April 27, 2019
A nice portion of the following column is about the Rural Reporters’ Association that those working in rural Saskatchewan as journalists were involved in the early 1980s. I had fogotten about it although I do remember Eric who I had a nice– though short– relationship with and Jeff Rosen who was a friend and now a Friend on Facebook.
I think this kind of association is one that would still be appreciated even today by journalists living in places isolated from the big city centres.
I also love the idea of doing an article on the grandparents with the most grandchildren in the Gravelbourg area. I do not recall anyone coming forward, however. I will tell you what, though, if anyone out there has a large brood of grandchildren, please let me know and I will write a story about it for Facebook.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the following:
Gravelbourg Gazette
February 2, 1983
Equal Times
by Tanya Lester
Journalists are a funny breed of people. We are often taught or learn or told to be competitive. The idea, especially for journalists on larger newspapers, radio stations and television stations, is to get the ‘hot’ news story first.
Sometimes this is fine. If Woodward and Bernstein had let other journalists know that they were working on the President Nixon Watergate scandal, they never would have become so famous.
And from a news point of view, if other journalists had found out about the story before Woodward and Bernstein were ready to publish it, the story would have come out before all the facts were gathered. This would have given Nixon and his aids time to arrange cover-up and possibly Woodward and Bernstein could have even been brought to court for libel.
But let’s get back to reality here. Reporting in small town Saskatchewan is a long way from reporting in big city Washington, D.C. Often journalist working in a small town are the sole reporters on their newspapers. Story ideas, whether ‘hot’ news or human interest, can be difficult to find.
This is why myself and a number of other rural reporters have got together to form a rural reporters’ association. One of the aims of the association is to serve as a vehicle for reporters to exchange story ideas.
For example, when I wrote the story about the federal government constituency boundary changes, I worked on it with some help from a radio news reporter in Swift Current. Having met him through the association, he phoned to get some information about what the Member of Parliament in this area thought about the changes. I was able to give him the MP’s Ottawa phone number.
In exchange, he was able to tell me who the present MP in the Swift Current area is as this was important to my story because the proposed changes would mean Gravelbourg would be part of the new Swift Current -Assiniboia riding. We also exchanged details concerning what the government bureaucrats involved in making the changes were saying to the press.
These are small details but you would be surprised how much less time it takes to write a story when a reporter can work with another journalist on it.
This story also ended up in the Borderland Reporter as it had implications for readers in the Coronach area. Since then, Jeff Rosen, who is the editor of that paper and also a member of the Rural Reporters’ Association, has run stories of mine including one on MLA Allan Engel’s opinions on the Power Plant and CPR rail line closure hearing as well as another story of the increase of students enrolled in French Immersion programs, Both those stories pertained to his readership area just as much as they had to our newspaper readers.
Of course, it hasn’t been a one-way street . Jeff’s stories have sometimes been run in the Gazette and some of the stories that he gets from me are changed, and run with my and his byline, so they will better relate to his readers. I’ve got a lot of story ideas from him, too.
Often I also get my articles ideas from Gazette readers as well. Some of you will drop around to the office with names of people to interview. Often these lead to some nice ‘human interest’ stories.
Then, there are the story ideas I get from people I am interviewing as the subject of another story. Recently, Norma Dreger, who also used to work on a small newspaper, gave me several story idea when I was over at her house inteviewing her for last week’s Beta Sigma Phi article.
I hope to use a few of Norma’s ideas over the next coup[e of months. One, I want to use in the very near future, if I can get your help in supplying me with information.
This story idea appeals to me because often people who don’t have a special hobby or profession or who are not involved in politics never have an article written about them even though they may have a very interesting story to tell. It’s just that its difficult for me to find them.
So, the story idea is this: I want to interview, take a photograph, and write a story about the grandparents, or grandfather or grandmother who has the most grandchildren.
This is what I want you to do: either send me or phone me with the name or names of the grandparent(s) who you might think has the larger number of grandchildren. It could be you or your parents or someone you know.
Just mail your entry to:————
The grandparent or grandparents should be living within the Gazette readership area which runs about as far north as the Shamrock area, west to the Ponteix area, south to the Mankota area, and east to around Mazenod and Melaval. Anyone who lives within these general boundaries could qualify for the story.
The grandparent or grandparents with the most number of grandchildren will be asked to tell me a little bit about their own lives, their children’s lives, and their grandchildren’s lives for the story.
Please get you entries into me….and the winning grandparents will be interviewed shortly after that with the inclusion of the story in the Gazette to appear a couple of weeks after that date. The grandparents will get enough copies of the that issue of the Gazette to send to their children and grandchildren.
I hope to hear from you with those entries soon!
Next week: Equal Pay in “Equal Times”.
— END–
To read more stories in a variety of genres and on various themes that were written by Tanya Lester over the years, go to writingsmall.wordpress.com and tealeaf56.wordpress.com
Tanya’s books are: Confessions of a Tea Leaf Reader, Friends I Never Knew, Dreams and Tricksters and Women Rights/Writes. The first two can be purchased from the author or from from amazon.ca The last two have copies in the Legislative Library of Manitoba. All of these titles are in some public library systems.
Tanya has now worked for over two decades literally doing readings as a tea leaf reader, tarot reader and also a psychic channeller, medium and gypsy card reader. She is also a reiki master and a fulltime housesitter. To find out more about her unusual career choices, go to her website at: teareading.wordpress.com To book a reading text/call 250-538-0086 or email: tealeaf.56@gmail.com
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