It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since I made the best decision of my career to date.
On May 1, 2013, I joined Cochrane’s favorite news outlet after many conversations with the then-captain of the Mighty Eagle Jack Tennant and its editorial coach, Derek Clouthier.
If you’re reading this and don’t know who I am, my name is Ryan and I am the photojournalist for this newspaper and I can say I am a very lucky man.
In a world of jack-all journalists, it’s very rare that a weekly newspaper would bring on a full-time photographer to handle the brunt of the visual arts, but Jack and Derek aren’t your everyday journalists, nor is Great West Newspapers your average media conglomerate.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last year, it’s that as much as I miss my time working the daily newspaper beat, from Edmonton to Ottawa, I have a family here.
Great West might not be as big an organization as some other media agencies, but in a world where true journalism is suffering and layoffs are becoming a frequent headline in dailies and internal emails in other organizations, this publication and all its sister publications join to make a healthy family.
I remember my first gig out of SAIT working with the Ottawa Citizen, watching teary-eyed colleagues say goodbye to people they’d worked with for 20-plus years, on my first day.
Layoffs happen in this and other businesses all the time, but it’s nice to know I work with a newspaper that respects the trade of photojournalism enough to hire someone with a passion for it and a passion for the community we all call home.
Stories can be told with words, but a picture can sometimes say more than a thousand words. I hope I come close to that on a weekly basis.
It’s truly a blast working with the Eagle’s editorial team – Kate McMackin, Brendan Nagle, Lindsay Seewalt and Derek – who are all great people whom I would gladly call friends if I didn’t know so many of their dirty little secrets. Just kidding…they’re #killingit.
And, if Mr. Tennant happens to read this, I hope he knows that “coming over from the dark side,” was the best decision I’ve made for my personal life and it will be one of the hallmark moments of my young career.
Thank you to Frank Shufletoski, Perry Mah and Candice Ward for pushing me to always be better, always work harder and to always strive to make a mark in this industry.
Thank you most of all to the Cochrane Eagle, it’s been a great year and I look forward to continuing to work hard to help this great and mighty Eagle soar.
