We journalists have an ethos. We live by rules that keep objectivity in check and prevent us from falling into pits of paranoiac despair. We also have many superstitions, maxims that secretly keep the wheels of news organizations turning.
We journalists have an ethos. We live by rules that keep objectivity in check and prevent us from falling into pits of paranoiac despair.
We also have many superstitions, maxims that secretly keep the wheels of news organizations turning. They vary from “The source will call back while you're in the bathroom” to “Don't touch Allendria's cat mug or bad things will happen.” This week, a good chunk of the more important ones came up at the Athabasca Advocate.
Without fail – if you're short-staffed in the newsroom, it will be the biggest week for stories all year.
This newspaper is chock-full of huge stories, any number of which could have made the front page.
You have the town and county councils approving the $15-million bid for the pool project. There's the third-party review of Athabasca University. There's 4-H Achievement Day, the final weekend of The Drowsy Chaperone and one man's hopes for a new NCABL team in town.
And you had myself, Hannah Lawson, and the wonderful new Jessica Caparini covering it all, while our previous stalwarts Matthew Allen and Joel Watson have moved onto new projects. They were sorely missed.
Important press releases will always come out Friday afternoons.
If a company or government doesn't want you reading a press release, they're going to push it out when they think reporters won't have time to deal with it. Often, that turns out to be Friday afternoons or over weekends.
At 3:15 p.m. last Friday, a quick little “ding” in my inbox chimed the news of Prairie Mines & Royalty's guilty plea for the toxic Obed Mountain coal mine spill into the Athabasca River in 2013. The penalties for the federal and provincial charges added up to $4.4 million.
For those who might have forgotten, 700-million litres of wastewater slurry from the Obed Mountain mine leaked into the river, making it one of the largest spills in Canadian history. Aspen Regional Water Services closed its water intake for 10 days in 2013 as the contaminants, ranging from mercury, lead and arsenic to cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, flowed down river. The fact that it has reached a kind of conclusion is a really big deal.
I saved the most important rule in the unwritten Journalists' Handbook for last...
If you believe that everything will turn out alright, it will.
Those that doubt that they'll get the story won't get the story.
In order to succeed in the world of journalism, you have to have undaunted faith.
Faith in your sources. Faith that the page will fill itself.
And faith in the purpose, that what you're doing is helping the community and the people in it.
In the spirit of one of my former editors, I often wryly joke that this newspaper is held together by angels' kisses and metaphorical duct tape.
But really, it is held together by that faith, along with hard work, a community that supports us and a lot of coffee. Oh, and an acknowledgement of the code.
