I'll never forget one of the first things I heard in D'Arcy Kavanagh's writing class in college.
"Everything you learned in high school about proper English: forget it."
I'm paraphrasing a bit (I don't remember the exact quote). But I do remember promptly hitting "select all" in my mind and clicked on "delete" faster than you could ever imagine. It's not that I was horrible at that class (I was an honor roll student in high school). But when I first started taking broadcasting, I had no intention of actually writing anything. My initial plan was actually to produce commercials and other audio tidbits. News and sports weren't even really on my radar.
As it turns out, my practicum in Red Deer changed my outlook on that side of the business, and ten years later, here we are.
But even in that ten years, it's amazing how much the industry has changed when it comes to the technology. The website we had at my first station in Lloydminster was about as basic as it could possibly get. We didn't have news on it or anything. I don't even think you could listen live. There were bios and a few other things, but that was about it. It wasn't until I got to Calgary in 2007 that we even started to feed the internet beast. But it was a couple of times a day, if that.
It wasn't until about my trek with CJCY in Medicine Hat from 2008 to 2010 that we started to get a feeling of just how prevalent the online and social media side was going to take over the industry. We were starting to post stories on an "as it happens" to our website. Those stories were being pushed to our Facebook and Twitter accounts.
That's when we started to realize one of radio's biggest problems. We were now going to be compared to TV and print outlets in the way our visual presentation looked. Gone were the days when all you had to do was SOUND awesome. You now had to be eloquent on a screen. And I was one of the "lucky" ones, in that I wasn't far-removed from my high school English days, so I went back into the trash can and recovered all of those files I deleted a few years previous. For others though, it wasn't that easy. I'm pretty sure sports guys are born with the inability to spell, or even have their fingers on the right home keys on the keyboards. I remember reading one of the scripts of the late Billy Powers once, and I had no idea what it read:
Yhe Vslhsty Glsmrd str bsvk im svyion yonihhy.
In real speak, it was "The Calgary Flames are back in action tonight." But his fingers were never on the right keys. But he knew what he meant and that's all that mattered.
But now it does matter. People judge you on your ability to spell, your grammar and all of that fun stuff. And not only that, but they're judging you on presentation, such as the photos you put up on the website. Which can be a bit of a challenge as a reporter. With two arms, you're trying to hold a microphone, take a picture, live-tweet and maybe even do some video. Oh, and that picture better be in focus, properly centered and look professional (even though you're probably taking it with an iPhone). And you better spell everything properly. For the record: don't depend on auto-correct for that. It never comes in handy when you actually need it.
It's funny to look back on the last ten years in this business because you realize just how quickly things changed. I can't imagine being some of my colleagues in the industry who have been in it for 20 or 30 years. The difference between "the good ol' days" and today must look like two totally different worlds.
A fascinating world we live in nowadays...
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