February 9, 2000
My week at The Georgia Straight - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER - My week at the Georgia Straight for work experience was an invaluable experience, for me. I got to see first hand the amount of work it takes to get an issue out for the public. It’s a time consuming process that relies on good management skills, good people skills and good team work skills. I was a little worried wondering what would happen when I got there. Would it be the den for extreme left-wing thinkers and hippies? A travel back to the time when drugs flowed like tap water and love, ever-so free?
On Monday, after the tour of the building (It’s actually the second floor of an office building on Burrard, that has a Lexus dealership on the main floor and, of all people, the Fraser Institute right above it.) and the introductions to the staff, I spent about an hour with the receptionist up front and saw the duties of a receptionist up close and personal. Signing for things, answering telephones, sorting faxes. It sounds mundane, but as Deb Kennedy, the Straight’s General Manager said, receptionists are an integral part to any operation.
I then proceeded to the board room where they’ve got a TV plugged into a cabinet. I was given a video to watch and for the next hour I did just that. It was a documentary shot about a couple years ago and it chronicled the story of The Georgia Straight and it’s founder and publisher Dan McLeod. (During my week I never met the man, but I did catch glimpses of him in the hall.) The video tells of his struggle against the city fathers and the law to get his paper published. The Straight has had a colourful past. It then gets into the progression from the hippie rag, to the paper that it is today, a chronicle of the arts and news in this town, as well as a venue for excellence in journalism. (There’s a hallway near the editorial department that houses all the awards that it’s won over the years.)
I then get my afternoon filled with a task that involves me making at least 75 phone calls, checking fax numbers and getting addresses. It’s called prospecting and it’s used by the folks in the sales department to line up clients, inevitably business for the Straight. Then a lady from the promotions department gets me into the Straight’s contest line, a line where readers can call in and leave their particulars to win prizes. There were 200 or so calls stacked in their message box to win a double pass to see the movie Simpatico. Well, it seems my next task is to sift through these messages to retrieve 50 winners. This probably is the first time I’ve ever played judge for anything. Some calls I rejected simply, because I couldn’t get the name or it’s the fifth call from the same phone number.
Tuesday was spent with the folks in the classified department. I got to input ads into their system, DTI, I think it was called. I then did some more prospecting.
On Wednesday, I did some data entry for the website, which was interesting and informative, but a bit boring after a couple hours. I got to spend a couple hours watching, listening and asking questions of the people in production. These folks are given the contents of the week’s issue and are set to plug that all into sheets that would essentially be the paper. They’d take text and marry them to ads and then paste them on sheets called flats that would go to the printer. They were very interesting and I saw the anxiety of meeting a deadline. It was about 10 past 3 and they were just waiting for the courier to come and pick up the pages, but as they were sifting through the sheets they found a mistake in one of the sheets and so frantically they had to reset a couple pages. In some down time, I talked to Deb and we chatted for a bit on the paper’s success, her role in the operation and stuff about the paper’s ownership. We also talked a little about editorial policy, which was interesting to me, but probably boring for you so onwards.
The next day as I was walking up to the building and I glanced at a paper box on the sidewalk and saw that week’s edition of the Georgia Straight. It was a little chilling, because less than 24 hours before I saw them put it all in the box waiting for the courier to dispatch the box to the printers. Such are the miracles of Guttenburg’s invention.
I got to spend the morning with accounting and did some data entry for them. But, before that I spent an hour or so in distribution with Nick Collier, a former editor and now in-charge of distribution. “Chief Paper Boy” is his title and he works out of a shed next to the Lexus place and oversees the delivery of the papers from the presses to here and then the drivers who bring the paper to the entire city by days end. Some 100,000 copies are dropped off in the alley and watching them be taken out is a sight onto itself. Nick and I spoke at great lengths about how the paper is taken around town and how the paper had grown since his days at the editor’s spot. He was very interesting and the entire operation is quite interesting. He explained to me his role and his previous roles at the paper and I found his insight and experiences so damned interesting. My afternoon was then spent ripping pages out of newspapers, why? Well that’s explained in what I did on Friday.
When one takes out an ad in the Straight, they are sent an invoice, which attached to it is an actual copy of the page in which the said ad is printed. So those sheets I ripped out on Thursday were now being stapled to the invoices ready for mail. Then in the afternoon I spent a good hour with the editor of the paper, Beverley Sinclair. Her job is, of course stressful, but also interesting. Even the paper is roughly 60-62% ads, a good part of its appeal to the public is the writing. (It’s also the writing that makes a newspaper, by the way.) She was very candid and very generous with her time. I found out she teaches journalism at Kwantlen and besides editing this paper she’s written a book on travelling this province of ours.
We talked at great length about the process of column writing and editing, as well as her editorial policy’s and journalism stuff like that. I got to go into the archives where stacked and stacked are boxes containing the 33 years or so of The Georgia Straight. I got to dig up an old feature about Tupper and I’m glad to say this was an examination of my school I could be proud of and which was true.
Overall, I had an informative week. It was chockfull of interesting stuff I did and go to observe. The hippie paper of the 60’s is now grown up and was a hell of good place to work at. I learned lots and I actually enjoyed it.
Questions and comments may be sent to: editor@thecommentary.ca
An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .