Working Two Days
One thing you quickly realize when you’re only working two days a week as a journalist: it’s hard to work on long term projects.
My last two weeks have been good examples of that. After going to a Montreal Impact practice with Simon Cremer, during which I had a chance to be part of a media scrum with Impact players Patrice Bernier and Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Piatti and coach Mauro Biello, I started research for an article about NHL playoffs scenarios.
What we wanted to prove was that some teams that finished higher in the standings would have a harder path to the Stanley Cup playoffs than others. It would be a timely piece because the Canadiens were facing the Senators on Saturday and Sunday. The teams were a point apart in the standings and were ranked 1st and 2nd in the Atlantic Division.
I worked hard to find interesting arguments on Thursday during the afternoon after I came back from the Impact practice. Jacques-Alexis asked me to look if similar stories had been published. There was one by La Presse’s Marc-Antoine Grondin that was in the paper’s morning edition (in the following days much more would be published in different publications).
One of my goals during the internship was to take matters in my own hand and trust my instincts. I compared my research to Grondin’s content to exploit the areas La Presse’s writer didn’t consider.
The next day, I wrote my article. A 900-word article on playoffs. It was not published, but I was still proud of the accomplishment. Journalism is all about timeliness and your article just as good as the latest that was published.
Radio-Canada sports is very different from the other sports publications in Quebec, like RDS and TVA sports. Radio-Canada is a national news outlet that will present Canadian athletes, their stories, their accomplishments.
Why does this matter to the article I wrote? Editors don’t prioritize articles about hockey here. Meanwhile, La Presse has three writers on the Canadiens beat.
As I was explaining, working on projects and having two days is hard. On Wednesday March 22, the Canadian government released its budget for 2017. Sports publications, other than Radio-Canada sports, did not write much about the funding allocated to sports.
One of the overlooked aspects was the investment into First Nations sports. More than $18 million had been invested with very few specifics on how the money would be used. The government wrote in its budget that the money would help grow “First Nations leadership” (skills?).
The paragraph about the investment seemed very political and did not present a plan on how the millions of dollars would be used.
Luckily, the French branch of CBC Indigenous, Espaces Autochtones — a team of three journalists — are right next to us, in the old Radio-Canada International offices. I spoke to one of the journalists’ whose partner, Lachlan Madill, is the host of Urban Nations on MaTV.
I worked with her and Madill to see who I should contact for my story. I did a lot of research throughout the day, but didn’t manage to get comments from the Finance Canada or Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.
I did get an answer by email from Finance Canada the following Canada, which was followed by a second email 5 minutes later saying “we don’t have any comments.” I felt like I was on to something, so I wish I could have continued to work on it with the help of the editors at the office.
I was still proud to have done some of that work.
