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What is a journalist but a reporter without a steady job

I don't know who said that. It was probably Allan Fotheringham quoting A. J. Leibling quoting Groucho Marx quoting Oscar Wilde although Socrates probably said it first. At least Allan wasn't quoting Hunter S. Thompson (I will later). That's one thing about journalists and reporters. We're endlessly quoting everybody. I was 29 when I went back to school and earned a two year diploma in Creative Communications at Red River Community College. I spent my summer as a cub reporter in the newsroom of the Stonewall Argus . Since then I've been practicing the black craft of journalism as a freelancer, a writer for hire. It's taken me to some interesting places from a bull paddock in St. Ambrois, Manitoba to the beaches of Barbados. I once did an interview in a van sitting under a working WWII Lancaster bomber. It's a good trade for those with an endless craving for variety.

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Journalism A low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange, seedy world full of misfits, drunkards and failures. A group photo of the top ten journalists in America would be a monument to human ugliness. It is not a trade that attracts a lot of slick people; none of the Calvin Klein crowd or international jet set types. The sun will set in a blazing red sky to the east of Casablanca before a journalist appears on the cover of People Magazine.   Hunter S. Thompson

Monument to human ugliness indeed

In my time I've worked with park interpreters, railroad section men, hospital orderlies and nurses, geologists, diamond drillers, musicians, actors, dancers, corporate communications specialists, and I've even watched politicians up close. Hunter can't scare me!

Science Writer?

One of the great tragedies of the western world is the intellectual schism that exists between the arts and the sciences. One of the perks of the University of Winnipeg was the place was small enough that we were all forced to mingle so arts and science students ate in the same cafeterias, took the same credit courses and went to the same dances. This worked out well for me when I met, courted and married a girl with a B.A. in Classics and Anthropology. It also provided me with a very good general background in basic natural sciences which I brought with me to journalism school a few years later.

"Journalism school was a course that didn't involve science or math."

I heard that one a couple of times from the people in my class at Red River. I want to emphasize, these were not stupid people. Quite the contrary. However, the schism still exists and it seems most serious in the media where most journalists fall squarely into the arts camp and can be snobbishly antagonistic toward the sciences. As a consequence, science issues are not covered particularly well, if at all. I'm not going to go on about that because it seems that's changing and I don't know if it's because there are more science grads in the media or if certain questions are best answered within the milieu of scientific debate and the old guard is either recognizing that or dying out. I should also take the time to say that I've met many fine science writers with bachelor's degrees in arts and I learn as much from them as they do from me.