How I learned to cover up my flaws as a journalist
You don’t need to be an expert in curling to write about curling. And I don’t think you need to be an expert in politics to write about politics. Or an expert on the economy to write about business.
You need basic facts, but if you remember to focus on the people, you will come out fine. It’s the people who make the story. Journalists, over time, come to discover this for themselves.
I think I showed examples of this in my previous post as I count down my top-40 stories on the way to retiring from a 35-year career at the Toronto Star.
I covered the Ontario women’s curling championship in Kingston in January of 2001 and the Brier in Ottawa in March of 2001. I had barely watched curling before, let alone attempt to cover this as an expert.
But I think I did okay by following that simple guideline: focus on the people.
I am including two examples of how this worked. One story ran March 6 and the other ran March 7, 2001.
Don’t get me wrong. I had done some important prep work.
Earlier in Kingston, I had sat down with two female skips, Anne Merklinger and Sherry Middaugh, and had them draw up curling strategies on a paper napkin so I could understand the basics.
Meanwhile, I kept reminding myself: Focus on the people.
In the next two stories, I think I showed how to overcome your weaknesses as a writer. I focused on the players and their backgrounds, while throwing in some description and colourful quotes.
As a result, I think these pieces stand up as interesting to read, even 15 years later.
They’re not perfect.
In the first story, I can’t remember Doug Harcourt and I should have included some details on his appearance so I could form a mental image. But otherwise, I think you get the sense of who he is from where he comes from: a grain and cattle farm in Saskatchewan.
I also knew enough about the background of Quill Lake to know that its most well-known residents were geese and NHL defenceman Lyle Odelein.
All the important scoring details are included too, but they are placed further down in the story so as not to load the top with play-by-play.
I am going to include a second story here on former skip Al Hackner and you can see here that I didn’t forget to include lots of personal description.
It ran a day earlier on March 6, 2001.
I am combining two stories into one here to serve as No. 30 on my list of my top-40 stories from a writing and editing career at the Star..
Skip puts Quill Lake on map
Curt Rush
OTTAWA — Grain and cattle farmer Doug Harcourt should be big news in Quill Lake today.
In the vast, wind-swept Saskatchewan farm country, where the cattle outnumber the people, there hasn’t been anything to brag about in men’s curling since Rick Folk won the Brier and the world championship in 1980.
Quill Lake, a town of 600 people plunked about two hours East of Saskatoon, gives top billing to homegrown NHL defenceman Lyle Odelein — and to geese. Quill Lake calls itself the “Goose Capital of the World.”
But it is Harcourt who has been flying here. The Saskatchewan skip is on a four-game winning streak, improving to 4–3 after slipping by British Columbia 5–4 yesterday afternoon. However, it was in the morning when he created the biggest buzz.
That’s when the 39-year-old skip and his teammates took Ontario’s Wayne Middaugh to the woodshed for an old-fashioned 9–5 beating. “It proved he’s human, “ said Harcourt, deflecting praise.
It was a stunning turn of events because Middaugh, the heavy favourite to win the Nokia Brier on Sunday afternoon, was sent crashing to his second consecutive defeat after four successive wins to start the 11-game round-robin.
Middaugh recovered his form in the late draw by downing Peter MacDonald of Prince Edward Island 8–4 to create a three-way tie for second place with Guy Hemmings of Quebec and Kerry Burtnyk of Manitoba at 5–2.
Alberta’s Randy Ferbey is alone in top spot at 6–1.
Five rinks are bunched at 4–3, British Columbia’s Dean Joanisse is at 1–6 and Newfoundland and the Yukon/Northwest Territories are 0–6.
Even after his victory last night, Middaugh still had a bad taste in his mouth over the loss to Saskatchewan. During that defeat, he slammed his broom after missing a draw in the seventh end, allowing Harcourt to steal two for a 7–3 lead. A fan at the Civic Centre shouted something and Middaugh responded with a rude gesture.
Middaugh refused to specify what the fan yelled out, but when asked to describe the gesture, the 33-year-old resident of Victoria Harbour said with a laugh: “I think I was telling him that we were No. 1.”
Middaugh, a two-time world champion who admits he is an intense curler, said that “99.9 per cent of the fans in the building are phenomenal and just because 1 per cent of them belong at an XFL game, it’s too bad that people like that show up. It’s just too bad you’ve got hecklers. You miss a bad shot and I’m probably the wrong person to heckle.”
He said the fan should have been ejected.
“If it was Tiger Woods, the fan would have been ejected by his ears and would never be allowed on that golf course again. He was heckling me to the point where I missed a shot. The timing was very poor.”
Prompted further to explain his reaction, he said: “If Tiger had just three-putted and then somebody went over to Tiger and said, ‘You’re a bum, you can’t make a putt, ‘ how do you think Tiger’s going to react? He’s not going to react very well. I’m not saying I’m Tiger Woods but that’s how sports works.”
The Canadian Curling Association, which operates the tournament, didn’t take any disciplinary action against Middaugh, who gave away an autographed broom to a fan following the morning loss.
BURTNYK TICKED: Two-time Brier champion Kerry Burtnyk was miffed yesterday when his third Jeff Ryan had a stone pulled for a hog-line violation. “The benefit of the doubt should go to the curler, “ Burtnyk said. “When you look at the replay it wasn’t even close. It’s not a matter of blaming anybody. What I’m disappointed about is that if you’re going to make an error, you should err in favour of the curler because it’s not going to affect the outcome of the game as much as it does when you take a rock off. And especially one like that where we moved about six rocks. Putting them back was a nightmare.”
Creaky Hackner holds his own with ‘kids’
Curt Rush
OTTAWA — Al Hackner’s hair is now flecked with grey, his back aches and his hip creaks.
No one has to tell the Thunder Bay veteran he’s the oldest skip in the Brier at 46. Just looking at his teammates reminds him of the passage of time.
His 23-year-old lead, Mike Assad, wears an eyebrow ring. Second Joe Scharf, 21, has a couple of earrings. And third Bryan Burgess, 24, had the Nokia Brier logo tattooed on his left shoulder before he arrived. Their musical tastes run from rap to hard rock.
“Al’s more into mellow stuff, “ says Burgess, who decided on the adornment after making a promise to his fiancee, who wears a tattoo of a rose on her ankle. “I told her if I get to the Brier, I would get one too.”
Call it the Generation Gap.
But Hackner, a two-time champion who appeared in his first Brier 21 years ago, has learned to accept change. Despite constant turnover (it’s his fourth straight national championship with completely different teammates), this is his ninth Brier.
That kind of resilience helped pluck the team from the brink of desperation following an 0–2 start this week.
