Toronto Free Press book reviewer and Conestoga University Journalism graduate Paul Tuns brings me the scuttlebutt from other journalists about TFP's new once-every-two-week publication schedule. "They'll never make it," predict some. "They don't pay" ( for freelance articles) lament others. But the common criticism of "They're not daily" is the one I find the most amusing.
Tuns, who came directly to us from Conestoga is the best journalism graduate who ever worked for TFP. Three years ago he was writing exclusively for us. Now stories under his familiar byline appear in the lofty Globe & Mail, the National Post and others.
One of the very reasons why Tuns is making it in our industry is that he has those rare qualities of never giving up and following each story through to its natural end.
Snooty journalists, who resort to the "they'll never make it" line are this young journalist's antithesis.
One never knows in life who is going to make it. Indeed, just being willing to try can sometimes attain remarkable results.
Years ago when I was working at a Thomson Corp. newspaper known as the Oshawa Times, an earnest young reporter by the name of Hank Kolajajuk was able to reach Ugandan despot Idi Amin on the telephone on his first attempt. When he told the retreating backs of colleagues enroute to the local watering hole, he was staying behind to try for the big scoop by making the telephone call, everybody laughed.
No one laughed the next day, when they read the big scoop under Hank's byline.
I don't know what it is about human nature that people increasingly do not want to try anymore.
Not only journalists, but people in general somehow assume things are impossible to achieve. Worn down by the bureaucracy of life, they give up long before even trying to reach the bureaucrat holding them back.
It was many moons later when the memory of a young Hank Kolajajuk gave me ideas when I was a new columnist at the Kingston Whig Standard. We reporters were sitting around at the local watering hole complaining about our editors and the lack of news. Upon my arrival at the Whig, the Afghan-Soviet war was at its peak. On the television set over the bar, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the wife and children of then Afghan President Najibullah boarding a plane for Paris. The newscaster indicated that the Afghan president was sending his family abroad for their safety.
"Wouldn't it be something to reach Najibullah on the telephone," I asked my colleagues. They all laughed, telling me since the whole world would now be trying to reach him, it would be ludicrous to even try.
Home at my apartment, I dialed the operator and was told there was a long waiting list to get through to Najibullah's palace in Kabul. Not wanting to give up, I explained to the operator that I was a newspaper reporter and that my colleagues were likely back at the bar still laughing at me. The operator asked if it mattered to me what time of night he could get back to me. I told him the time didn't matter.
Two nights later in the wee hours, I got a call that he was putting me through. With incredible luck for me, the person who answered the telephone at the palace was an aide de camp I had met two years earlier in Washington, D.C.
I told him I wanted to speak briefly to Najibullah about what it must feel like to be left alone in Afghanistan with his family in Paris. The aide de camp told me I was crazy. Just put him on for a minute, I insisted. Because of my Afghan contacts, I knew a little Farsi. I did not know the Afghan president could speak English. My memory served me well enough to nervously squeak out the standard "How are you?" line in Farsi. There was a moment's silence and then a deep chuckle. "How is it that someone with the surname McLeod knows my language," he asked. I told him because of an adopted Afghan girl, I knew something of the Afghan culture. Then I asked him, why he had chosen to stay behind in deadly Kabul when he put his family on the plane for Paris.
"Well, If you know anything about Afghans, you will know of their great courage, even communist ones like me," was his reply.
It was a remarkable quote and a remarkable impromptu telephone interview that took no longer than 10 minutes at most.
I went into the Whig office right after the telephone call and wrote a story for the Whig that later went world wide. Editor in chief Neil Reynolds, who now enjoys the same status at Conrad Black's Ottawa Citizen, was very proud of the story.
The next day, the reporters of two nights ago weren't laughing.
When they got over their pride, one or two of them asked me how I had pulled it off. I told them truthfully, "just by trying".
Meanwhile, for all those journalists who say "they'll never make it" about Toronto Free Press: Just watch us.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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