The Brave and The Bold Print

I hear the 911 operator ask through my cellphone, "Are you safe?", and yell back, "What? Me? Yeah, sure, I'm safe," as I run through the trees and bushes to get closer to the fire, then taking pictures of the blaze with the same phone while someone screams, "We don't know how much fuel is inside," which I later repeat to passers-by, themselves having the common sense to leave.

Such is the strange dichotomy of being a reporter in a small town: the realization of one's civic obligation to report an emergency to the authorities, then take pictures and/or video and gather information in order to report it to the general public. Citizen first, newsman second, my inner Boy Scout conflicting with my mercenary need to be the first on the scene, even when I'm without my trusty new state-of-the-art Nikon.

Over the past couple of years, I've needlessly risked life and limb in effort to get photographs of various events from unique and often dangerous perspectives, leaning off rickety fire escapes, standing on top of partitions, lying prone in the middle of busy highways, and getting as close as possible to accidents, fires, and crime scenes while trying to not be overly intrusive, distracting or disrespectful... not that I don't tend to cross the line of safety on a regular basis, at least until shooed away by a Mountie or Fire Inspector.

Even without taking risk into consideration, there's always the Heisenbergian Observer Effect to consider, as people do act differently when aware that they are being watched, especially by the media.

None of this by any means makes me brave; some might say it makes me reckless and foolhardy. Bravery is a quality not of the photo-journalist, but of the men & women who fight the fires, investigate the crimes, and attend to the injured. I and those like me merely attempt to capture the important or exciting moments for historic posterity.

Members of the media often get a bad rap, all being painted with the same brush. Not all of us are looking to sensationalize every event. Maybe I'm naive in thinking that we can do our jobs in competition with all others in the 24-hour news cycle without harassing and embarrassing the subject and thereby villainizing ourselves. It's maybe that line of thought that's cost me a job or two.

The perfect example in my mind was at a grain elevator fire a couple of years ago: a couple of firemen were receiving oxygen on the open rear of an ambulance. It could have made for a front page photo, but I chose to respect the moment, and to not invade their privacy.

Everybody has the capability of being a reporter these days. We all have phones with built-in sound recording, cameras, video cameras, and wi-fi browsers, and thus can instantly report everything we might witness by posting to the ubiquitous internet. Everyone is a celebrity within his or her own circle of interest, posting daily occurences to Twitter and Facebook, hoping videos go viral on YouTube. Traditional news sources use the same services, and media and social media have become interconnected. We now live in Andy Warhol's future, each of us "famous for 15 minutes".

Sadly, I must admit that I am aware that it probably appears I may be more guilty of that than most. This summer alone, I've been a radio personality, internet sensation, newspaper reporter, bandleader, photographer, web designer, event emcee, and the list seems to go on. And quite honestly, I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.

Rest assured, though, somebody will probably write about it. After all, me finally acting like an adult would be news.

Never Surrender

It almost seems funny that last night I skipped my CJ Radio boss Bill Gade's seminar on Small Claims Court held here in Neepawa, as this morning I'm off to Brandon in order to square off yet again versus my former employer The Neepawa Press, appealing a very questionable decision made in Minnedosa two months ago.

Here's the thing: I've explained many times in several different media over the past 17 months that my dismissal from the Neepawa Press didn't upset me; it was the way in which it was conducted. Considering with whom I was dealing, it really shouldn't have been surprising.

I was fired after having already announced publicly in Winnipeg while on-stage at Dylan O'Connors (recorded for podcasting) and privately in a letter to and in conversation with my immediate superior (then Advertising Manager, now General Manager) Darren Graham that after discussing the matter with my family, my decision had been made to leave the hostile work environment created by Glacier Media/Prairie News Group/Neepawa Press Publisher Todd Hamilton. In fact, it was recommended not only by my immediate family but also my doctors, as the stress had already begun to take a toll on both my emotional and physical health; I was diagnosed with a stress-related auto-immune disorder, from which I still suffer.

However, rather than put in my notice the next time I was able to see him (previous days, I had been informed that he was out-of-town, while he had ignored and not returned any of my phone calls), Hamilton fired me. My exact words? "Great!"

I should preclude that with some background as to the months leading up to that January 11th, 2010 morning. Now, like most residents of Neepawa since 1896, I've been a weekly reader of the Neepawa Press since I was a child. As an adult, in the course of three businesses, I've been an advertiser, and still was at that time. In July of 2009, I invested in a large ad in a local festival booklet in addition to my previous monthly advertisements, but having never seen any results, I then had informed Darren Graham that I needed to discontinue all advertising in the Neepawa Press. Profile articles on my musical career in The Press, Neepawa Banner & Brandon Sun have always caused an increase in business for me as a solely home-based, self-employed guitar teacher and musical instrument retailer, but regular ads had not.

At that time, the Neepawa Press had been sold to Glacier (a corporation based in B.C.), and as Darren Graham had long wished to be named Publisher at the time of Jack Gibson's inevitable retirement, the news that Todd Hamilton would be arriving to assume that position caused Darren to decide to leave the Press. I, and no doubt others, urged him to remain, which he eventually did. He even received his very first byline in 14 years, albeit for an article which Hamilton had written describing himself.

Meanwhile, despite my request to discontinue my advertising, which I repeatedly explained to Darren I simply could not afford, the ads continued to run in the first edition each month. This I found at first curious, then frustrating.

During the conversations with Darren regarding the ad, I also related my interest in perhaps contributing the odd freelance article, perhaps even one regular weekly column.

In early November, Darren asked me to meet with Todd Hamilton, without informing me that the previous Press reporter had quit. I was offered a full-time position with the paper.

Over the following two months, I endured Hamilton's insufferable nature, while correcting his previous errors, such as publishing medical information concerning vaccines for the H1N1 virus; the weekly frightening headlines concerning a lack of innoculations for Neepawa might have been more effective had the information come from the local Regional Health Authority, rather than one based 90 miles away. The reason for the error was that the Assiniboine RHA didn't fax the Neepawa Press regularly, while the Parkland RHA did; why research a story if it's handed to you? Heck, who needs fact-checking when you can just re-type a press release, regardless of where it originated? To hell with the public trust, right?

I couldn't see it that way. Hamilton's habit of "Google-ing the news" and changing a few words before attaching his name didn't sit well with me. I believed then and still do that research was key, facts should be checked and double-checked along with spelling and syntax. I don't subscribe to the concept of waiting for emails and submissions from the community, I actually go to events and gather information the old fashioned way, by experiencing it first-hand. Eventually Hamilton's from-behind-the-desk approach would catch up with him, not when he plagiarized one of my articles, but instead when he took information from the internet regarding the local hog plant's labour negotiations. I had phoned them a month earlier; Hamilton wound up printing a retraction a week after printing 6-year-old information on the front page.

So, after dealing with Hamilton changing the weekly production date from Friday to Monday without telling me, and altering the previous history of 50 issues per year to 52, I found myself at the end of the year scrambling to write 2010's first newspaper during a holiday week when the town was all but closed but for two-and-a-half days mid-week, with interviewees understandably either requesting later appointments or not bothering to show up.

Needing to be in Winnipeg on January 3rd and 4th, which I had informed the entire staff (other than Hamilton, whom I had not seen in weeks), I received a phone call the morning of Monday, January 4th, and was screamed at before the phone went dead. My attempts to return the call went to voice mail and were never returned.

Upon my return to Neepawa, I set about the task of covering a week's worth of sporting events; Hockey Tournament of Champions, Annual Women's Curling Bonspiel, Olympic Torch Run, High School Basketball Tournament, as well as routine things such as a small house fire. During that week, I had daily discussions with Darren Graham, who was usually in my home for coffee with one other staff member. I arrived at the Press office the following Monday morning with all the photos I'd taken and articles I'd written on a portable USB drive, as always. I was fired as I prepared to download the files to the Press computer server.

The Press instead ran a single local article, concerning the Olympic Torch Run, written by an advertising salesperson. Over the coming year, it would become routine for the Press to run inaccurate stories written by less-than qualified and inexperienced "writers", and usually only 3 or 4 local stories per week, with over-sized photos on the front page that often had no real merit for publication.

Having been dismissed on January 11th with the information that I would recieve one-week's salary (the minimum pay-out without notice by law in Manitoba), I immediately turned my attention to freelancing for the Neepawa Banner. After re-editing the articles I had written presumably for The Press, I emailed them to The Banner's editor, Kate Jackman-Atkinson; naturally, having their own reporting staff, they had covered many of the same events I had, and were only able to use two of my articles.

I then succumbed to pneumonia contracted during a week of running in-and-out of freezing cold weather in effort to get the greatest variety of actions photos possible. Having been phoned on January 12th by Bill Gade of CJ Radio, I eventually went to work at the Neepawa radio station, while dealing with a lung infection resulting from the pneumonia, and wound up in the hospital. Since that time, I've become the Assistant Manager for CJBP 97.1 FM, continued to contribute to newspapers as a freelance photo-journalist, and resumed my musical career as an educator and performer, all while continuing to fight the auto-immune disorder, which has required numerous painful tests, biopsies, and exploratory surgery.

Sadly, as much as the files on my thumb drive were my bargaining chip for my job at the Press, so was the money owed to me for having been employed there against the advertising debt; it's hard to pay someone who owes you as well. My first week's salary had never been paid, and the Manitoba Labour Board eventually received that on the final deadline date they'd set in October 2010, 11 months past-due, a cheque that had been issued half-a-year earlier. However, Hamilton had back-dated the date of my dismissal by a full week, and to this date I have yet to be reimbursed. Add to that unpaid mileage and personal expenses.

In Minnedosa Small Claims Court, in a case brought about by Mr. Hamilton, I explained my side, and while it seemed quite simple, the Hearing Officer disregarded or misunderstood all evidence, refused to hear from witnesses, and ruled completely for Hamilton and the Press to the complete disbelief of myself and others in attendance. Some in the news profession have referred to this as having been a ruling based on the temporal proximity of lunch, suggesting that perhaps I should have arrived in Court prepared with not only overwhelming evidence but also a sandwich for a jurist who might call the case early for need of a snack.

Today, I will again attempt to find justice.

Brand New Day

For me to steal the title of a storyline in Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man comics shouldn't seem terribly odd to those who've known me. After all, I do still read them.

It's taken me years to figure out just how I really wanted to maintain my web presence, during which time the internet has continued to evolve. GMail, Facebook... a decade ago, not part of our collective consciousness, or lexicon, because they didn't exist. So I'm presently re-vamping everything that I do on the internet, expanding yet somehow condensing and organizing things, something which I have often done, every few years, on-line and off. Recent changes in both worlds require it once again. More on that soon.

Meanwhile, in the off-line "real" world, during the course of the past few years, I left the seeming comfort of the family business, became a full-time musician and released a debut CD just before my band broke up, started my own dream business in Brandon only to have a year's work go down the drain with the realization that my business partner was an apparent alcoholic embezzler, considered bankruptcy, suffered a severe lung infection, suffered a massive concussion, spent a half-year in Winnipeg hanging out with various other musicians, was asked to become a reporter for the Neepawa Press, developed an auto-immune condition due to the stress of working for an abusive publisher, was fired the day I had planned to give notice (although somehow said publisher illegally back-dated my dismissal in effort to rob me of a week's salary), contracted pneumonia during my last week at the paper, developed another lung infection, was asked to join the staff at Neepawa's new radio station and subsequently hosted a modestly successful small-town Morning Show for almost a year, was promoted to Assistant Manager while watching a parade of backstabbing fools routinely file in the door and inevitably back out again, occasionally freelanced for the Neepawa Banner and Brandon Sun newspapers while enjoying the regularly-repeated incompetence of publisher Todd Hamilton and the Neepawa Press' reporters-du-jour, then recently came close to death when the auto-immune disorder returned, initially disguising itself as lymphoma.

Somehow during everything else, I managed to perform at and even organize the odd music festival, make new contacts & friends, travel, spend time with family, and play at the Winnipeg Convention Centre the past two Halloweens.

Having faced debt and death, and having laughed at both while never escaping the encroaching shadow of either, I find myself now not at a crossroads or an impass or even back at the beginning, but instead at a new beginning, one which cannot ignore, forget or forgive the past but must instead embrace it in order to move on and move ahead.

There's a quote that's appropriate here... people have asked what qualified or prepared me to be on-air talent at a radio station; besides doing similar 27 years ago on NACTV's audio broadcast, sitting in on the broadcasts of deejay friends at Brandon & Winnipeg stations ever since, and giving the occasional live promotional interview, there is the fact that I had memorized every televised episode of WKRP in Cincinatti, Rhythm & Blues and News Radio. Add to that an intimate knowledge of popular music of all genres gained from a lifetime of listening as a fan, a reluctant acceptance of having been routinely (and often by choice, nay, personal necessity) cast as the centre of attention as a writer and/or performer, and a comfortable familiarity with a microphone. But the night before I first took to the air for CJ Radio, I stayed up all night watching Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume, in which he said:

"SO BE IT."

From Neepawa To Gotham City

Every so often an opportunity comes along that can't be passed up, and sometimes if it's not there it has to be created. And still other times, it just magically appears.

So when I found myself performing on the Main Stage of the Winnipeg Convention Centre for the 2009 Central Canada Comic Con, with special guest TV's Adam West, I considered it appropriate for my band to begin the set with the theme song from Batman.

Playing Friday night in the midst of the first annual Miss C4 Contest, we were quickly joined on stage by 30 young and attractive costumed contestants, all dancing the Batusi.

Having promised to cover the event for The Neepawa Press meant getting to play both Peter Parker with my camera and Clark Kent with my pen, although while I have been bitten by spiders, none to my knowledge had been radioactive, and my parents tell me that I wasn't found in a rocket ship near the farm.

Saturday was Halloween, and I was shaking hands with the original Bruce Wayne himself, although West, at 81, is now as well-known as the Mayor of Quahog on the animated series "Family Guy". Explaining that I was there to get a photo for the Neepawa Press as he held a friend's childhood toy Batmobile, he said emphatically, "The Press. The Press. The Press is good. The Press is always good." And there, as if by grace of the comic book gods, was my quote.
I autographed a copy of my CD for him, explaining that I had to rush off to again play his theme song, to which he replied, "You go do what you've gotta do."

As I ran past the Batmobile through the throngs of other nerds and back to my guitar, imaginary cape flowing behind me, it was all I could do to not yell, "I love you, Batman."