Gotta love what you do

This was my Friday. This was my Saturday.

It was a long weekend of work. I did eight game stories on basketball and volleyball, trying to make each sound exciting and different then the rest although they all blurred together in my head.

In three of those, I had to provide commentary on the streaming webcast online. It was an on the spot offer: "I need you to commentate volleyball." It was a new challenge. I mean, I don't really know volleyball. But it was a fun, spontaneous experience.

Commentary, run down, get quotes, write story, send, run up, commentary, repeat.

At the end of each day, I felt exhausted. I also found out I love what I do.

Anytime I feel like complaining about working any of my numerous jobs over the past year, I stop myself and realize how dumb that would sound. I am being paid to write, watch, and talk about sports.

If you would have told me two years ago when I was spinning my wheels in university, trying to get somewhere I didn't know how to get to, that this is what I would be doing, I would not have believed you.

I am thankful for all the opportunities that have been given to me throughout my schooling and I look forward to many more.

Because I like what I do.

Which is good because this will again be my Friday and my Saturday once again in the not-so distant future.

Not Incognito

Surfing through the rounds of NFL pregame shows yesterday morning, I landed upon FOX where the station had landed an exclusive interview with suspended Miami Dolphins lineman Richie Incognito.

Incognito has been suspended by the team while the league investigates claims that he bullied fellow offensive lineman Jonathan Martin to the point where Martin snapped and left the team. Evidence of texts and voicemails from Incognito to Martin have surfaced and the ensuing news story has gotten plenty of hot takes (ugh) from the sports world.

Incognito had not spoken publicly on the events since his suspension. He sat down with Jay Glazer yesterday for an interview.

The heavily edited, six minute interview featured Glazer asking predictable questions for rehearsed answers from Incognito. Disclosed beforehand was Glazer's relationship with Incognito. It raises a few question. How am I as a viewer suppose to know that Glazer handed this interview objectively? Why is FOX OK with a reporter holding this kind of a relationship with someone he's reporting on?

Today, there has been backlash stemming from the interview. The Atlantic Wire says that though the network disclosed the relationship between the two "...that should not excuse the player or journalist. In a lot of newsrooms, Glazer would have been disqualified from ever speaking with Incognito on camera."

Meanwhile, Dave Zirin from The Nation took the interview behind the woodshed. In his column, Zirin called the interview "sports journalism at its worst" and a "big steaming pile of propaganda". I would encourage you to read Zirin's piece since it sums up my thoughts on this issue in a much more colorful and articulate manner.

Winnipeg's Great War

During World War I, 261 Fort Street was home to a major milestone for the city of Winnipeg.

It was home to a factory owned by John Hadden, who by receiving an order for 6,000 tunics and pants, was the first Winnipeg-based firm to win a war-time contract.

To the right is 261 Fort Street today. 

Not a trace of that history remains on that site to the eye.

Winnipeg's Great War: A City Comes to Age touches on many historical themes in the book. One that is weaved throughout is the evolution of Winnipeg through the war. The Winnipeg that existed before World War I was completely changed by the end of the conflict.

261 Fort Street is an example of how that change continues today.

The book, written and researched by Jim Blanchard, is packed full of interesting facts, details, and anecdotes about Winnipeg during the First World War. Blanchard said the book took him three years start to finish and it shows in the detailed text.

One of the strengths of this book was Blanchard's ability to recreate event as if he was a bystander. Whether it was a riot or the torture of conscientious objectors, Blanchard does an amazing job in taking accounts from a variety of sources and describing the events as if they were happening right in front of his face.

The amount of detail in every paragraph did make it a harder read at points, especially with chapters that reached at times 70 pages. With no natural breaks, the information bogged me down at times and I felt like I wasn't completely digesting the entire story at times due to the length. However, that would be my small criticism of this otherwise terrific book.

Having an opportunity to talk with Blanchard today was very insightful in seeing what methods he used to research and write this work. As someone who someday wishes to write a historically-based work, I enjoyed listening to him speak about how he went about finding and tackling the information he needed to write the book.

Evidence, Evidence, Evidence

Last week, I had the pleasure of listening to Trudy Lieberman speak about medical journalism during a presentation at Red River College that was put on by the Evidence Network.

 
She touched on many issues surrounding the coverage of ObamaCare, how to deal with PR people, and properly vetting “experts”. But everything she said followed the same message: the evidence doesn’t lie.

Lieberman, who works as a critic for the Columbia Journalism Review, used several real-life examples to illustrate her points. She also held an hour long Q&A session that was both interesting and informative. One of the greatest parts of the program I’m taking is the fact I get opportunities to not only listen to people like Lieberman but talk with them afterwards and ask questions. 

During the Q&A session, she said that anecdotes are a staple of reporting. And they shouldn’t. The problem with them is how do you know they are true? Is it based off experience, third-hand information, or a real life example? There is no way of truly knowing how factually correct they are.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity ran a segment on his show this month ripping ObamaCare using personal anecdotes. Salon ran a fact check on the stories told and at the very least, the segment is misleading. A paragraph in the story by Eric Stern speaks directly to what Lieberman talked to us about: 

“...will we truly have the same freedom to choose a physician that we have now? Will a surplus of insured patients require a scaling back (or “rationing,” as some call it) of provided healthcare services?  Will doctors be able to spend as much time with patients? These are all valid, unanswered questions. The problem is that people like Sean Hannity have decided to answer them now, without evidence. Or worse, with fake evidence."

Balance that with another story from Reuters about ObamaCare that uses evidence through out. By using facts that can be checked and confirmed by anyone, the story has to be given more validity over ones that don’t use evidence. 

You can agree, disagree, like, or dislike a story for a number of reasons. But by using evidence and the cold hard facts, there is one thing someone can’t call your story: untruthful.

The evidence is there.

It's been busy

Here I am, once again, trying to blog in early hours of Tuesday morning. The past week has been really busy for me both in school and with other jobs I have taken up during the school year. The one nice part of this program is when I do something, there is a product to show at the end. I thought I would use this post to highlight a few of the things I've been doing in the last week.

1) One of my favorite opportunities through school came up last year when I got an opportunity to work with the Manitoba Bisons sport teams. I was doing that again this weekend with a pair of game stories on women's soccer, which I know next to nothing about. However, their coach came up to me afterward the game on Saturday and said she really enjoyed my write-up, so I must have done something write.

2) Not that I didn't have before, but I do have a new respect for people who can do multi-hour talk shows. I host the Manitoba Sport Report for my IPP on Red River Radio and I find the preparation and actual show is fun and exhausting. I can't imagine doing it for a three hour show. Here's the website with archived episodes. Only the first one is up but there was a show last night which will be posted very soon.

3) Although this has caused some former hockey playing friends back in Brandon to disown me, I have started working as the media person for Winnipeg AAA Hockey. That requires finding time in my already hectic schedule to go to a game each week, write about, and take pictures. Here's my first one from last week on the homepage of the Winnipeg AAA site.

I also have many other cool projects on the go. Everything I'm doing causes me to be extremely busy but the experience all of the things above offer me is fantastic and I'm glad I'm doing them.

Things got real in Mount Kisco

Last week I posted about Target Practice, one of two documentaries shown last week at Cinematheque. The other, The Trib: Story of an Underdog Newspaper, was a great look at the newspaper business in Winnipeg in the 1970s. Among the stories told were ones about the rivalry between the Winnipeg Free Press and Winnipeg Tribune.

1970s Winnipeg has nothing on 2013 Mount Kisco, New York.

Mount Kisco is a town of over 10,000 located in southern New York. It was a village as of 1978 and is the home of two newspapers, the Hudson Valley Reporter and The Examiner.

The rivalry between the two has escalated to the point of an arrest.

The publisher of The Examiner suspected the Hudson Valley Reporter was removing their papers outside of a diner in Mount Kisco and replacing them with ones of their own. The Examiner went so far as to hiring a private investigator to look into the manner. It worked; they caught an employee of the Hudson Valley Reporter in the act.

Later, Michael Espinoza was arrested and charged with criminal tampering.

The whole story is here, is pretty funny, and shows you the lengths people will go to outsell a competitor.

What day was Target Practice?

On Thursday, our journalism class checked out a series of shorts at Cinematheque. We were most interested in a documentary directed by Paula Kelly called The Trib: Story of an Underdog Newspaper. It was paired with a dramatic piece by John Kozak called Target Practice, where one scene in particular caught my attention.

Without giving away spoilers, the scene has two people talking at the doorway with a baseball game playing in the background. Me being me, I immediately began paying attention to the game in the background. While dialogue made it hard to hear it in its entirety, I took away what I could and decided I would figure out the day of the events in the movie based on the game that was playing.

Here are the four key details:
- Mark Trumbo (Angels) was batting and had already struckout twice in the game
- Trumbo was batting against Phil Coke (either Tigers or Yankees)
- The score of the game was 1-1 at that point.
- The Angels scored a run on a sacrifice fly towards the end of the scene.

I started by going to Phil Coke's Baseball Reference page. Since I didn't know what team he played on but Trumbo's, I searched Coke's game-by-game results for games against the Angels since 2009 (when Trumbo broke into the league). I find out Coke didn't face Trumbo once in 2009, narrowing down his team to the Tigers since he was traded there before the 2010 season.

In 2010, Cokes faces the Angels three times, but not once was Trumbo in the lineup. On July 4, 2011, Trumbo and Coke finally face off when the Angels first baseman singles off the pitcher. However, this is not my game since the score was never 1-1 and Trumbo did not strike out in the game. Their next meeting is on July 28 but the details of that game does not match either.

The next matchup is July 30, 2011. Trumbo strikes out swinging in the top of the second and does so again to end the fourth (!). In the top of the sixth, with the score 1-1 (!!), Trumbo steps up for a third time, this time versus Phil Coke. He is walked and a few batters later, the Angels score on sacrifice fly (!!!).

This is the game.

Not another game matches the details provided in the movie and it also fits with other minor details said in the movie (Erick Aybar is playing was one).

I can say conclusively from my research that the events in the movie Target Practice take place on July 30, 2011.