Meet a Journalist

A journalist's profile, stories and career in the field of journalism. Know a journalist who should be profiled here? Send an e-mail to Janet E. Bardon

March 23, 2000
JoAnn Napier
Technology Columnist, The Ottawa Citizen's High Tech Report
Co-author of Technology With Curves: Women Reshaping The Digital Landscape, (HarperCollins)
jnapier@sympatico.ca

 

"I suppose I think that the highest gift that man has is art, and I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist - that there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be achieved through the dissection of personality. That's what I want to do. I want to reach a little closer to the world, which is to say to people, and see if we can share some illuminations together about each other. I happen to believe that most people - and this is where I differ from many of my contemporaries, or at least as they express themselves - I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting. Not only is he dramatically interesting, he is a creature of stature whoever he is."

 - Lorraine Hansberry, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black"

 

Lorraine Hansberry was black, beautiful, and a playwright. Remember Raisin in the Sun? She wrote that. She died  very, very young. She was a smoker. And I offer this quote from her because, when I came across it in the book Hansberry's Drama, I immediately thought: That's it! That's just how I feel. Substitute artist for writer, and what Hansberry says here is  exactly how I feel about writing and about journalism. Everyone is interesting if you ask the right questions.

I'm a Canadian journalist with 20 years' experience, who's covered stories on three continents and interviewed the seminal thinkers and founding pioneers of the Internet.

I've associate produced two documentaries ("Understanding/Using the Internet") and a 13-part series ("Life on the Internet") for PBS (pbs.org), and written the narration for a National Film Board documentary ("Bronwyn and Yaffa"), which won The President's Prize in Japan.  Which sounds pretty good, but actually, it's just a series of credits gathered around a desire to find out what makes people tick, why they feel what they feel, what makes them do the things they do.

I began working as a reporter at The Halifax Herald. The company published the only newspapers in town at the time, The Chronicle-Herald (a provincial paper) and its metro edition cousin, The Mail-Star. When I went down to fill out an application, the sheet indicated that preference would be given to folks who could type 55 words a minute. I was 17. I lied on paper. I was hired, on a Friday. I spent the entire weekend teaching myself how to touch type. By Monday, I was an honest woman.

I love newsrooms. They used to be smoky, unkempt, dysfunctional places. And, these days, they're not smoky. I began covering local news, and theater; loved the opportunity to see movies for free and write my opinions up, in time for the evening deadline. As a young girl who grew up with three brothers, my sole direction in life usually centered on tackling whatever the boys could do. In the newsroom, the boys covered politics and so I steered away from writing feature stories - though I loved them - and indulged my competitive streak. Which proved to be both a good and bad move. As most choices prove to be. I ended up covering the legislature, and the labor beat and, eventually,  Parliament Hill, and Senate hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington.

I've interviewed a global range of egos, innovators and leaders -  from U.S. presidential nominee Bill Bradley to Web creator Tim Berners-Lee.  And I can confirm, indeed, that the late Ms. Hansberry was correct. Virtually every human being is dramatically interesting.

As for my education, it is limited, academically. I'm a graduate of Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia, where I studied everything from Calculus to Anglo-Irish literature in the belief, however misguided, that I should use my undergraduate degree to cast my net wide. I ended up with an Arts Degree, an English Major and I put myself through university working as a sports reporter in the summers. (What I knew about sports could be put in a thimble, unless you counted soccer or tennis. But that's another story).

But what I learned on the job, out in the world - from how to type to how to ask questions to how to really hear the answers - has been truly invaluable. If you're considering a career in journalism, I have a few suggestions: decide to be curious, and define what you're curious about. You can always change it.

Then begin. Ask questions. Listen. Read. Try to reveal the unexpected. Live by the motto that everyone is a creature of stature, whoever he is. And try to uncover that truth, wherever you find it. Good luck! - JN