(This post is based on an earlier Facebook announcement, for those who haven't already seen it).

Time for a formal announcement, if you don't already know: We're leaving France in late June 2021 to move back to Canada, and will be heading to Vancouver.

I'm very excited about this move - I've missed living near the ocean, I've really missed living in an English-speaking city, and I'm eager to try something new while returning to a country I already know and love.

Also - for all the happy posts and photos of our adventures, it's been a very difficult and never-ending fight with immigration authorities for the past five years, and something I'm very eager to put an end to.

As always, immigration issues have propelled this moving decision. I know some of you think the reason I've had such immigration/visa problems is because I keep flitting around, but the reverse is true - I keep moving because visa/residence pathways have been blocked.

Every - Single - Move I have made since 2013 has been intended to be "the final move," where my immigration would be finalised and I could live in that locale forever. It didn't happen.

In 2013, I moved to Halifax, and met the crazy Ontarian French Canadian who somehow convinced me to go camping with him in deserted northern Nova Scotia 2 months after meeting. His work transfer to Montreal meant I had 2 choices: stay in Halifax with a somewhat secure immigration procedure and possibly lose him, or roll the dice with immigration and marry my love. I chose the second option.

Quebec, though, was a nightmare. I had no working visa, no right to live in the country, and the only feasible way to get a visa was to stop working freelance for AT LEAST 2 years while I tried my luck with immigration. This was unappealing because A: I still wasn't 100% convinced the guy I married wasn't a serial killer and I wanted to protect myself (he turned out to be awesome, btw. Well done, me), and B. I knew of Quebec's long history of "clearing its immigration backlog" by canceling all immigration applications every 2 years or so and making people start over from scratch. So I pushed for us to go to the UK.

The UK seemed like a GREAT idea - we both had working visas, I was convinced we could turn those into long-term residence visas, and Britain is beautiful. The last thing I expected was for (some of) the fuckers to vote for Brexit the month after we arrived. In the months following that, it became crystal clear that the Home Office (in charge of immigration) was not going to allow us to get long-term visas, and it increasingly became a source of stress as its 'hostile environment' meant that working visa-holders were really not at all protected from canceled visas or worse. It was nerve-wracking, and with a new baby, we needed a better option.

Enter France - we said, "after this, we're never moving again". We were so ecstatic to receive our visas - so ecstatic, and so eager to move, that we didn't fully understand that they had done something highly irregular - they gave Matt a full working visa, and me a "visitor" visa, which does NOT give me the right to work. Every bureaucrat we saw, in countless departments in the years since, said they had never seen anything like it, and that a mistake had been made. We tried to get it fixed - they rejected my request twice. The only path to normalising my visa was for Matt to get citizenship (which would take at least 5 years and another 2 for me to get working rights). Or, for me to leave France and my family and reapply from outside the country (not an option). Desperate, heartbroken, and furious, I realised that France was not a long-term option. And that's when I began the application for Canadian permanent residency, in February 2020.

Please understand that each of these moves - Quebec to the UK, the UK to France, and the upcoming France to BC - has been absolutely heartbreaking for all of us. It's a difficult thing to make inroads in local communities, make local acquaintances, and get used to a way of life, only for the ugly mess of visas to make a move necessary. This part of the process is not something that we've enjoyed.

But with any luck, by August my immigration woes will be over and I will have permanent residency in Canada.

**Support refugees and immigrants. You have no idea how difficult the whole process is, in every single country. It's a nightmare. We were the lucky ones - if we needed to, we could just return home. For too many people, that's not an option.**

A quick thought on keeping NYRs – the only way to make it work is to hold yourself accountable at regular intervals. 
And I’ve been able to do that, thanks to my handy-dandy spreadsheet. So here goes:

The wins

First, let’s start with the good.

I’ve made solid progress on my work-related aims. I’ve been able to write about religion for RNS, a longtime goal, and I’ve found an outlet to write about geopolitical issues and where it intersects with business for Supply Management Magazine. I’m building a client base for my communications work, and I’ve written about mining for non-mining outlets (The Ecologist and VICE Canada).

Spending time with my little boy (20 months now) and exploring with him is also high on my priority list. I’m putting down my phone more (awful habit), and reveling in the time we have together, where we read, play (European) football indoors, and learn new words. Since January, we've taken him to New York to meet his cousin (same age), to Paris’ Jardin des Plantes, and to the library and local parks regularly. And we set up the tent indoors to give him a sense of what to expect once the weather gets warm. 

I’ve done well on the health front. I’ve stopped drinking completely – not of my own volition. I used to have a glass of red a night, but one day it just tasted awful. Same thing the next day. It’s been two weeks. I miss my reds. But maybe it’s for the best.

I’ve also gotten my ass in gear to get my French residency situation sorted. Because of the horrid company which processes French immigration files, I only have a visitor status here. I’ve found an affordable lawyer who is taking care of it, and hopefully, within four months’ time, I’ll be here as a full resident with working rights. Cross fingers for me.

On the travel front, another winter has come and gone without me taking a much-needed warm break. But I’ve got two trips in April: one to Perugia for the International Journalism Festival, and the other at the end of the month to Nice, Marseille, and Nîmes while the boys are off in Canada. 

The middling

I haven’t made nearly as much progress, or put nearly as much effort into, speaking and reading French as I should be. I know, I live here and I’m surrounded by it. But I work and live in English, and I’m still trying to figure out how to mix those two better. I have ideas.

I also wanted to get involved in an environmental project, but hadn’t found one yet. I did find a fantastic volunteer project in Paris, but….I’ll address that below.

We’ve made some progress on making the apartment homey. We upgraded our bedroom duvet. There’s now something hanging on Magnus’ wall. But the main room is still under-developed, and I think that should be our focus, now that the sun has returned.

The no-progress at all

On these fronts, I’ve made absolutely zero progress: Making friends. Working somewhere that’s not my apartment. Reinstating our weekly date night. These need immediate attention.

*****************************

I’ve had a massive shift in my thinking over the past weekend. For the entire time I’ve been in Saint-Ouen l'Aumône (hereafter SOA), I’ve been almost entirely focused on working from Paris, attending events in Paris, making connections in Paris, trying to develop friendships in Paris. All the Meetup groups I’ve joined are Paris-based.

There’s just one problem: I don’t live in Paris, and the train is a 40-minute trip.

I downplayed the distance for months, but it didn’t change anything. I said I’d attend Meetup meetings only to cancel at the last minute. I stopped going to services in Paris. I tried to work from Paris once, but found it too much of a hassle.

But yet I continued to think of myself as “so close to Paris.”

Then, one of Matt’s colleagues needed help this weekend, as she was leaving Paris to get settled in her new flat in Pontoise.

And it hit me.

Pontoise/SOA is a place entirely separate from Paris. It’s got its own events. It has opportunities. And my life could be so much fuller if all I had to do to get there was walk, instead of running to catch the train, then taking a metro, then walking, and then having to do it all over again on the way back.

We've already started to integrate into the neighbourhood. The local market knows us well, as do the local librarians (who always greet Magnus by name when he enters the building). Our neighbours are friendly and love chatting to Mag. I tried rowing on Saturday at the local club (I was miserable at it, but I’ve found a canoe club in Cergy, within walking distance). I’ve also signed up for a coworking space that’s a 20-minute walk from our apartment. And I’m heading to badminton night on Friday, in a gym that’s a 10-minute walk from my desk. I want to start a parenting group for our apartment complex. All of this will force me to speak more French.

So I'm looking forward to the next few months, when I can focus on where I *actually* live and build my community.

A few days ago, I saw a post on Gretchen Rubin’s (Facebook? Twitter? I forget which) about how she fared on her ’18 for 18’ list, and I was inspired to create my own ’19 for 19’ list – I figured it was a new and different way of trying to structure the year, instead of just jotting down airy-fairy resolutions in early January.

There are two things that are not heavily featured on this ’19 for 19’.

The first is work (there’s something on the list related to work, but it’s not a focus of the list). Like most journalists (I tell myself), my life is 80% work, 10% sleeping, 5% eating and 5% fun. This list is an effort to turn me into less of a workaholic, and more into someone with a well-rounded life.

The other thing that’s not on this list is reading. One of my great fears before I became a mother was that I would no longer have time to read (as too many new mothers told me). So 2017/2018 was me desperately trying to prove to myself that it was rubbish.

So I read. A lot. So much. And then I realised….maybe I overdid it (I’m not one for moderation, which is also why I mostly stopped drinking.)

I read three, sometimes four books a month in the past year. But it came at a cost. I didn’t go out much. I didn’t connect with people much. I didn’t leave the apartment nearly as much as I wanted to. It became an excuse not to grapple with French and find people to be friends with. I didn’t play with Mag (or Matt) as much as I could have.

So without further ado, here’ my 19 for 19:

1. Improve my French. I really want to get to the point where I can converse fluidly in French without having to obsess over it. The only way to make that happen is to speak more French with more people.

2. Spend time outdoors. As noted above, I spend too much time in the apartment. I have this (as yet unproven) theory that if I spend more time outdoors, it’ll make these wretched winter months go by much faster, and I’ll also be able to thoroughly enjoy the better weather when it comes.

3. Get immigration status sorted. My current visa for France has me listed as a visitor. That’s problematic. These next few weeks will be about getting listed as an ‘auto-entrepreneur’ so I can legally work as a freelancer for French companies (I can already legally freelance for non-French companies).

4. Travel. This year, I’m going to the International Journalism Festival in Perugia in April. I really want to see the ‘Museum of Romanity’ (Roman life) in Nîmes soon, which will give me a handy excuse to escape the bleak Paris winter for a few days. I’m headed to London for two days in January, to meet up with client and friends, and also see the Ashurbanipal exhibit at the British Museum. We’re heading to New York in February to see family, and we’ll be spending the month of August in Florida (five days), Ottawa (14 days), and northern Ontario (8 days). And we’ll be back in northern Ontario for Christmas.

5. Expand my reporting niche. I started out as a reporter writing about fish and the environment. I miss the fish. So, more fish in ’19.

6. Explore with Magnus. My glorious rambunctious little boy deserves more adventures, and adventures are what he will have.

7. Reinstate the weekly date night. Between the new addition and the moving to a new country, this one fell by the wayside. Time to reclaim that.

8. Get that Nikon/join photog club in Paris. I love taking photos. It’s about time I treated myself to a serious camera. And joining a photography group in Paris will help me meet more people and practice my French. All good things.

9. Build client base. Always good to have an excess of work opportunities.

10. Strengthen muscles. I’m pretty scrawny, so I’d like to bulk up a bit. Plus, Matt and I (and some friends) are planning on kayaking from near Whitehorse to Dawson City in 2020. In order to be able to contribute to the rowing (and preserve our marriage), my arms need to get stronger.

11. Get involved in an environmental project. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel a deep-seated panic about our environmental situation. I’ve gone a bit extreme on the recycling end in our house, and I’m in the process of banning any new plastics from entering our abode. But I still feel like I need to do more.

12. Be healthy. I don’t eat as much fruit or veg as I should. I’m a little too in love with French chocolate pastries, often with detrimental effects. And, strangely, given that last bit, I still struggle to maintain a good weight. (It’s genetic, but still frustrating). So bring on the healthy eating habits.

13. Write for myself. Just to see where it goes.

14. Interior decorating. We have a magnificent apartment. But we haven’t done much on the decorating side (we tended not to live very long in our previous apartments, so decorating hasn’t been a priority). The plan, however, is to remain in France for the foreseeable future, and that means putting our personal touches on the place. We’ve already started in the bedroom. We need a few lampshades and wall décor for the main room, and comfortable balcony furniture to enjoy the summer.

15. Work from Paris. I’ve found a great coworking space that I plan to use a lot more frequently this year. This will go a long way towards practicing my French and meeting new people.

16. Make friends.  This should be higher. Despite it being #16 on the list, it’s really priority #1.

17. Get serious about my spiritual life. I’m a bit private about this, so that’s all I’ll say.

18. Professional development. Find a mentor. Learn Excel. Perfect my pitch techniques.

19. Find a cause to volunteer with. I’ve already decided: homelessness. It’s a big problem in Paris, and it seems to be getting worse. My whole life, I’ve been pretty ashamed that the only thing I can think to do around a homeless person is step around them. So now it’s time to do something different. I’ve found a Meetup group that delivers food to homeless people on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and I’m going to start volunteering once a month. I’ve let my privilege blind me for too long on this issue.

This is a long list. These are not ‘resolutions’. A better way of classifying this is ‘things I would like to include in my upcoming year.’ It will be a handy guide if I’m ever feeling bored, restless, or lost for direction.

​Thanks for reading, particularly if you’ve made it this far. If you have any questions or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
 

I really needed 2018 to be better than 2017 on the professional front – and I am thrilled to say it did not disappoint.

I gleefully left my (short-lived) communications job in London at the end of March, and moved with my small family just outside Paris, as my husband was offered a really exciting opportunity.

I didn’t take up work until September, because finding an apartment in France, as well as reliable daycare pour notre petit, took a lot of legwork and emotional strength. France is not kidding about bureaucracy. Or ludicrous three-months-up-front initial deposits for an apartment. But I digress.

I accomplished two major things this year:

First: I moved to the Paris region, a long-time dream of mine. Like most things in life, it didn’t exactly come about by endlessly banging on doors, but in a series of opportunities that opened up. We happily took the leap, eager to do whatever we could to escape from Brexit hell.

So now, whenever I want to see Montmartre, I pop on a short train. If there’s a museum exhibit or an author talk in central Paris, I’m right there. I want to spend an hour or two soaking in the beauty of Saint Eustache or just meandering along the Seine? I’m there in a jiffy. It’s glorious.

It also means I’m in the perfect spot to strengthen my (let’s face it) flagging French (point of clarification: I understand it just fine. I read it without an issue. I write it without too much difficulty. But I trip up when speaking, so I need to work on that).

The other thing I’ve accomplished is that I officially went full-time freelance.

Granted, I didn’t have much of a choice. My visa doesn’t allow me to work for a French company (we’re working on it), so that’s how it is. And though we can live decently on one paycheck, I am far too ridden with anxiety to be comfortable with that.

So I’m back to reporting, and I fucking love it. There’s so much to enjoy – digging up new and interesting story angles, interviewing fascinating people, delving into the science-tech-social issues that I enjoy.

I’m also very, very aware how lucky I am to still be in this game. When I look around at American media, it’s so easy to be dismayed by the male- and Ivy-dominated mastheads of pretty much every major publication you can name. I didn’t come from money (and therefore, didn’t have the Ivy experience). But I’ve stuck around, and I’m going to make damned sure I never let my sense of Ivy-less inferiority keep me from pitching to top magazines in 2019. (Because the world needs more working-class journalists. Full stop.)

I’m very pleased with how the last few months have gone. I’ve had some headaches, sure, but many more successes. I’ve been named a regular contributor (now on the masthead!!) at Mining Magazine. I’ve been asked to be an editor at another publication I write for. An editor (not one I usually work with) at CIM Magazine approached me for an assignment last week. I took one-on-one pitch writing course, and I learned so much from it. Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post which went pretty viral, and even got a mention in POLITICO Europe. I’ve got pieces due for two new publications in the New Year, and 6-8 solid pitches to send out in January.

So I’m very, very excited about what 2019 is looking like.

Here’s what I’ve learned after four months of full-time freelancing:

Anchor clients are critical. If you’re someone who, like me, panics about money, then having an anchor client will do wonders for your stomach. Having a reliable and sizable payment coming in every month does a lot to bolster my self-esteem, not to mention my bank balance, and takes a lot of worry out of the freelance process. It’s OK if I don’t land X number of assignments in one month because the anchor payment will be there, and everything else is just gravy.
But to make everything else feel like gravy:

Reducing expenses is necessary. We cut a lot of costs just by moving from the London area to the Paris region. Our daycare costs decreased by 50%, and my commuting costs went down 86%. Matt’s commuting costs went from the cost of the car + gas + the emotional toll of being in traffic, to zero (he walks to work). We’ve also gone pretty minimalist, benefiting from hand-me-downs for little Magnus, cutting down our wardrobes, and significantly shrinking our discretionary spending (as much for budget reasons as for environmental ones).

So instead of barely scraping by on two (rather high) salaries as we were in the UK, we’re living very comfortably on one salary, while using the other for trips and savings.

Reaching out to new editors is a great way to get more bylines. I know, I know. Seems bleeping obvious. But it’s one thing to know that, and another thing to do that. I’ve been getting bolder in the last two months, and I’ve got 2 new commissions to show for it.

Chocolate does not replace meals. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I’m going to give freelance journalism another try.

The first try didn’t go so well. After having being let go by S&P in 2014 due to unresolvable (I still dispute this) visa issues in Canada, I was stuck in Quebec, newly married, without a valid visa to live/reside/work in the country. In desperation, I did all the wrong things: wildly emailed editors with no specific story ideas, let my fear of rejection stand in the way of pitching actual stories I had, and sent snarky emails to the HR manager trying to hire for my position (the last bit worked. Since my old boss was re-assigned, the new one was more inclined to find a solution, and I would report for them for another year).

But living in Canada from 2013-16, with its seemingly never-ending announcements of journalism layoffs and publication shutdowns, scared me. I thought two things: one, I need to live somewhere where I can legally work, and two, I need to try something else.

For the past two years in London, I tried something else. Some things, actually. I tried a Big Four firm, which I found deeply unsatisfying. Then I tried working for an organisation as part of their comms team. If I had been given more leeway to do the things I had been hired to do, it would have been great. For various reasons, I wasn’t. You’ve all seen the blog post, no need to rehash.

Now, we’ve moved to France, and I’ve committed to getting my freelance career up in running – not least because finding English-speaking writing gigs in France is a giant waste of my time, as very few exist.

To make this work, I figured out what flipped me out the most about the last freelance go-round. And that was the lack of any sort of stable income. I just couldn’t see myself (or my ego, or my bank balance) surviving for very long on the endless pitch, write, revise, pitch somewhere else merry-go-round. I needed something more sustainable.

When I started out, and even when I was in j-school, it was still considered some kind of sacrilege for a journalist do anything non-journalistic on the side to make ends meet. Some activities falling under this category still make sense – volunteering for political campaigns being top among them.

But this idea that doing *anything* outside of journalism to supplement your income meant you weren’t a true journalist smacked of elitism. Back in 2014-5, I was still under the influence of this pernicious assumption, so I didn’t bother to develop a steady income alongside my articles.

Now, thankfully, there seems to be a more open approach to journalists taking on a variety of roles to pay their bills. And I’m no longer feeling ashamed that I have to do the same, and nor do I feel like it makes me any less of a journalist for doing so.

That being said, my steady income now will be reporting on international arbitration cases – so, I’m not strolling too far from the path.

This steady work gives me the freedom to pitch to other publications, and not obsess too much if I don’t succeed at first. And that is a glorious freedom to have.

On the pitching front, I recognise that I need a lot of work. So I’ve found a few mini-courses offered by working journalists, and will take one of them in the next month.

I was also inspired by a tweet I had seen by a writer, who wrote about her goal of obtaining 100 rejections from publications, and how it actually gave her bylines in reach publications she never thought she’d be published in. (Wish I could find the tweet in question).  You can bet that I’ll be trying the same in the next few months.

It’s also dawned on me that while emailing editors I don’t know and pitching for work has worked a surprising number of times, it’s still much better to get to know people face-to-face. In that vein, I met a business journalist who works for Usine Nouvelle last night, and we hit it off.

So I’ll be doing more of that.

That’s my starting point. I’m sure I’ll make a lot of mistakes (and hopefully, learn something) along the way. Thanks to everyone who’s given me any kind of support – whether a like, a RT, advice, or an offer to work on a project – you’ve given me loads of encouragement to keep going, and brought a smile to my face.

In the meantime, enjoy the Magnus photos. :)
​

News headlines have been awash today with claims that French President Emmanuel Macron “granted” citizenship to the migrant from Mali who miraculously saved a baby from falling four storeys by climbing from balcony to balcony and rescuing the child.

News services from BBC to The Daily Beast to the Evening Standard to CNN all reported that Mamoudou Gassama will be made a French citizen, as conferred by Macron on May 28.

But, like a lot of reporting on migration and citizenship, the details show another story, French journalist Agnes Poirier told me via Twitter.

“First, he [Gassama] will be given legal papers of residency which he didn’t have, and then he may apply to French citizenship which will be granted,” Poirier said.

It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but the difference between this, and the automatic ‘conferring of citizenship’ is important.

First, too many of us tend to assume that heads of state – whether it be the French president or the U.S. one – have these kinds of sweeping powers, to be able to grant citizenship on a whim much like a king would do. (But that’s another issue altogether).

Second, people know so little of what a migration/immigration/naturalization process actually looks like.

This is where the teaching component of journalism is important. Many people will never move to another country.

What they know of immigration procedures is limited and all too often is seen through the filter of politicians. And many politicians who focus on immigration aren’t keen to represent the process as it actually is, but will highlight abuses, overstate trends, and sometimes outright lie.

This is where it’s critical for journalists to understand immigration terms and explain them clearly to their readers.

There is a difference between getting the legal right to stay in a country – whether it’s called a ‘green card,’ ‘permanent residency,’ or ‘indefinite leave to remain’ – and securing ‘citizenship.’

In a world where migration and immigration is a major flashpoint in political debates, it’s necessary to have an informed electorate who can confidently say they have more than a cursory comprehension of the system.

Am I an expert on French immigration and naturalization? No. But I’ve recently gone through the French immigration process myself to get a residence permit. I’ve gone through the UK immigration process. I’ve gone through the Canadian process, several times. And I’ve researched dozens more, due to possible moves due to new jobs.

So I can tell you, terminology matters. It’s the difference between a two-year stay and indefinite leave. It’s the difference between being able to reside only, and being able to reside AND work without constantly worrying about immigration officials knocking on your door. It’s the difference between being able to reside in-country for an unspecified amount of time, and being able to vote in elections.

Words matter. And news stories on migration and immigration need to reflect that. 

This week, it was reported that the party currently leading the polls ahead of the Quebec provincial October election is advocating the expulsion of immigrants who fail to assimilate, which will be judged in part on their knowledge of French.

Let me tell you a story about three French-speaking newcomers to Quebec who had difficulty ‘assimilating.’ 

My husband was raised in francophone northern Ontario, attended a French school for most of his K-12 education, and spoke French at home with his father. He was the Managing Director of a Montreal-based firm, operating solely in French. And yet, when it came time to switch his out-of-province driver’s license for a Quebec one, he was met with nothing but resistance.

Finally, in desperation, he pleaded to the clerk, using all the québecois he had, to accept his documentation and transfer the license. It was only when he spoke this way that his request was granted. He still bristles about this encounter.

Though I didn’t grow up in a French-speaking home, my French background was extensive: five years in school, a French minor in college, multiple visits to France to brush up my vocabulary, translating and writing about news in North Africa for work. But given my husband’s experience, I didn’t feel comfortable conducting official business in the language.

I tried to sign up for a library card at la Grande Bibliotheque, in English. The clerk spent 15 minutes poring over my documentation, finally honing in on a reason to deny me a card. She found it: in one of the documents, my first name was misspelled by one letter. I protested in French, but to no avail. The damage had been done, and the decision had been made.

I would never attempt to sign up for a library card again.

One of my husband’s former employees was a Moroccan immigrant, who had flawless French and technical expertise to boot. But, while working in the Gaspé peninsula, he was repeatedly made to feel like an ‘other,’ culminating in one woman furiously stopping him in the grocery store and demanding that he return to his country.

We all spoke French fluidly. We all had trouble assimilating. Knowledge of the French language is not the issue.

Integration works two ways. Immigrants have to be willing and make the effort to accept their new culture and adopt new ways of living. But communities also have to be willing to accept these new faces, these new accents, and welcome those who have newly arrived. In our experiences, the latter part is where the compact breaks down.

What can be done to improve this situation? The very least political parties should do is to stop harping about immigrants who don’t assimilate, which only encourages voters to see immigrants as a problem and not as an opportunity to present Quebec as a vibrant, inclusive society.

Quebec politicians can be leaders in creating a space where French-speaking individuals can excel, no matter their race, origin, or accent. They should take this opportunity, instead of pandering to a part of the electorate who define a ‘Québécois’ as someone whose French is as pure as lamb’s wool.

​As for us, we’re in the process of moving to Paris. So far, nobody has had any trouble understanding our French.

I thought I’d give it a try.

I had loved working as a journalist. Loved it, even loved hating it when the pressure got up, when the sources were elusive, when one stupid typo wrecked your whole story.

But I was living in Canada (Montreal) at the time, and it was hard to ignore the constant layoffs, shutdowns, and general sense of desperation among journalists about job security and availability. The knocks just kept coming.

My own situation was precarious in its own right. My job was not under threat. But my legal residence in Canada was…what’s a nice way to put this….not so much legal.

We needed to leave, to live in a place where we both had (up-to-date) visas. So we packed up and moved to the UK.
Still smarting from the Neverending Canadian Journalism Implosion, I thought, this would be a really good time to try this second career in communications. Everyone swears that going from journalism to comms is a breeze, a natural fit, an opportunity to still use your skills even if you’re no longer a journalist.

So I gave it a try. First at a Big Four firm, then at a smaller membership organisation. (I’m going to be vague about specifics there. If you’re that interested, it’s not hard to find.)

I hated it. I hated every single second of it. I didn’t want to hate it. But boy oh boy did I ever.

Here’s what I found:

They don’t know what they want. Both times, they were positively giddy in the interview at the prospect of having an actual journalist on staff who could help them understand what media was interested in, and how they could position themselves better.

Fast forward to the reality I found: They resisted change. They didn’t see the point in making anything more media-friendly. I can’t tell you how many times I said, ‘This is what I would be interested in, as a journalist’, only to be roundly ignored. Organisational change is glacial, in some cases. And it’s a lot easier to disregard a new recruit’s advice, than to actually do the hard work to implement those changes.

They don’t know how to use your skills.  They think they know exactly how they would use a writer or an editor. The idea of having one on staff is intoxicating. But unless there are very clear plans in the organisation’s yearly/quarterly/monthly work outlines for written documents, they’re not going to find the opportunity to create that space. If you’re lucky, being entrepreneurial and volunteering to do this will work well. In my case, there were too many other priorities to even find the time to work on the idea.

They don’t know anything about communications.  This was one of the bigger shocks. I knew that moving into a new field would require a lot of on-the-job learning, no matter how close people say journalism is to communications. It’s still an entirely separate discipline, and I was really looking forward to learning the ins and outs, the basic tenets of the profession, and the ways different organisations applied them.

The reality, it seems, is that there are a lot of people just ‘winging’ it in comms, who come by their comms jobs having done zero actual communications work but have other attributes – familiarity with the organisation’s field, good relations with key stakeholders, etc.

Word to the wise: If your Director of Communications ever says, ‘I’m not a comms person,’ run like hell.

But if you are lucky enough to be working with actual comms professionals, you can learn a lot from them. I had some top-notch colleagues who, in addition to being caustically funny, were also pretty solid in their jobs, and from them I did learn a bunch.

Workloads are very, very different This doesn’t apply to comms departments specifically, but to the departments outside of comms. In comms, we were run ragged, expected by the rest of the organisation to do a boatload of everything. But outside of comms, it was a very different pace and a very different set of expectations from anything I saw when I was in journalism.

When people have no requirements to produce regular output, or when output is defined very, very fuzzily, it can make your head spin. At least, mine did. Even more so when people in those departments complained they had too much work to do.

Maybe I didn’t fully understand what it was they did, or how challenging it was.

Maybe.

I’m sceptical.

If the work is not fulfilling, you’ll miss journalism. A lot. If you find something you can really sink your teeth into, then that’s thrilling. You have a reason to go to work and a reason to roll up your sleeves. If it’s not, it’s can feel like drudgery, and can make you look back with severely pinkified lenses at your old life and career. I suppose this is true of most situations. I just didn’t anticipate feeling it so acutely while in comms.

There is a gender difference. I know, I know. You all think I’m an angry, out-of-control feminist. I’m comfortable with it.

But what I’ve found is that employers and bosses look at men and women in the workplace very differently. Sure, you might have an enlightened boss/workplace. But unconscious bias is a thing.

That means that the skills a former journalist has – writing, editing, social media – are seen very differently depending on gender. If you’re a man, those attributes are seen as ‘hard’ skills, critical to business and to a project’s success.

If you’re a woman, those skills are definitely lumped in the ‘soft’ category, as in ‘oh isn’t this nice that she dabbles in writing.’ So even if you have an advanced degree in journalism and 10 years’ reporting experience, if they need a writer, they’ll go and hire a (male) temp.

Yup. No kidding.

Now, the caveats. I’m only talking about two experiences that I had of working in comms. Maybe a third experience would give me a different view. I hope it would. Two experiences are not sufficient to support a widespread generalisation. So, go into comms if you think that could work for you. All I’m saying is, it didn’t work for me. If nothing else, reading this will help you make a more informed decision.

What’s next for me? A new city, in a new country (I’ve been dropping some pretty heavy hints on Twitter, so no points for guessing.) I’m in the beginning stages of putting together a website for a news venture I’m launching. It might sink, it might swim. It might ruin me even more than my student loans have already done.

But I miss journalism, so I’m going back.

Stay tuned!

I was a journalist for over ten years, covering a wide variety of topics for numerous publications, most recently focusing on energy and mining for S&P Global Market Intelligence and Mining Magazine.

I’ve now moved into another sector, after conceding that the constant job cuts and low pay in the field was just too stressful to handle. Though I loved every minute (well, nearly) of being a journalist, holding my breath every week and waiting for the job-guillotine to put an end to my position became harder and harder.

Following the advice (and the footsteps) of many a former journalist, I looked for other industries which could use my ‘communications expertise’ and ‘writing skills’.

What I’ve found has been enormously frustrating – and a lot of it is due to a fundamental lack of understanding as to what journalists actually do.

Without exception, everyone that I’ve talked to assumes that the bulk of journalists’ work comes down to one thing: writing. They then take that assumption to assume: 1) we’re very good at writing, 2) we love to write, 3) whatever we do next, it must include a lot of writing.

I can’t speak for other journalists, but in my case, it’s hard to imagine them being any more wrong.

True, most journalists are fairly decent writers. We need to be, to convey a point clearly in a small amount of text. Add onto that the often complex subject we’re writing about, which we have just learned about ourselves, and we have to be very good at how we use our words.

Very few journalists I know enjoy the writing process. It’s torturous. We only do it because we have to.

Furthermore, ‘writing’ accounted for maybe 5% of my overall job as a journalist.

I don’t know why people assume that journalists just sit down at a desk, raise their fingers above a keyboard, and let the words flow. That’s not at all what the process looks like.

Being a journalist is easily 85% to 90% research – which comes in a lot of forms. First, we have to find a story that needs more attention. For my most recent beat (mining in Canada), that meant looking through countless company press releases, Twitter feeds, and local publications detailing what new laws were being debated, voted on, or contested, keeping up to speed on new mines, knowing when funding was being pulled from a project, and why, as well as knowing the political climate in over a dozen jurisdictions.

To give an example: the last story I wrote for S&P Global Market Intelligence was about the suicide crisis in the northern Ontario town of Attawapiskat, and whether an unfair deal with a diamond miner may have contributed to this outbreak.

I chose to do the story because the Attawapiskat suicide crisis was major news, with every news outlet covering it. Missing from almost all that coverage? The role of a diamond mining company operating near the town, and whether that company had reneged on its agreements to provide jobs, opportunities and development for indigenous residents of the isolated town.

Before I spoke to anyone, I first had to dig in and do reams of research. I investigated what the indigenous population had said in the past about their dealings with the mining firm, as well as any documents the firm made available on the nature of its agreement with the local community. I looked into what mining associations and Aboriginal groups said about the town and the mining industry,  and read many reports from Canadian think tanks about Aboriginal-resource company relations and how it had changed over the last 20 years.
Armed with that information, I then hit the phones.

I called everyone – the mining company, the local governance association, a Canada-wide group representing Aboriginals in their dealings with the natural resource industry, firms which advised Aboriginal groups on how to negotiate effectively with resource firms, and law firms specialising in representing Aboriginal claims to resource companies (and the diamond mining company, which wasn’t talking). Each interview took a few hours to set up, involved at least 1 hour on the phone. Following this, after each interview, I double-checked my notes, doing what I could to ensure I transcribed the quote correctly, and followed up with the source if my notes were unclear at any point.

So now that I’d done research and interviews, you’d think I would be done. But I wasn’t.

Because what I found from the interviews was another question that needed to be investigated. The mining company may or may not have negotiated in good faith and followed through on what it promised for the community, but nearly everyone I spoke to pointed to the unbalanced nature of negotiations between companies, who had access to the best and savviest lawyers, and Aboriginal groups, who were often very new to the process and were unable to negotiate in the same capacity.

Which meant I had to do more research, about negotiations this time, and then, another round of interviews – this time digging up who the best people were to talk to about negotiations, barriers to fair talks, and legal and political measures which helped or hindered this process.

Interviews are also laden with challenges – everyone has their pressure points, biases, and areas they’re not comfortable talking about. Sometimes you can get away with not touching on these areas, and get the information you need. Other times, you have to find a way to negotiate those potholes in such a way that you don’t piss off your source TOO much and still get the information you need.

This whole process took the better part of two weeks – and I hadn’t even touched the writing part yet.
In the end, I spent about 3 hours pulling together my notes, my outlines, and the transcribed interviews into (what I hope) was a cohesive, coherent and balanced piece on existing challenges facing Aboriginal communities in securing a fair deal with resource companies developing deposits on Aboriginal land.

And very little of that time was spent ‘writing’. By far, the biggest part of “writing” this article was the research that went into it. You can spend all the time you have writing, but if you haven’t dug up the relevant facts, if you haven’t spoken to the people who know the most about the issue, you’re not doing journalism. You’re writing an opinion piece, with no new information for the reader whatsoever,

​RESEARCH is what journalists do. The rest of it is just window dressing.

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