Reflection from my first few weeks in Bonnyville

So, I’ve been working for The Bonnyville Nouvelle for about a week and a half, and so far, I’m loving it.

Hopefully, I’ll still be able to say that a few months from now :P

The community is great and so are my coworkers. Of course, being away from Chris and now sharing these moments with him has been hard, but it’s been good to be able to focus more on my job and getting into routine.

I just finished my first full week and tomorrow we go to production. I’ve done a few features and profiles, as well as cover Town council, school board and other events.

So far, I love working in a newsroom with other reporters, and, surprisingly, I love working under an editor. I always thought there would be some sort of power struggle, or butting heads, but really, I just love not having the responsibility of doing it all: coming up with story ideas, covering all the events, working every weekend and editing all the articles myself. I love bouncing ideas off Melissa and Brendon, even though the three of us are entirely different people with often conflicting views.

Tomorrow, Monday, is our production day. Brandon, Melissa and I will all show up at 9am, which is something we rarely do. We will each go through the pages as they will be shown in the paper. First, Brandon and I will read through the articles, making any necessary changes and initially the page; then Melissa will read through and make the final changes. After that, we have our story meeting.

Here, we all brainstorm events we’ll cover and story ideas. We all help each other come up with ideas or events in the beats we each cover (really, it’s more of Melissa and I giving Brandon all the sports-related articles, while Melissa and I focus on arts, education and political issues.

However, Chris and I are still in need of a place to live and the fact that I’ve taken a pay cut hasn’t helped with the huge rise in living cost. However, even with having to pay more for rent, I still think we’ll be happier living and working in Bonnyville :)