When the lesson is failure
When I was in journalism school in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1987, one of my placements was with the local CBC television station. My claim to fame from that time is that I rubbed shoulders with Ian Hanomansing and Susan Ormiston, both of whom were covering provincial news at the time. My claim to infamy from the same time is the day I failed to deliver what a reporter needed. I had been sent out to get a clip from a person who had been involved in an accident; said person was a distance out of town so the camera man (that tells you how long ago it was; 1987 to be precise) drove. Once we arrived, we learned that the person we needed wasn’t immediately available, so we waited. And we waited. I think I must have been responsible for calling the shots, as I was the journalist (albeit only an intern), so we continued to wait. No cell phones back then, of course. Eventually, the young man arrived home; it was cold and dark by then, but I gamely asked the necessary questi...
