As a child, I followed news at a young age. I remember when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was elected, I recall taking clippings on the Contra Affair and creating a graph to track the Manitoba provincial election results. In Winnipeg, I attended Radio Broadcasting at Robertson College to fast-track into the news medium.

After completing a work practicum at CJOB 680, the top news and talk station east of Calgary and west of Toronto, I was hired shortly after as an overnight operator and announcer. I was terrible. I couldn't pronounce the names of Latin baseball players when reading sports, I spoke too fast and I was chronically tempted to editorialize the news I was reading. Most of all, I didn't want to just read the news, I wanted to find it. Eventually, I accepted the position of content producer for Adler on Line, hosted by Charles Adler. It was then I really developed a taste for breaking news, investigating in-depth leads and chasing a story. However, the position was entry-level and my salary was nearly negligible. I worked full-time witnessing during evening and weekends, until the birth of my first son. Circumstances changed and my passion for news was replaced with the need to earn a living.

I accepted a full-time position as marketing assistant at an agricultural publication firm in Winnipeg called Issues Ink. I excelled in sales and accepted the position of display account executive at the Winnipeg Sun shortly after. Sales came naturally and easy to me. I was honest with my clients, developing a close advisory role with many, but I was bored. The thrill of the sale was nothing compared to the heady news rush I had always been addicted to. I was often late for sales calls, the result of chasing police cars and firetrucks. I drove with the window down, listening for sirens. Eventually, I began to hate the rate card. I hated the age of acquisition. I hated vertical revenue. September 11, 2001 made me realize several things, but one of them was that I needed to be back in the newsroom. The Winnipeg Sun published an evening edition that day and the salesforce was charged with making the issue profitable. I wanted to watch what was happening, not key-up ads to profit on a tragic event which shook the world. While at the Sun, I tried to break back into the newsroom with the support of my publisher to write the occasional opinion column while still working full-time in sales, but the editorial staff were deadset in opposition against the idea. It was then I realized my leap into sales may have been a terrible decision. In 2004, I accepted another sales position at CTV Winnipeg. The pay was fantastic, but more so than ever, I craved the newsroom and became increasingly disillusioned with what seemed to be a deteriorating news mandate in mainstream media. One year later, I quit.

Rather than die slowly in sales, I chose to exit the media completely after applying for dozens of news-related openings in Winnipeg. Over the next two years, I was able to secure freelancing work and also worked yet again in sales, but this time in my father's business. In 2007, I couldn't ignore the urge any longer and applied for the position of reporter/photographer at the Maple Creek News-Times.
We subsequently sold our home in Winnipeg, packed the U-haul and started all over again. Since beginning with the News-Times, my work has been re-printed in several publications, and I was honoured to have received the SWNA first place award for best agriculture series in 2007 and third place for columnist of the year. The sales and marketing knowledge I had resented so deeply has been a tremendous aid as we have now published new special sections backed by strong editorial. I spearheaded the Round Up, a publication with a circulation of nearly 40,000 dedicated to the cattle industry and distributed through Saskatchewan and Alberta.

In 2008, I was the first Canadian journalist to be invited to attend the annual convention of R-CALF, a controversial American cattlemen's activist group which has previously sought to close Uncle Sam's border to Canadian beef. The invite came after months of hard work at building a genuine relationship with the group. I learned more from that convention than in any account I've ever read on the trade issues. I've published several major investigative pieces on healthcare, corruption, industry and First Nations within the last year alone. Real journalism can happen anywhere, at anytime and in any medium. It is our collective job as journalists, in markets large and small, to make it happen. It is our duty to record modern history as the future is simultaneously shaped.