be awake before any other living being. The old timey music on the radio only seemed to exist in that one place – Grandma and Grandpa’s kitchen. The plastic tablecloth would save the heavy table from any toast crumbs that would inevitably sprinkle from my mouth.

Sometimes I’d get outside early enough that the dew was still on the ground. I’d just go out and breathe in the fresh morning air and have a chat with the dogs. If I got up a little later, I’d be lucky enough to trek to the end of the laneway and get the mail, which seemed to be a pretty major event, at least for the person who got to do it. Wandering outside, barn to barn for what seemed like hours, in fact, it was probably only minutes before an encounter with a wayward wasp would send me running back to the safety of the house.

I’d grab a book from the endless pile I’d picked up during a trip to the library with Grandma. When I was older, I’d snag one of her many Harlequin Romance books. My parents and usually an aunt or uncle would tsk that I was inside on such a beautiful day. They just seemed incapable of understanding that it could be a beautiful day inside too.

Sometimes my mind would wander. I’d stare at the door in the living room that didn’t lead anywhere since the veranda outside it was torn down – the veranda that was long gone before my day, but still there in all the old photos. I’d imagine what the house was like then and for whatever reason in my child’s mind, I imagined things would be a whole lot different with a veranda. Maybe it was the soul of the house talking to me, igniting my imagination so it would run wild.

Eventually, I’d tire of the reading and mind games and retreat upstairs for a nap in Grandma’s bed. I remember waking up, and still groggy, walking to the window. The pink curtains were moving slightly in the breeze. I’d look out at the trees and a sadness welled up inside me, knowing one day I would have to leave.

Then I’d push the sad feelings away and simply bask in all the house had to offer – warmth, contentment and safety. Those are the feelings I remember, the true treasures I ended up finding all those summer days at the farm.

Why not a writer?

I was chatting with another writer this week about what we wanted to be when we were in high school. Turns out both of us wanted to be actors.

I didn't pursue it because the university programs I looked at required a singing audition. (Those of you who know me can pick yourselves up off of the floor now. I know I can't sing. Well, my son thinks I can, but he's only 3.)

My fellow scribe, on the other hand, didn't pursue acting because her parents wouldn't accept it and likely wouldn't have paid the bill for a fine arts degree. She did get a degree in another area that lead to writing, but she still feels like she disappointed her parents. I just don't get it.

Here's why. I ended up getting my first BA in Law. I flitted between Mass Communications and Law but ended up in Law because a) I was fascinated by it, b) second-year stats in Mass Comm nearly killed me and I just couldn't fathom doing it in my third year and c) one of the mandatory third-year Mass Comm courses was full and I would have had to take it in fourth year, dragging my degree into five years. No thanks. Law it was.

I toyed with the whole law school idea and even wrote the L-SAT once. I barely passed it and didn't get into any of the law schools I applied for. I worked a year of full-time retail knowing it would force me to make a decision one way or the other. I liked Mass Comm because I got to study the media. And I always enjoyed story-telling. Journalism it was. I somehow managed to get into the two-year program at Ryerson University. And then I managed to get work in the field when I graduated. I'm still plugging away, now as a technical writer.

My point is, there was never any point at which my parents told me or even hinted to me that I was a disappointment. Now, some of that may be because my dad was a reporter for many years. But I think most of it was because they had experienced moments where they were told they had to do something because it was expected of them.

My dad came from a poor family so the school system of the day tried to force him into hands-on courses like shop. I guess the reasoning then was that without money, you couldn't afford to continue your education at a university, so needed a trade. Or it could have been as mean-spirited and unfounded as if you didn't have money, you simply weren't suited for the more "academic" courses. (I know some brilliant mechanics, including my father-in-law, so I don't subscribe to this sort of outdated thinking). If you met my dad you would know how ridiculous this is. My sister told him how to put the gas barbecue together when she was 9. Handy he's not.

My mom, even though she came of age in the late 60s, grew up in a conservative, rural area. She was accepted by every university she applied to. But she decided to get married and have kids. You simply didn't do both where she was from.

So I guess my parents figured they wouldn't inflict their own expectations on us when it came to the professions my sister and I chose (she has a fine arts degree and worked for many years as a photographer). They never made me feel like they needed a lawyer in the family. They made me get my pictures taken for both graduations so they could send them to the extended family. My dad's media friends knew who I was by the time I graduated because he wouldn't shut up about me and how bloody proud he was.

I'll just never get people who can't encourage their children's dreams and goals. I'd like to thank my parents for being cool enough to let me figure it out on my own. I plan to do the same for my kid. And now I've said it on the internets, so you guys can keep me honest.

Spreading the word on mental illness

Something I love about writing is the opportunity it gives me to learn more about things I feel strongly about and raise awareness of them. It's something I particularly enjoyed as a freelancer. Working in communications, these types of opportunities don't always present themselves in traditional ways, but they still happen now and then.

Before I left Douglas College, I volunteered to be an extra playing a patient in the Women's Chronic Unit at Riverview Hospital circa 1940-something for a reenactment scene being shot for a documentary called Bedlam. Above is a shot of me on set, shot by Mikki Herbold.

The film is a project by Heidi Currie, a criminology prof I met while working at Douglas, and filmmaker Lisa G (Lisa's the one with the camera). It's a continuation of their project Asylum. Heidi teaches a course on working with offenders with mental disorders.

I knew about Asylum as it had been part of a larger series of events at the college I had publicized last spring. Last fall, I posted a story on the employee blog that Heidi needed extras for her new project and figured, "Why not?"

The new documentary focuses on Kay, who took a job at Riverview during WWII at age 16 – she tells the story of her first day at work as Bedlam’s narrator.

The treatment of people with mental illness has improved markedly since then, when the patients at the Women's Chronic Unit were unmedicated and wards were understaffed. We wore drab tunics and grey wool socks and were essentially stripped of any identity we had outside of our characters' respective illnesses.

At one point, a nurse on set who had worked at Riverview years ago said we looked the part but were much too quiet. For a relatively short period of time, we were told to pump up the volume. For me, playing a depressive, this meant sobbing. Hard. I only had to do it for 10 minutes or so. I experienced postpartum depression a few years back and I simply thought of how alone I felt in order to pull what I needed to from my guts and do a good job. It made me sad to think that if I had been born in the wrong era, I could have been in a ward at Riverview, rather than feeling a heck of a lot better within a few months with the right medication and counselling. And it made me angry.

Provincial dollars for healthcare, including support and services for people with mental illness, have been decimated in BC. Well, redirected, says Heidi - there is limited access to mental health services until someone with ends up in the prison system. Then the province deems it important. Talk about too little, too late. Heidi also told me that there is very little documented history of Riverview so Bedlam will be an important educational piece on BC's mental health system.

Sadly, underfunding and poor access to mental health services isn't limited to BC or adults. Through a remarkable Twitter campaign sparked by TheNextMartha, I discovered No Points for Style, a blog by Adrienne Jones, whose son has bipolar disorder. Her story gave me the much-needed kick in the ass to put this entry together as the film shoot was in January. Not helping kids is just plain wrong and makes me much angrier than I think I can possibly express.

My thinking is the more people understand the history, they more they will see the danger in backtracking to having little government support for people with mental illness. I know it's a cliche, but hey, knowledge is power. And if I can play a small part in getting that knowledge out there by spending a Saturday playing a Riverview patient from back in the day, I'll gladly do it.

Low pay = cheap boss

So my clever headline is a play on the Globe and Mail headline that caught my interest today.

Does low pay = high passion?

It's a conundrum that writers and other creatives are often forced to face - must I live on slave wages for the rest of my life in order to do something I love?

Let me give you some context here. The Globe and Mail's Dave McGinn features an employer - internet entrepreneur Ben Huh - up top. Huh weeds out job applicants by posting entry-level jobs at low-paying wages. His rationale is that way, he'll find people who are passionate about the work, not the paycheque, and noted that those who focus on the $ tend to be the worst candidates. Huh blogged about this last month - read it benhuh!com.

Now, let's emphasize that Huh's talking about entry-level jobs here and I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent straight off. My issue is that way too many employers of creatives are using the same argument when filling positions that require experience. I know - until recently, I had been looking for writing work on and off for about a decade while freelancing. And I'm not alone - I hang out with other writers, along with a number of photographers, graphic designers and artistes. I now have a writing job I enjoy with a decent wage and other perks, so it is possible, folks!

There seems to be an assumption that anyone can do creative jobs, so we don't deserve a decent living wage but should be grateful to have someone to pay us pennies for our efforts. I've done a few 'writing tests' that resulted in nothing (one did, however, land me my last job featuring relatively low pay balanced by kick-ass benefits). Forget the fact that many of us are educated in our fields and have continued our education in order to stay on top of technical demands. Forget the years upon years of experience we have.

It's not necessarily better for freelancers. For years, PWAC (the Professional Writers' Association of Canada) has been lobbying for better freelance rates for writers. Bad Writing Contracts is a coalition of Canadian writers fighting for better contracts (read 'better pay') too. Writers' rates, particularly in Canada, have remained frozen for about 30 years.

Whether you're looking at staff positions or freelance jobs, the problem is the same. We're too often undervalued for what we do because we are artists. We are supposed to be flakey, fluffy, hippies who don't care about things like paying rent or frivolous purchases like groceries for our kids. We're supposed to be grateful for that ever-elusive byline. We should explode like KITH's chicken lady upon seeing our words in print. I call bullshit.

When you, my fellow creatives, don't stand your ground and accept less than you are truly worth, you devalue the work of every other creative out there. You give the man (sorry, slipping into that flakey hippie jargon), a reason to continue to devalue the work of other creatives too. And then this ridiculous cycle never ends.

You say goodbye, I say hello

So dear readers, I've been rather neglectful in my blogging duties. But I have a good reason, honestly. I was in the process of negotiating and ultimately accepting a new job. Then, once that was done, all I wanted to do was write about the fact that I have a new job effective March 1, but I didn't want to possibly jinx things (signed offer aside) by tempting the cosmos to jerk this new opportunity away from me. I'm weird that way. Now that I'm wrapping things up on my last day with the college, I feel pretty safe in blogging about my new adventure.

It's pretty cool because while this new job will use the skills I already have, I'll also get to learn more about writing for the web, SEO and all that fun stuff that I keep hearing will be good for my career. And I agree that it will be good for me. They have a terrific team, some of whom I'm friends with (hey, it's who you know in this business) and the location is superb: Yaletown - no more commuting!

However, there's still a part of me that is kinda sad because it means I'm moving further away from my first career as a journalist. Though my ultimate love is the writing part of it, I also have to admit that I get a buzz out of the whole process of creating a story in the more journalistic sense - interview someone who has something interesting to talk about, learn more about them, find that human interest story that will make people want to read past that first sentence and finally, write.

Today, I went out with a bang. Last day working for the college, I interviewed Patrick Gallagher, a.k.a. the short-shorts wearing football coach Ken Tanaka on Glee. Super-cool guy, very down to earth. Last summer, I interviewed another successful Canadian actor, Fred Ewanuick (that's me and Fred, his new show Dan for Mayor premieres next Monday at 8:30pm on CTV, by the way). Fred was also very gracious, very much a guy you can picture having a beer and watching the game with.

Whether I'm meeting someone famous in the traditional sense or someone who becomes a community hero like the college's Olympic torch bearer, Anna Solnickova, I love meeting people and finding out what makes them tick. I'm nosy.

Of course, a huge part of my sadness is because I'm leaving a team of people I really like. But you can't stay somewhere just because you like the people. We'll still see each other and trade war stories. Indeed, our get-togethers will likely be all that much more interesting because we won't be seeing one another every day. There'll be new dirt, which always helps fulfill my nosy nature.

And yes, I'm still writing and learning, and that's the key. I write, I learn, I'm happy. If I'm really jonesing to do an interview, I can always write a freelance piece.

Cool Globe story

Just read today's Tuesday Essay, Mysterious and Terrible and Crazy in the Globe. It touches on the same topic as my post last week, Naysayers, Deniers and PITAs.

However, it goes well beyond the bitchings and criticisms of family members over who started the drunken mashed potato fight at Thanksgiving back in '78 and touches on some heavy stuff, namely Todd Babiak's struggle with whether or not to have a character burn in a fire in his sedan in his latest book, Toby: A Man. Babiak's own father burned in a fire in his sedan in 2002.

He writes, "Novelists aren't supposed to worry about what their mothers and brothers think, but I do. I worry about it constantly. If readers know some bits of the book are true, perhaps they will think everything is true. This would not bode well for my mother's reputation."

Thought for food, indeed.