Christine Beyleveldt

The other day I was sorting out my filing cabinet and I decided to recycle my newspapers. Carrying all of those papers out to the recycle bin, I felt like I was saying goodbye to another version of myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still got digital copies, but that’s not the same. I’m about a year away from finishing my dental hygiene program now, and I thought this would be a good time to reflect on how far I’ve come, and why I decided to make this career move seemingly out of nowhere.

1. I felt like I was doing important work

Somehow both of my careers have been accidents. When I first started writing, I predominantly wrote arts and culture. Until my boss thought I’d be better at covering news and, surprise, surprise, not only did I love it but I was actually good at chasing scoops. As the news section editor, I felt I was doing the best work I’d ever done. I covered everything from student politics to housing, infrastructure and local government. I thought I was writing stories that actually mattered. Stories that could actually make a difference.

Once, I ran a story I was so proud of. It was tied to a piece of newly-elected NDP provincial government legislation and how it affected an English upgrading program offered at the university. When it first appeared in print nothing happened. But months later I ran into one of my interviewees and learned that internally it had actually caused a bit of a stir and sparked a policy review. That’s the feeling I was always chasing.

2. It got me out of my comfort zone

I was a shy kid and public school was difficult because of it. Reporting changed that. When, for your first assignment, you have to cold call people you’ve never met asking to interview them, you learn very quickly to get out of your comfort zone. I look around me and everywhere I see people my age crumble at the thought of having to make a phone call. Meanwhile, I’m now the kind of person who will knock on office doors asking to speak to politicians when they don’t return my voicemail.

3. Solidarity in the industry

Us journalism types don’t always see eye to eye. I got into my fair share of scraps with the opinions editors, but at the end of the day, we took pride in each other’s work. In an industry where people will make it their mission to take you down, we stuck by each other and defended each other’s work, and that’s something we need to see more often. If your coworkers don’t have your back, you need new coworkers.

1. I felt like nobody cared what I wrote unless they disliked it

You know that phrase no news is good news? Yea. People don’t like to read the news. I struggled to find contributors willing to pick up stories I pitched because they weren’t easy, so I ended up writing my own section every week. What’s more, when I latched onto a story I thought had real importance—like the grant for domestic students in the English upgrading program, because the instructors felt like they were being pushed to take international students at the expense of domestic students—it fell on deaf ears. Or so I thought for a long time.

I got shortlisted for a labour writing award for an article about the cleaners joining a union. But I also got raked over the coals for that article. My piece about the university’s first student housing opening its doors, which I spent weeks working on, only earned me a torrent of verbal abuse from one of my interviewees for not making them the feature of the article.

2. The utter disregard for bipartisanship

The more entrenched I became as a journalist, the more often I had to keep quiet. Journalism is, by nature, a heavily politicized field. Sure, we’re supposed to be impartial. But I’m telling you right now that you will never find an impartial journalist. The very term is an oxymoron. I felt like the more I became invested as a reporter, the more I had to batten down my own hatches. Expressing an alternative point of view was off the table. I’m so glad to be out of such a politically charged field.

3. There’s no money in print journalism

When there’s no money you have to write what people want to read, and that’s not what I was in the business of writing. When I moved on from community news and took my first job in the big bad world outside of the four walls of my university, the stuff I was writing felt so vapid. I wrote an article about table lamps.

But that’s not all. Last year, Bill C-18, the Online News Act, hammered the final nail into the independent media’s coffin. If I hadn’t already gotten out of the media business, that would have been my signal to abandon ship. Australia passed similar legislation in 2021 and the social media giants who were in the news sharing business hammered out revenue sharing agreements under their own steam with Australian media. But when Canada broached the table with the same bill they left no room to negotiate. The result was exactly what could have been expected. In Canada, there is no access to news via social media. I never imagined this kind of censorship would come to Canada, but here it is.

All of this made me realize that I’m not as much of a fighter as I previously thought. I didn’t want to claw, kick and scream for attention in the vast pool of aspiring writers. Not when I could make a difference in people’s lives in another field and not have to fight tooth and nail for the opportunity to do so. As an aspiring hygienist, I feel I can make a difference for people in an area of their lives where it matters. What’s more, it’ll be appreciated.