As the new staff writer at Coast Reporter, let me introduce myself. We journalists like to hope we're a mighty objective lot, but invariably we bring our own life experience to the table as we research and write stories. A journalism professor of mine once referred to journalistic objectivity as a necessary myth, but ultimately an unachievable goal.
I wish I could refute that, but aggravatingly, I think he had it about right. So, for the record and on the record, here's the lens through which I'm processing the Coast and its stories.
I grew up in Vancouver, took French Immersion at Kits high, and did my BA at the University of British Columbia where I double-majored in Chinese and creative writing. I travelled where I could, both during university and after graduating. I taught English in Taiwan, studied Mandarin in Beijing, backpacked through China and Southeast Asia and around the Mediterranean, then lived in a Parisian garret for a couple years with delusions of becoming A Writer.
When career angst finally hit, I came back to Canada and did a master's degree in journalism at Carleton in Ottawa. I graduated last spring, moved to Toronto, and reported for the National Post for the summer, mostly covering city news (read: crime). I stayed on in Toronto to freelance for the Financial Post Magazine and write a business blog for the Globe and Mail, before deciding that, with print journalism in its current death spiral, Toronto was hardly the land of opportunity.
That and I was seriously sick of eastern Canadian winters (a word to the wise: you know it's really cold when your snot freezes).
So I did what 28 year olds are increasingly liable to do in our current recession: I moved back in with my parents - who, as it happens, have retired to Roberts Creek. Initially, my plan was to regroup, then move back into Vancouver.
But this is a very winning little corner of the world.
And so as the summer passed and I've settled in (by which I mean my bear paranoia has dispelled somewhat, and I now feel quite blasé as I swipe my Experience Card over at Horseshoe Bay), I began to contemplate staying here more indefinitely.
And when Coast Reporter decided to chance it and hire me, fate offered me a way of doing that. So there you have it: my story, my lens.
I very much look forward to getting out into the community, meeting as many of you as possible and hearing your stories - which I pledge to write with as much of that mythical objectivity as I can achieve.
Judging from our lively letters pages, I have no doubt you'll all let me know - with many rhetorical flourishes - when you believe I've missed the mark. Please do. An engaged community is a strong one.
