Over the Hills- A Story about Newspapers
- Lynda
- Jul 28
- 4 min read
by Paul Strickland
About the Story Thing (2025) - 05
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"About the Story Things" is a thematic series of articles, sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces will appear every other Monday Jun 2 through to the end of 2025. Query us about contributing at https://facebook.com/relskim or Lisa.RealitySkimming@proton.me
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Late one Friday afternoon Bob sat with colleagues from the Orion Telegraph in a booth at the Roundhouse Pub. The paper had just come off the presses, the early copies had been checked for any glaring errors, and now everyone was relaxing a mug or three. They talked about interesting interviews during the week or the challenges of new computers and layout software. At times Friday evening gatherings like this one would see the pub take on the dimensions of an unofficial press club. Reporters from the Etzikom TV station and CBC reporters who did the morning radio show from Manyberries would attend and talk shop with the print journalists, editors and composing room people.
Bob was perhaps sensitive, as supervisors and critics among his friends would sometimes say, but over the next few weeks he perceived that the atmosphere at the paper and at these gatherings was getting to be a little less comfortable. At work, fewer calls came to the phone at his desk. Then one Friday night in October during the usual get-together in the pub, Nora, the girlfriend of the managing editor Clay Itrey, sat next to Bob and asked him, "You have academic degrees - including a master's, I think. Why don't you go back into education?"
Bob explained to Nora, as he did to other people who asked him this question, that the job market for teaching positions in the humanities in community colleges had been flooded since the mid-1970s. Community colleges either weren't hiring or, at best, they would hire a person to teach one or two courses per term on a contract basis. This would typically be about $2,000 per course so that, if in luck, one might be hired to teach two courses per semester - four courses per year - for a maximum of $8,000 per academic year, not enough to live on. Pakowki Lake College hadn't hired someone to teach fulltime in English or history since 1979, Bob noted. To teach in university one almost always needed a PhD, and to teach English or history in a high school one needed specifically a bachelor of education degree, at the very least, and more often a masters of education degree. Yet sometimes a school or district would give the job of teaching history to the coach to take on as a sideline, just as principals and district administrators did with Latin courses in the early sixties when they wanted to discourage students from enrolling in them. In any case, a career in journalism is a good alternative because some scholars consider newspapers to be the first draft of history, he told Nora. But like so many other people who asked Bob this question or questions like it, she didn't seem to be listening carefully.
After Bob left, Clay told Nora, "He's getting old and stale. We'll have to find ways to motivate employees like him who are over forty or make some tough management decisions."
Bob went on a two-week holiday in mid-November. When he came back, Josie, a colleague at the paper, picked him up at Etzikom International Airport. He'd brought back a carton of cigarettes from the States for her. "Did you hear what happened?" she asked him. "They fired Phil Mazzini."
The letter of dismissal referred to many perceived shortcomings in Phil's performance, Bob learned. One was that he was "a whiner". However, not long ago Phil had written an investigative story on illegal logging at the boundaries of Aspen Hills Provincial Park, and it turned out that a former MLA and a friend of senior management had been involved. Phil landed on his feet, though. He got a job in public relations in the provincial forests ministry.
In early April of the following year, Bob got up at 4:00 am one Saturday morning in order to join Badlands Naturalists from Palliser Springs on a trip to an isolated semi-desert spot near Manyberries to observe the mating rituals of some members of the quickly dwindling regional population of sage grouse. The best time for this was just before dawn. A reporter from the Etzikom TV station made some noise with his equipment, and the president of Badlands Naturalists was annoyed, but fortunately the birds were not frightened into hiding. The Orion Telegraph photographer took some good shots for the article Bob planned to write.
Bob was called into the managing editor's office when he went into the Telegraph's office the following Monday morning, and the publisher, Joe McTavish, was also there. "What did we tell you?" Clay said. "No more than twenty minutes spent each day on each event you cover, and no more than ten inches per story. All your stories are too long.
Anyway, we're abolishing your environmental beat, and we suggest you turn in your resignation."
Afterwards the good residents of the County of Thirty mile said Bob was lazy and didn't really want to work. Bob went into hiding in the Aspen Hills for several weeks, practicing his meagre survivalist skills.
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In his 28 years as a full-time journalist and 6.5 years as a freelance journalist, Paul has worked for newspapers in Nevada, Medicine Hat and Prince George. Besides being an investigative reporter, he is a poet, a short story writer and an essayist. He has recently contributed to UNBC's Over the Edge, to CNC’s The Confluence and occasionally to the Prince George Astronomical Society's Pegasus newsletter. Paul also wrote a bi-weekly column for the P G Free Press and continues to freelance for electronic sites such as chickenbustales.com and www.dooneyscafe.com He presently resides in Prince George and haunts all the literary scenes that appear in town.
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