Yesterday, The Vancouver Sun‘s Vaughn PalmerreportedEnbridge Inc. was among the business interests at a $3,500 per table fundraiser for the New Democratic Party of British Columbia.
The company attended that event despite the BC NDP’s opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Project.
But this isn’t the first time the controversial pipeline company has rubbed shoulders with opposition politicians.
Back in 2010, when Carole James was still the BC NDP’s leader, I reported Enbridge representative were at a similar $250 per ticket fundraiser for the party.
According to Elections British Columbia, that fundraiser netted the BC NDP $75,959.20, with Enbridge subsidiary Northern Gateway Pipelines LP listed as having donated $750 to the party in the same year.
Then, in 2011, Enbridge made another contribution to the BC NDP’s war chest. But the amount was significantly higher: $3,000.
So here’s the question from my side of the Rocky Mountains.
In the past, Enbridge’s donations have been a source of controversy within the BC NDP.
Does that hand wringing continue or are the party’s MLAs just counting the days until the next election, after which they’ll almost inevitably form government?
Teaching tip for journalism instructors: Record a walk-through of newsworthy location (such as city hall, a trade show, a transit station, etc.) and then ask students to brainstorm story-generating questions based on that footage.
As a journalism professor, I often advise students who are new to beat reporting that they can find lots of story ideas by just observing where their beat takes place – whether it’s city hall, a police station or the theatre.
In providing this advice, I’m sure I’m not alone, having received the same tip myself when I was a journalism student at Carleton University.
But I recently found what I think is a useful tool to demonstrate the value of that tip from inside the four walls of a classroom.
The creation of that tool began by recording a walk-through of one of the brand-new rapid transit stations in Calgary’s northeast, which is home to some of the city’s less well-off neighbourhoods.
That station had been criticized on the letters-to-the-editor page of the Calgary Herald because, according to reader Atul Jain, it “lacks adequate roof cover, has no wind-breaks, no bus shelters, [and] not enough benches” – among other issues.
So I asked my students to watch the first two minutes of the recording and see how many critical questions they could come up with about that station – questions that could lead to potential story ideas.
That meant they didn’t actually get to see the inside of the station. Instead, all they got to see was the neighbourhood around it, as well as its parking lot.
Nevertheless, the results exceeded my expectations. Here’s a smattering of some of the questions my students came up with:
How do residents feel about having a station so close to their houses?
Will the station impact property values?
Why is the station’s park and ride lot so full given that the footage was taken on a Sunday morning?
Is the lot too small for the station?
Why aren’t the parking stalls electrified for commuters who have to leave their vehicles there all-day during the winter?
Why are there warnings about owners leaving their vehicles in the lot at their own risk?
How much security is there at Calgary Transit’s park and ride lots?
What is the rate of vandalism and theft at park and ride lots?
How does the station compare to others being built in wealthier neighbourhoods?
I think this served as a powerful example about the role questioning plays in coming up with original story ideas, as well as how those ideas can be found just by walking around a rapid transit station – or any other location their beat is taking place.
And it all happened over the course of 20 minutes in a university computer lab.
Earlier, I mentioned there isn’t necessarily a problem with the process by which journalists can arrive at original story ideas, contrary to what media ethicist Kelly McBride appears to believe.
There just needs to be more engagement with that process – a version of which has been been successfully used for centuries by at least one other profession.
As the Vancouver, British Columbia-based blog The Gazetteer has rightly observed, scientists employ a similar method to arrive at original research.
But, while there is an expectation among scientists that this method will be adhered to, there isn’t a similar requirement in my own profession – although, perhaps, there should be.
Journalism is “facing an originality failure,” according to media ethicist Kelly McBride. But I believe she may have misdiagnosed the cause of this potentially fatal disease.
In a recent commentary for The Globe and Mail – which has been under fire since one of its marquee columnists was accused of plagiarism - Ms. McBride stated that originality failure “results from many pressures.”
Among them: “the overwhelming volume of writing incessantly pushed out into the digital space, the pressure on writers to feed a content beast that’s never satiated, [and] the diminishing economic forces that support professional writing.”
But she also seemed to blame the “research patterns” of “modern journalists,” who start their thinking with Google searches rather than spending time outside the office at “the bar, the barbershop, the local college, [and] the courtroom.”
As a result, according to Ms. McBride, today’s reporters “must see always what others have written.”
But this explanation for why there isn’t more originality in journalism doesn’t seem to account for the process by which reporters actually formulate new ideas.
In my experience, that process begins when a journalist asks a critical question about the subject of their reporting – whether it’s something they’ve heard in the courtroom or found through a Google search.
The journalist then tests their hypothetical answer to that question via interviews and research. If that answer is correct – and sometimes even when if it isn’t – an original story is born.
As such, the failure to produce these stories represents a failure to engage in that process.
After all, critical questions can be asked regardless of whether a reporter is pounding the pavement or pouring over Internet news feeds at their desk.
But until more of those questions start being asked, it won’t matter whether reporters get out of the office and into the barbershop.
