The Baseball of Journalism

“There is quality in quantity.”

Branch Rickey said this when he created the minor league system for Major League Baseball in the early part of the 20th century.

Rickey would later go on to integrate baseball as the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1940s.

He invented the minor league system while he was working for the St. Louis Cardinals, who didn't have the money to compete with the New York Yankees when it came to signing players and finding new talent.

The solution was to sign many players for less money in the hopes that one or two just might turn out to be good.

I have the same approach to journalism when I’m out in the field. I try to get as many quotes from as many people as possible. Most of them don’t make it into the story. Having so many allows me to pick and choose, keeping only the best.

I had to try out this philosophy while I was in Korea shooting my documentary. I’ve learned that I have a really good eye for photography. What I need to work on are my technical skills, and how I am able to execute.

To compensate for this, whenever I was shooting an interview I would make sure to shoot from at least two different angles. The belief was that if the first one didn’t turn out then hopefully the second one would.

A person should never put all of their eggs in one basket, and by getting multiple shots or multiple quotes; the eggs are getting placed in different baskets so when one basket falls, not all of the footage goes down with it.

Ps. For fun, here’s a quote from the Simpsons to inspire: Apu, If It'll Make You Feel Any Better, I've Learned That Life Is One Crushing Defeat After Another Until You Just Wish Flanders Was Dead!

Thank you Doosan (but I still don't like you)

If it weren’t for the Doosan Bears I wouldn’t have been published in the Winnipeg Free Press last April, despite the fact that I hate the Doosan Bears. As a fan of the LG Twins I feel compelled to despise them with every part of my being.

(A little background information)

The Doosan Bears and the LG Twins are professional baseball teams in Korea. They both share the same home stadium in the Jamsil Sports’ Complex. (the same complex used to host the 1988 summer Olympics – the Olympic Stadium in the complex hosted the famous showdown between Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis, won by Johnson who was later disqualified when he tested positive for steroids.)

One of my favourite Korea stories took place at the baseball stadium in the complex. My parents were visiting and staying at my apartment. It was my place and my rules so my Dad was upset that he had to do my chores and wasn’t allowed to smoke.

We were at Burger King and my Dad had just finished so he went outside, as he often had to do, to go for a cigarette. As I talked to my Mom inside the restaurant in the baseball stadium, I saw my Dad turn and start to talk to a stranger, only to me it wasn’t a stranger, it was Norm Jensen, someone I had gone to University with (in the 90s), knew was in Korea but hadn’t seen yet.

During my first semester at Red River College I happened to spot someone in the Atrium wearing a Doosan Bears hat. Instantly I knew he was from Korea. I went up and introduced myself as a former English teacher who had lived for three years in his home country.

Back in April when news about Korea was in the papers and on the news casts everyday I pitched a story to the Projector. Because of my experience I knew there wasn’t very much to the stories and that nothing would happen (no war yet and as a further side note, this summer I conducted an interview with my friend Trevor who spent a week in North Korea in April)

Luckily I ran into Peter again in the Atrium. He wasn’t wearing his Doosan Bears' hat. I started up a conversation and he allowed me to interview him about the situation between North and South Korea.

He told me he was a captain in the Korean reserves and would have to go back to Korea if a war broke out. If he didn’t go back he could face jail time.

As a journalist this got me excited.

As a human being, I felt a little bit guilty.

Never Interview a Stranger

When I had to do my first street interview (or streeter) during first year journalism I was terrified. I felt like a young teenage boy nervously trying to ask the girl I had a crush on out. I was shaking, sweating, and questioning exactly what the heck I had gotten myself into.

I struggled mightily early on in my first year of journalism. I have nightmares and toss and turn in bed at the thought of my instructors having future students critiquing my early work, and tearing it to shreds.

For a while, I just wasn’t getting it.

Other times I felt dirty, like during a streeter, or the Bomber assignment when I felt like a telemarketer bothering people while they were on their free time.

I got some really good advice from my first semester instructor who told me to go out ‘with a purpose’. I guess I needed to go out knowing what kind of a story I was telling, why I was telling it, and whom I was telling it to.

The other piece of advice I got, from my other instructor, was that an interview wasn’t a normal conversation and that I shouldn’t confuse it with one.

I need to remember this because sometimes I get off topic when I need to keep my focus and stay on the subject at hand.

I need to forget this, when I am talking to the person I am interviewing so they will let their guard down, and tell me things even they don’t want me to know.

Over the course of the summer I interviewed about thirty people for my documentary about English teachers in Korea. A lot of these were long conversations where I just let the person go on. I was just interested to see which direction they would go.

Now when I have to ask for an interview it’s a lot easier. I don’t have to psyche myself up anymore before I make the ‘dreaded’ phone call.

For my radio assignment I got quotes from at least five different people and was still ready and willing to stay out and pursue more.

One of the things I liked about living in Korea was that a person was allowed to talk to strangers while there. Turns out it’s something I also like about journalism.

rymr

Life in the ‘big’ city

I’m not sure if it still says this but when you used to drive into town there was a sign that would say : Winnipeg, one great city. I always thought it should say : Winnipeg, we are SO a city.

Growing up in Westwood, I was often reminded of the unicity concept when I went to the local mall of the same name. (it’s no longer there)

It’s not so much one unit as it is a collection of smaller ones.

I never really noticed the difference until I moved to Korea and lived in the province that surrounds Seoul and is known as Gyeonggi-do.

Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty million people live in the Seoul metropolitan area. (roughly the population of Canada)

Seven million people use the subway system everyday.

After I got back from living there for a few years, things seemed a lot different. I certainly had a lot more personal space and everything seemed open and free.

The difference was really clear as I drove to the Paul McCartney concert this summer. The whole time I kept wondering what happened to all of the people and the buildings.

Where did they all go? Did they just disappear?

“You have to remind yourself that things here are just different, they are not wrong, it’s just different”. A friend of mine told this to me during an interview for my documentary about English teachers in Korea.

So often I would end these interviews by asking the person to offer any advice to any one back home who might want to go to Korea to be an English teacher but might be a little bit afraid.

Time after time people kept offering up the same advice. They would say that it was up to the person to make the best of it and that having an open mind really helped.

Sound advice. I need to follow it.

cheers,

rymr

ps: it is nice to see stars again. good to know they didn't go away.

The Future of Journalism

“There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won’t be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer.”

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=3

http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/petermansbridge/2013/05/the-future-of-journalism.html

I do not agree. I think journalism will always exist as a profession, and not merely as a hobby.

The quote is from “Free” by Chris Anderson and it appears in both of the links above. One of the topics of Anderson’s book is the way in which the business landscape is changing for journalism.

This change coincided with the online/digital revolution of the twenty-first century.  He mentions sites like YouTube that offer unlimited content for free.

Change has been felt in the newsrooms in Canada. Last year the Winnipeg Free Press had major lay-offs. The Globe and Mail recently offered its employees a buyout option.

Despite all of this, I still decided to become a journalism major. I spoke with a few former journalism majors over the summer as they had found careers teaching English in Korea. They were very pessimistic, but does all of this doom and gloom paint a full and complete picture?

One of the sentiments often uttered by both of my journalism instructors last year, was that “there was no such thing as a print journalist anymore”.

They didn’t mean that print journalism was dead but that the days of a person being a print journalist and only a print journalist were over. In this modern era, governed by free content and counted web hits, it is essential for the journalist to diversify their skills.

This factored into my decision to go to Korea over the summer, in order to make a documentary about English teachers. If I want to find a job in journalism I know I’m going to have to learn how to do more, including shooting and editing video in the field.

And jobs there are. A quick search found the following link where jobs for journalists could be found.

http://ca.indeed.com/Journalism-jobs

It’s far too early to draw any conclusions as to what the long-term effects will be from this changing face of journalism, but in the end I believe there will always be a place for the well skilled, professional journalist.