Thursdays are tough these days, but not in a bad way. It’s not like I’m a politician or own property in Florida.
Mayor Peter Chirico, however, can see me eating a little crow on the Echo Essentials Podcast with co-host Scott Clark. It comes out later today at 2 p.m. (updated with the link) It has to do with a previous podcast where I was wrong on the pretext of a point, and my co-host (and employer) took me to task for the gaffe. Fair enough, it comes with the territory in my business. It did give me an opportunity to expand on and better define my contention. It has to do with a rubber procedural bylaw that gets suspended or upheld, depending on who benefits.
Better yet, wait until next week’s podcast, we’re talking about the faux Town Hall held recently and I wonder what the mayor will think about it that one – not that we’re in communication. Scott and I don’t agree on how council approaches things and you can feel the real tension in our exchange. That’s what makes us tick as co-hosts, being different and having a variety of viewpoints is the magic sauce of podcasting.
As for my faux pas, I think Scott wanted an apology as well for “leading him on” with my inaccurate take on the issue. Sorry, sometimes I get things wrong. Fortunately, I didn’t make a great big deal about it. There was no mention in the Essentials Newsletter and I didn’t blow it up into the top podcast element or mention it in the headline (the worst scenario), it was buried into the sixth minute and only given cursory attention. The mea culpa is equal to the extent of the transgression.
Speaking of fact checking, Peter said all the mayors get to make the selection for Ontario Senior of the Year and I’m not sure about that. At least one municipality not far from here takes public nominations and council chooses their nominee. The form merely says it must be the “municipality” nominee.
Scott said, to his recollection, no nominees were selected by either the mayors or councils in the past. Hmm. I’m making some calls for confirmation.
And let’s be clear, I think Harriet Madigan was an excellent choice, whether it was by a “committee of one” or not.
Anyway, you can judge that one for yourself. I’m now looking forward to our upcoming podcast about whether “code of conduct” investigations are a net positive, with FONOM advocating for changes to the and municipal leaders crying foul over costs.
And I like this week’s podcast discussion over municipal minutes being next to useless compared to decades prior, with columnist Phil Koning doing the homework for his latest Small Town Times piece. We also had a chance to chat about it in this podcast posted Monday.
A pattern is emerging with each week similar and it is a wild ride. There’s a perfect storm of intersecting duties on Thursday that remind me of my newswire editor role (rotating with another colleague and sometimes one night a week) at The Nugget back in the day. Sometimes there’d be double digits of pages to fill with local, provincial, national and world news and photos. And don’t forget the classified spill into the last section, they’ll let you know later how big a hole to fill. This was back when the millennium turned, a little before people started complaining about how thin the sections became.
Technology-wise, today, it’s actually similar to what I experienced 24 years ago. We were using digital programs for laying out pages with internet-fed local and wire service copy, photos and graphics just like today’s top sources, it was just a lot more clunky back then. You’d strap yourself into a chair for a full shift of keyboarding and mouse play, with a couple breaks for coffee runs. Same today.
It was before “smart phones” though and I’m so glad I can tell the difference.
To be honest, my favourite time was when we used blades and deft fingers with wax under our nails to cut in headlines and columns of text. I also liked the darkroom work, but that was much earlier. Before the blindness and headaches from too much screen time. You had to think back then, not so much now.
Flash forward to my Thursdays in the here and now. I’ll be doing much the same as decades ago while producing a digital newsletter for a hard 4:30 p.m. deadline. I’ll scour the local social media pages and websites looking for relevant and connected news items and events. The most recent podcasts will be featured, a decent photo goes in the spotlight space, a Zen Suggestion gets dreamed up and the last newsletter’s promotions get relegated to lower prominence.
Part and parcel to the newsletter, I’ll be keeping an eye of the posting of the 2 p.m. podcast (we interviewed new Battalion president Adam Dennis, and that follows the gaffe discussion) so the right website links are highlighted and social media posts get shared. There’s also some work on the descriptions of the past Echo podcasts, such as To North Bay With Love and Backroads Bill, along with the newer offerings by network members such as Cheap Seats, Frontline and Richard Fortin Presents, for example. It’s part of the process and checking details burns brain cells at a high rate, to be honest.
I’ve produced about 120 newsletters in a row since Echo launched last September, beginning with three a week for the first four months.
Also on Thursdays, since Sept. 19, the first draft of the “Echo Sportscast” show needs to be reviewed. The recording was done the day before and the producer makes the edits while adding artwork, video clips and name plates. It’s due to post first thing Friday morning so it’s an afternoon deadline as well.
This initiative, with four shows under our belt so far, has me back out at the gyms, fields and arenas again. Just like old times. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit surreal to be capturing key moments of sports competitions on video and interviewing players and coaches. It’s people to people stuff and I need more of that, not less.
I’m one of the co-hosts for both these shows, so there’s a little more headwork involved on Thursdays, compared to Tuesday’s newsletter deadline. Wednesday, meanwhile, has turned out to be a killer, also not in a bad way. We record the Essentials show at 12 noon, usually, and the Sportscast is in the studio at 2 p.m. or earlier. My head spins on hump day, believe you me.
When I started at The Nugget, news and wire editors would work side by side on the night shift, first up was “marking up” local copy, getting or doing rewrite and proofing again. We’d scour the various wire services for the best and most important journalism of the day, sometimes just to fill a hole but mostly to make it an interesting read. It was bearable because it required teamwork, even when the colleague wasn’t your favourite.
Here’s the podcast on the North Bay Echo YouTube channel:
Writer, photographer and proud father. My mom's family is from the Soo with its Algoma Highlands, dad hailed from Cobden in the Ottawa Valley and I spent my teen years in Capreol. Summers were at the beach on the Vermillion River and winters at 'The Rink.' Born in East York but Toronto never was my thing. Ever since a kid looking out the window on long trips, I imagined living on the highway in a little house with a big yard and trees growing all around me.
