MAJ Archives

A journalist's profile, stories and career in the field of journalism. Know a journalist who should be profiled here? Send an e-mail to Janet E. Bardon.

June 15, 2001
Stephanie Whittaker
Freelancer
Pointe Claire, Quebec
swhit@dsuper.net

My career in journalism is the result of serendipity. As a senior in high school, I intended to study nursing but that idea was scotched by a college admissions officer who pointed out that I was missing two key matriculations. What a lucky break. Although I had always demonstrated a strong writing ability, I know now that I was singularly unsuited to a career in nursing.

I studied English at McGill University in Montreal and took as many electives in political science, history, sociology and French that I could squeeze into my schedule. It was a well-rounded liberal arts education. I also worked on the McGill Daily, which was a hotbed of Marxism in those days, and was a member of the McGill Debating Union team.

By age 19 and with parental guidance, I had decided that I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I graduated with a B.A. in 1975 and did what all well-educated young adults with no practical skills do. I worked as a desk clerk in a hotel. By day, I used the job to perfect my oral French; by night, I took journalism courses in the continuing education department at Concordia University.

My first newspaper job was at a suburban weekly in the West Island of Montreal at $135 a week. There was also a $20-a-month car allowance. I look fondly back on that time as one in which I learned a lot, albeit in an impoverished state. I recommend weekly newspaper work to any aspiring journalist who has difficulty getting into larger media. It's an excellent training ground, almost as good as a journalism degree. The trick is not to stay at a weekly for too long. I've met plenty of people who take jobs at weeklies and never leave, thus resigning themselves to a poorly paid career.

By late 1978, I saw an opportunity and seized it. The Gazette, Montreal's English morning newspaper, was in expansionist mode while its competitor, the Montreal Star, was shut down during a strike. I took my portfolio to The Gazette one afternoon and waited a couple of hours until the city editor, who had recently joined the paper from the Toronto Star, returned from lunch. He was a grizzled, Lou Grant lookalike who told me he was just getting oriented and wouldn't offer me a job right then... So I phoned him at the same time every Friday afternoon to ask him if he'd given any thought to hiring me and after about three weeks of these reminders, he called me in for another interview and hired me.

For several months, I covered the suburban beat. Six months later, the city editor, one of the best mentors I've ever had, told me the paper wanted to create its first action-line column and he'd like me to set it up. At the age of 25, I had a staff of five researchers and was writing a daily column that resolved consumer complaints. I was miserable. Having little interest in consumer issues, I was desperate to return to real journalism. A hefty pay cut later, I returned to general-assignment reporting. The daily cut-and-thrust of covering news and feature stories suited me and I carried on in this vein until I was asked to open a suburban bureau in my old stomping grounds, the West Island of Montreal.

In 1983, The Gazette launched a zoned weekly section that covered the West Island and I was named bureau chief. I was given six reporters and a photographer and each week, would assign stories and photos, cover events and write a weekly column. I loved the work, enjoyed the comradeship of my colleagues (many of whom have moved on to interesting journalistic jobs across the country) and contrary to how many journalists feel about being in bureaus, which can feel like outposts of the empire, I was blissfully happy.

In 1988, I was asked to return to The Gazette's main newsroom as the newspaper's second ombudsman (and, I'm proud to say, Canada's first female news ombudsman). I did the job for a year and left when I deemed that my 2-year-old son needed me at home more than I needed to be at work. I have never regretted the decision to put motherhood before my career. I had a daughter the following year and spent several years raising my children.

Enter serendipity again. I casually began writing freelance stories for my former employer. There was no master plan. I just churned them out when I could. In 1996, an editor at The Gazette asked me if I'd write two weekly features - one on Careers, the other on Real Estate - for the Saturday paper. I continue to do this. My freelance career has grown tremendously in the past five years, thanks to my membership in the Periodical Writers Association of Canada, a professional association of freelance writers, which has proved to be the best annual investment of $230 that any writer could make. With guidance from my PWAC colleagues, whom I count as my current mentors, I have penetrated the Canadian magazine market. In the past year, I have written for such diverse publications as the National Post, Canadian Living, Via, Canadian Gardening, Flare, Today's Grandparent and Revue Commerce. I also write regularly for Marketing magazine.

Like other freelancers, I enjoy the flexibility of being self-employed and have been able to get my income close to what it would be (after taxes) if I were working at a full-time newspaper job. Because one of the areas I write about is careers and workplace issues, I am acutely aware that many people choose careers for which they are unsuited or just unhappy in. This awareness has sharpened my appreciation of what I do.

I believe that the qualities and traits one needs to be a good journalist include an insatiable curiosity, a love of people (I thoroughly enjoy the interviewing process) and an ability to listen, intuit, synthesize large swaths of information and convey the words of others in an honest and representative way.

I've been asked by Media Link to address the highlights of my career and I can't really identify any. Not because there haven't been any, but because I've covered thousands of stories and met tens of thousands of people through my work. But I can talk about why this work brings me joy and satisfaction. As someone who churns out an average of three stories a week, most of them service features, I receive a tremendous amount of feedback from people who say my work has helped them in some way. I have written many stories that have galvanized individuals into changing their lives for the better. One man told me that after reading a story I had written about how managers can identify and manage adult workers with attention deficit disorder, he realized that he was one of those workers, albeit undiagnosed, and sought help.

This kind of feedback answers a spiritual hunger I have by reminding me repeatedly of why I'm here and what I can do to serve others. I get satisfaction from knowing that my words have the power to change things.

I am also grateful that I made a few key mistakes early in my career that helped me learn. My first memorable one happened shortly after I had joined The Gazette. I was assigned a news story about a teenager who had been critically injured playing hockey. After interviewing his teachers and friends and being turned away by his brother at their house, I went with a photographer to the hospital where the boy lay comatose, his spine broken. The photog and I had to sneak into the hospital through the laundry room because we'd been blocked by a security guard and after a long search, we found the boy's room. His dad was sitting vigil in a chair in the corridor, slumped forward, his head in his hands. When we saw the man, the photographer and I decided not to intrude on his grief and left without ever speaking to him. My city editor (the Lou Grant look-alike) told me I should have done the interview with the father and that he may very well have wanted to talk at that moment. He was right. A few days later, the family was addressing the media about why there had been no oxygen cannisters in the arena, where the boy had been injured. The teen subsequently died and there was widespread belief that he probably would have lived if he had received immediate oxygen. The consequence was that city arenas were henceforth equipped with oxygen for such emergencies. I no longer fear asking tough questions in difficult situations.

My advice to anyone considering a career in journalism is to remain wide-eyed and awe-struck by the world and to resist that slide into cynicism. As I've suggested, the qualities that serve journalists best are the desire to learn things and share information with others and to be dogged about tracking down that information.

What challenges do journalists face now? The concentration of media ownership means that some stories that should be told are never published because too much power resides with too few owners. There is also a logistical challenge of getting readers' attention. At a time when everyone is pressed for time, fewer people read newspapers and the ones they do read are increasingly dishing up soft stories, even on their front pages.

Despite that, I believe that for those of us who love gathering information and crafting it into compelling stories, this is the best career in the world. I can't imagine making my living any other way.