Blog ended.. obviously

Hi there,

The blogging obviously came to an end when I made it on with the Corp.

If you’re looking for One Fine Edit, the editing company, please go to www.onefineedit.com

Thanks for visiting!

Moved!

So after moving to Toronto to freelance and fill in at CBC radio for the summer, I ended up getting a job with CBC radio in Edmonton until September.  And that means I’ve moved back to Alberta.  It’s pretty exciting. I just finished the drive from Ontario last night.

PS. If you liked the shopdropping doc, check out the comments in the previous post, where Vanda left links to some sites where you can see pictures of the shopdroppers in action.

Shopdropping

Here’s the full version of the documentary I did on Shopdropping. I recorded it in Montreal and Toronto.

The introduction: An art movement that started in New York four years ago has just made its way into Canada.  And you don’t need to go to a gallery to see it…

Shopdropping Doc

New show

The new episode of the Speak Easy is up on Rabble.ca. I produced this one. It’s about fixers, people who come up with solutions to all kinds of problems.

It’s hosted by Anna AbouZeid and Kim Fisher.

Happy day

The first episode I worked on for the Speak Easy is up on the Rabble Podcast Network. It’s all about free art. This is the episode that the shopdropping story I posted earlier came from.

In the show, we have a mini panel interview with two musicians from Shotgun Rules, a local indie band, about the pressure to give away music for free. Then we have a beautiful doc about an upcoming art show in a not-for-profit gallery in Toronto. Third is shopdropping, and we close with a story about what it’s like to busk and be a balloon artist.

Shopdropping interview

This is from The Speak Easy. It’s an interview with Ryan Watkins-Hughes, the creator of an art movement known as “shopdropping.” Yeah, I know, you probably don’t know what that is. It’s all explained in the story…

I hosted this episode of the show with Anna AbouZeid. Kim Fisher produced the show for us.

Shopdropping on the Speak Easy

Online journalism… transgendered athletes

Another one of my projects just appeared online, finally. It’s a series of stories about the issues that come up when sports organizations try to set up eligibility guidelines for transgendered people who want to compete. The project was timely because Kristen Worley, a track cyclist from Toronto, was in the middle of training to qualify to become the first openly-transitioned athlete at the Olympics.

The project is a collaboration between me and three others in my journalism program. We completed it after spending about three months doing interviews and research in the fall.

Several of the people in the stories had never been interviewed about this topic before. Dr. Myron Genel, for example, was one of the signatories on the Stockholm Consensus, which the IOC adopted a few years back to help determine whether a transgendered person could compete in the Olympics. He’s never really been quoted in other news stories about why the rules for the Olympics are the way they are.

The project is called Transgendered Athletes: Investigating who gets to play in Canadian and Olympic sport.

First radio documentary

I made my first radio documentary for a class this fall, and then I ended up selling it to the CBC through Syndication. So if you’re from Thunder Bay, Whitehorse, Yellowknife or Regina, you may have already heard it.

My favourite part of the whole thing is the natural sound in the background. It’s not the type of thing you normally get to hear on our national broadcaster…

It’s pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a little intro: A little-known drug is tripping its way into some Canadian lives. And as reporter Mackenzie Grisdale found out, you can buy it practically anywhere.

Salvia Documentary for CBC

Show on Rabble

The first episode of The Speak Easy, the show my class is putting together, is now up on Rabble. I wasn’t part of this episode (but I picked the opening music!). I’ll let you know when the ones I helped produce do show up online. I’m really excited about the episode I’m just finishing up this week, but that one won’t be online for five weeks (we’re just releasing one show a week to… build tension I guess).

Anyway, check out the inaugural episode. It’s the first in the list. The shows below it are from last year’s class.

Setting up

I’m just setting up the site, and trying to decide how much extra space to buy so I can start uploading some mp3s of my stuff. Meanwhile here’s a bit of who I am…

I’m just about to graduate from my MA program in journalism. I’m specializing in radio. Earlier this year I did an internship at CBC radio’s As it Happens. It was a dream come true.

Now, I’m going to be freelancing some radio docs and such as I get myself organized for the real world.

I look to As it Happens and This American Life when I figure out the kinds of stories I want to do and the way I want to do them, but I’m figuring out my own style, too.

Another show I’m working on right now is called the Speak Easy. It airs on CHRW 94.9 from the University of Western Ontario every second Wednesday at six o’clock. Soon, it might also be on the Rabble podcast network (links to come when it’s up!).