MUSIC INTRO Gabe Hello, I'm Gabe Oatley, the co host of cookbooks. Andrew And I'm Andrew Oliphant, one of the guests of Pull Quotes, the podcast where we take you behind the scenes of Canada's top long form stories. Gabe Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Andrew Thank you. Gabe Who did you speak with this week? Andrew Yeah, I spoke with Alex Boyd who's the Calgary beat reporter for the Toronto Star. Gabe Amazing. Alex is so awesome. Andrew Yeah. Gabe What would you want to chat with her about this week? Andrew Well, last month, she actually published a three part series in The Star about the global vaccine rollout. And vaccine inequality. She went to Angola and South Africa for some of the reporting and You know, there's so much conversation at the beginning of the pandemic, how we're kind of in this global community and that everyone deserves a shot. Gabe Hmm, sounds like a really powerful story. I also gather you were keen to chat with her a bit about her process. Like how she was actually able to tell such a detailed feature story on a topic like vaccine inequality that was kind of changing day by day as things were shifting with COVID Andrw Yeah, you know, she wanted to go to Guatemala for the story, but with the changing situation with Omicron. She couldn't actually make it. She went to Namibia on her trip, but didn't use any of that reporting. And she only actually had two days' notice to go to Angola for this, and I also got some great insights into the role of her translator Domingos while she was in Angola as well. Gabe Andrew, the sound sounds like such a great interview for your first EP guest posting pull quotes. I love it. Let's play them. Andrew Let's do it. MUSIC OUTRO Andrew Alex, thanks so much for taking the time to join our podcast today. Alex Thanks, Andrew. I appreciate you having me. Unknown Speaker 3:11 So I wanted to begin by looking at Dose of Desperation, part one of your series fighting for a shot. You followed a shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines from an airport runway in Angola, where the vaccines were first delivered to a vaccine distribution center in the capital to a stadium where people lined up to get their shots. How did you decide to use this as a way into the greater conversation of global vaccine distribution? Alex Well, I'd like to say that this particular shipment, you know, was just an inspiration to structure a story around it, but I must admit that part of this was just logistical. You know, I've been talking to UNICEF for months trying to figure out whether it would be possible to see one of these shipments, and it turned out to be more challenging than I expected just logistically, you know, they weren't always sure when they were sending shipments or how that was going to go or whether the country receiving it would be receptive to a reporter. And so it wasn't immediately apparent whether this would be possible. And so I ended up getting about two days notice that I was able to go to Angola, and I said sure. Yep. hopped on a plane off I went. And so I felt really lucky to be able to be on the ground when a Canadian shipment arrived. And I think a big part of the story is the issue around donations, are they getting to people that need them? Are they going in big enough numbers? And so it ended up being you know, a good way to kind of structure the story in terms of taking a reader along with this particular shipment. But like I say part of this was just logistically ended up kind of being how this reporting trip ended up being working out. Andrew So were there any other contenders for a story arc that you didn't go with? Alex Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's a, I think a really good question because I think there's a low hanging fruit story structure here, I think, in which a Western reporter would go out and find, you know, someone who had a really awful story of not being able to get a vaccine who was very personally affected by the pandemic, and really hung the story on the emotion of that. And to be clear, you know, I have so much who are in that position who haven't been able to get vaccines. So I'm in no way belittling that experience. But I think it's very common for Western reporters to really fall into that trope. of these countries kind of being, you know, sad and not as lucky as us and Oh, isn't that too bad? And readers, I think that the other World Vision commercial starts playing in their head, and they forget that these are real places with, you know, real people who are struggling to solve these issues. And so it was really important to us not to fall into that trope of just kind of an unfortunate country that, you know, doesn't have the riches that Canada does. And so we really wanted to put the emphasis on the people who were working really hard to solve this problem to get vaccines out. And we're really frankly, at least in the case of Angola, doing a very good job of it. And so part of this was we wanted a structure that would allow us to showcase the work being done the solutions being found in try to portray Angola as a real place and and try to, you know, take readers along with us. Andrew Yeah, maybe could you talk about that decision. I guess, with respect to framing of how COVID-19 is impacting Africa, I know like, there's a lot of talk on how Western media let's frame African nations as like struggling or impoverished. So yeah, maybe. Can you talk about any other decisions you made with respect to how African nations are framed in your story? Alex Yeah, like it's challenging because, you know, African nations don't have, you know, the resources and the economy, frankly, that a country like Canada does. But I think where Western media consults short is presenting that in a vacuum or just making it seem like a charity case. Like I think a lot of the focus around donations has been Oh, isn't it nice that Canada is helping and we should help more and this is just a warm, you know, warm, fuzzy thing that we're doing to help our neighbors in the rest of the world. But I mean, the fact that it is a charitable system that countries like Angola are dependent on countries like Canada for donations is a choice. It didn't have to be that way. The reason that they're kind of left waiting for what are essentially, you know, table scraps from the global community, is that they were left out of mechanisms that would have allowed them to, you know, purchase some of their own would have allowed Africa to make some of their own. And so the fact that they're left dependent I mean, it's not a new story, it kind of, you know, is built on the bones of history and of colonialism of, of, you know, centuries of history of our world. But just to present it as a isn't this a nice thing that Canada is doing? Really is not it's just showing one tiny piece of a much larger story. Andrew Yeah, and I know in your third part, you use some pretty significant historical moments of vaccines. You looked at Napoleon, vaccinating his children for smallpox. You looked at the polio vaccine. So I guess what was kind of the reasoning behind using these extort historical examples in your piece? Alex I mean, I was loved me a historical example. I'll put a historical example into anything but I do think beyond just myself. I get interesting. I do think there was a real purpose here because, you know, one of the things when I look back at the pandemic, there's a few things that you know, just kind of lodged in your brain and you end up thinking about for weeks afterwards, and one of the things that someone said to me a few weeks ago, was how much she hates the word unprecedented when it applies to the pandemic because we've heard that constantly, you know, this unprecedented virus this unprecedented pandemic, and yeah, COVID is new, we're kind of trying to find new ways to fight it. But this idea of a pandemic that is, you know, swept the world that has drawn lines between, you know, the haves and the have nots, that's a not a new thing. And so when we allow readers to use words like unprecedented it's kind of having them a blank check to be like, well, we don't know what to do. This is unprecedented. We've never done this before. And and really when you look at history, there are examples of leaders. Meeting these pandemics making decisions about vaccination, using vaccines in Napoleon's case, you know, for arguably political reasons. And so, you know, history gives us these, you know, clues to how it might have gone differently how we might have expected this to go. But if you say unprecedented, it just it wipes it wipes the slate clean Andrew I'm wondering if you could maybe talk about your thinking in respect to the tone of the piece. For instance, in the second part, there's a line about the Canadian government saying we're all in this together and you say, more than two years later, that feels less like a reassurance and more like a threat. Can you talk about any decisions you made? About having your own voice in this story? You know, Alex I do think I write a little bit in this story with my own voice that that been a little bit. I don't want to say glib, but I do. I think inject a little bit of personality into this. But I would draw a line between what I've done an opinion, for example, I mean, I wrote about vaccines for over a year. I spent months on this project. And so I think it's it's not necessarily me, you know, having an opinion or, you know, trying to take the government to task a line like that, as as slim as it may feel, is rooted in months of research and interviews and talking to people who really know how the pandemic is unfolding. And and the fact that you know, Canada has it done, what it arguably owes to the rest of the world. And so, I mean, we talk a lot about this idea of being impartial and to me being impartial is not, you know, presenting both sides, you know, oh you know, Canada tried to do a thing good for Canada, but these people say Canada didn't do enough like it's not my job necessarily to present those as two equal arguments. My job is to be impartial in my process and interrogate both of those arguments and present them both, or look at them fairly and investigate them fairly. And then when it comes to the end, I think it's fair to say, Okay, I've talked to all these people. I've heard both sides. And I have come to the conclusion that Canada has not done what it said it would do and what critics say it should be doing. And so I think, I think a line like that is his fair, honest, unbiased reporting, because I did hear both sides. Andrew Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and in that part, too, I know you used average in the vaccine lab in Cape Town to kind of begin the the narrative for that part. Just kind of curious how you kind of gained access to that lab considering it is kind of a laboratory where they produce vaccines. Alex Yeah, and to their credit African was pretty open. Petro, the head of allergen actually does all her own media. herself. She prides herself on that she's an incredibly busy person. I don't know how she does it, but I think they're aware that they need to have the world on their side or it would behoove them to have people know what they're doing. You know, Canada, for example, has given them $15 million, and so a lot of different governments and players have really invested in what they're doing. It was not particularly challenging to get access at that point. Vaccine, manufacturing facilities. Once they're sealed. They're very, very paranoid about contaminants entering and kind of mucking up what they're doing. And of course, one of the one of the dirtiest things you can let into your lab is humans. And so typically, once a vaccine facility is sealed, there's very little opportunity for visitation but when we were there, it was actually just weeks before their H vac system would have been signed off on and then the whole thing would have been sealed. And so at that point, it wasn't too challenging, though. I would imagine that has changed since then. Andrew Yeah. And I guess what was your process in using that like the lab in order to frame this particular part about in our intellectual property? Alex There was a Yeah, a couple things at play. There. The first one was that I was terrified that no one was ever going to read a story about intellectual property. I was intimidated to learn about intellectual property initially because it sounds very boring and very complicated. It's really not though I mean, it it really is the story of our world and medicine access and how we decide who gets medicine and who doesn't it it really I found it really fascinating. But what they're doing is really looking to up and some of these systems and so my role my intent with them is to kind of use them as example of a company really trying to push through some of these barriers when it comes to intellectual property. But also, you know, going back to this idea of the tropes that Western reporters rely on when they go to other countries. I thought it was really cool to focus on a company that is, is saying, You know what, you can keep your charity, we are going to try to flip the script here, and we're going to make our own vaccine. We're not going to wait for you know, countries to you know, give us their scraps, we're going to do it, do it for ourselves. And so putting the focus on a company and some individuals who are really trying to fix the core problem here. To me, that was really interesting. Andrew And I'm curious about the prep before you went to Angola and South Africa. I know you mentioned there was like a month long process before you even arrived. So maybe first if you could maybe take me through your pitching process for the story. Alex It was an unusual pitching process. I am definitely a preparer like when I'm able to I love doing a lot of pre reporting a lot of research in advance that when I go into a new situation, I have a pretty good sense of what's going on like which is not to say that you should let you know the reporting inform your story, but I hate going in and asking uninformed questions or, you know, talking to experts and not having looked them up in advance. So I really tried to do a lot of prep work. That said, a lot of that got blown up with this story because the pandemic was just moving so quickly and so you know, I knew early on that I wanted to do a story about global vaccine equity. But what that would look like meant basically trying to predict where the pandemic was going to be eight months down the road, which if I could do that, I probably have a different job. And so, instead of pitching, you know, specific characters or specific ways of reporting, I tried to approach this as looking at kind of almost story archetypes. So like I pitched early on that I wanted a country that could demonstrate the issue with the donation system. I wanted a story or a country that could show the issue of of vaccine geopolitics and how that was kind of being influenced. And so for each of those, I gave kind of like lists of countries I'm like, well, it might be Mexico or it might be Guatemala or it might be you know, whatever, but it kind of with the Asterix that I knew this was totally gonna change. And so the awards committee to their, to their credit, I did get their suit, the James traverse foundation. You know, I pitched this few weeks went by they came back to me and said, Hey, we love this story. We think it's great. Your pitch is already a little out of date. Can you update it? And I was like, yeah, absolutely can do that. So I did that. That second pinch, of course, was very quickly itself out of date. And so it meant just kind of constantly re re updating what I envisioned the story to be, even when I got into the reporting phase. Like I said, I two days notice I was going to Angola, then I went to Namibia and South Africa. I was literally on a plane out of Namibia when Omar Khan was announced and that I mean, torpedoed my version of the story yet again, because that really pushed us into a new phase of the pandemic. So, I mean, this was a story that had to be reimagined and reimagined and reimagined and reimagined. I probably wrote about 10 stories, you know, or 10 stories worth of words. Before we got to that kind of final version. Andrew Yeah, and I guess, maybe if you could speak a little bit more about kind of your approach, doing a long form piece about a story where the information is changing so rapidly, like how much of an influence to that breaking Daily News affect your your end product. Alex It did a fair bit. I mean, like, it was almost a blessing and a curse because on the one hand, you know, cuz when I pitched the story, initially back in early 2021, I remember people being like chasing Google vaccine equity is going to be a problem a year from now. And I was like, I don't, I don't think we're gonna fix this a year from now. So I think that'll be fine. And so I think by the time the end of the year rolled away, everyone was like, Oh, right. This is a big thing. So it was very newsy. But at the same time, things were, you know, constantly changing and being updated. And so I think what ended up being important was being able to identify some of those common themes. And so, you know, donations, even though omachron changed, I was in Angola pre Omicron, even though that has really changed things. For them. But the center idea of donations didn't really shift for them. The idea of intellectual property, again, was still relevant. And the idea of geopolitics and the omachron thing really, I think, made that more urgent but didn't change the central issue and so having a really solid understanding of what kind of the core principles of my story were helped, even if it meant that the examples and the interviews and you know, a lot of the reporting around it had to change I mean, I have so many good interviews and videos and and stuff from South Africa and from Angola that didn't make it in because Omar Khan really shifted things which broke my reporters heart, but I mean, at the end of the day, you really have to kind of make sure that you're telling the story that that's forward looking. You have to be flexible. Andrew Yeah, and I'm just curious, like, where most of those interviews done, or like scouted before you left or was that kind of a mixture of both when you were kind of finding people in Angola in South Africa while you were there. Alex It was definitely a mix of both. I had some really good conversations with for example, the head of average and before I went to South Africa, a guy with vaccines for Africa, I'd had a little bit of discussion with people Angola before I went. I talked to the people in Namibia, though I actually didn't end up using any of my reporting from Namibia. And so I had a good sense. Like I would talk to them and say okay, what do you think of the story is what what do you feel people need to know, to inform of my knowledge, but then once I got there, there was a lot of wandering around and talking to people and kind of being open to what I heard from from people on the ground. And I got to say to that, you know, local reporters, I had a translator in Angola. I was in contact with a former reporter. In South Africa, who is who was very helpful, but I mean, there's almost nothing you can learn as a Western reporter being in a country for a week or two weeks that someone who lives there doesn't know 1000 times better and so, respecting local knowledge being open to that is really important part of the process. Andrew Yeah, and I know you mentioned that your translator helped you out a lot while you were in Angola. What was kind of his role while you were there? Alex So he himself a journalist, in Angola, and so you know, he I hired him initially just just as a translator, they speak Portuguese and Angola, which is not a language I have any background in. But I think sometimes people think of translators just just kind of like little robots that you know, they've taken words in one language and kind of spit out words and another but I mean, he was fantastically useful just in terms of like, you know, we'd go into a building and he'd be like, Oh, this used to be owned by this company. And then it happened to this or he could be context on on the ministers or on the people that we're meeting. I ended up getting stuck in Angola a couple of extra days because of PCR tests challenge during a pandemic the best and so I really wanted to go on a tour of Luanda, but that's not really a thing. And a lot of they don't really have a tourism industry, I guess. And so I called my translator and I was like, Hey, can you take me on a tour? And he was like, what? And I was like, just let's just drive around and see what you think is interesting. And so I wouldn't want it to go to the kind of classic tourist touristy things. In Rwanda, but he was like, no, let's go see this cultural center. Let's go talk to this person. And it ended up being just a really interesting introduction to a city through his eyes based on what he thought was important and what an outsider needed to know. And so, I mean, it just goes beyond so much more than words. This sort of reporting really, honestly couldn't be done without the expertise of local reporters. And I think any reporter who goes and who doesn't listen to them, or does it take their their cues, is doing themselves a disservice. Andrew Was he helping at all with like finding sources or was that something that you kind of did on your own? Alex Cool. He was a little bit in the sense that we would like wander around at vaccine clinics and, you know, approach people and talk to them and he'd sometimes have suggestions for like, what questions I should ask or like, we did an interview with the head of the who and Angola and he was he tacked on a few questions of his own because he had another story that he was working on. And, but the questions that they're the answers that came out, I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. Maybe I should look into that as well. So it ended up being I think I was guiding things, but he really had his own thoughts and was a big part of the process. Andrew Was there any talk with like your editorial team about crediting maybe crediting him more than a translator or is that something that was kind of out of your hands? Alex We we had I'm not sure that we would have credited because I how we would normally do it is we either cut it as a co byline, but that's typically somebody who's had a big say in kind of how the story was shaped the files from is usually when someone kind of wrote a chunk and then contributed to your story. And so I'm not sure either of those would have been appropriate. That said like we credited him as a translator, but I worry that when a reader sees that, they just think that oh, they just, you know, translated a few words or or just helped, you know, just on the language side of things. So I was wish we a either had like a more expansive understanding of what translators do or be like some sort of like in between. Explanation like I just think because fixers and translators have been treated as as being not helpful or not integral to the process. I think people discount their role. But I don't know that we have a great way of explaining what they do. That's a good question. Like, I don't know whether you add a note do you add an essay about how the reporting worked in credit than their I don't know. i But yeah, I think that's a good question of how you explain what what they gave to the story. Andrew Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. And also you said because you wrote a little personal essay once you returned. And it you said, I was retrospectively the walking embodiment of my story, a privileged westerner who had been vaccinated months earlier and had parachuted into a country to ask people face to face what it felt like to not have had the same good fortune. So I'm just wondering if you can speak more on kind of your awareness of that kind of aspect of parachuting into these countries while you were there. And like, if whether or not you had any reservations before before going Alex Yeah. Like, I mean, like, you know, that that sentence you just read I've never had a situation like this where my own personal situation so clearly echoed the story that I was writing and it just it felt uncomfortable to go up to someone and say basically, that you know, what is it likes not be vaccinated. I love being vaccinated like it just, it felt very greasy and so trying to have those conversations in a way that felt authentic and in a way that allowed people to actually speak freely, felt difficult. I mean, the other part of it too, is that, particularly in Angola, the vaccines had been donated by Canada, and so I felt like there was a real people felt pressure, I think, or this is how I interpreted it felt pressure to express gratefulness for the vaccines or to kind of impress on me that they weren't going to waste because as a Canadian, they really wanted to say, hey, you know, we are we are, you know, taking advantage of this donation that we've been given and I don't doubt that they were trying very, very hard to get those vaccines out that felt really authentic to me. But at the same time, it really reinforced this kind of global charity model where not only do you have to wait for donations from Canada, but then you have to, you know, be grateful for it and make sure people know that you you know that you're really lucky to have it and so, it just kind of felt a little bit uncomfortable. Just in the sense that you know, I it made me very aware of my privilege here like I think, you know, there's a lot of talk about people, you know, being neutral in their reporting and, and not inserting themselves into it, but I didn't have a choice here. I was part of it, whether I wanted to or not, and my presence, you know, was seen through that lens. And so, yeah, I don't know that I have a perfect answer here. But I think it's something that reporters have to think about, like you can't it's a luxury to be like Well, I'm just not going to insert myself into it because story in cases like this. You are a part of it. And your question or reservations. I mean, we've we've heard an increasing amount of criticism in recent years about reporters parachuting in and for very fair reasons. I think it's very fair to be critical of a reporter like myself, who was literally speed reading a book on Angola on the plane, because I've had so little notice that I was going and so it's very rare to be like, well, you know, what do you know about Angola and you're very correct. I don't know a whole lot I was very dependent on on people being able to explain things to me and kind of doing very, very quick research. I do think the advantage of having a Canadian reporter go though, is I may not know Angola, but I know the Canadian audience and so I know what the conversation around vaccines has been like here. I know the fact that Canadians like to think of themselves as a country that helps others that does, what it says it's going to do on the global stage. And so I think it's fair for a Canadian reporter to look at the story through that lens. Okay, Canada says it's doing all these great things. Is it though? And that's a story. I think that in some ways demands that Canadian perspective that holding Canada to task so am I the best person to write about, you know, a deep dive on a villa? No. But I think I am positioned to write a story about whether Canada is meeting its obligations to Angola, Andrew Yeah, definitely. I'm just going to switch gears a little bit here. So graphic elements in all three parts of your series was kind of very important to me in terms of informing the narrative. So I'm just kind of curious what your relationship with the data and graphics team was throughout this whole process. Alex You know, we had a good relationship and I just want to give a shout out to I mean, the whole Toronto Star graphics team is fantastic. Andras planner, though, is the guy who did the coding on this part in particular. He's fantastic. What he could do with graphics. I don't understand it, but it's it's very cool. And so our relationship was, you know, we had a conversation at the beginning about what was the story What to tell what to be want readers to take away? And also what were the data sources that we were going to use because what data we could use what was fair to use? And, and what would give the right kind of, you know, story, I guess, or takeaway for readers was kind of a question and so once once we had that kind of common ground established, he went away and said, Okay, I've looked at the numbers, here's, you know, 10 different things. I could do to you know, try to illustrate certain points we went back and forth about what might make the work the best he made some graphics, we looked out looked at what the words so yeah, it was very much a kind of an open conversation about how we marry graphics and words and how they could kind of work together in the final project. Andrew So yeah, I guess maybe if you can maybe just take me through that a little bit more just like how did you decide what was worth using in terms of kind of informing the narrative? Alex Yeah, so a lot of this was driven by what was possible, rather than, you know, maybe what we would have done in an ideal world. You'll notice for example, in the story, there's very few comparisons of case data or death data. Which is not to say that wouldn't have been very useful to a reader personally, I would have liked to know that myself. But how those numbers are reported in various countries are so different. It really wouldn't have been fair to compare, say, death rates in Angola versus Canada. Because how they're being recorded is just so different that it's it's largely meaningless. I do in hindsight, wish I'd maybe addressed that point or explained it in the story because I had a lot of people that email me and be like, well, the death rate at a goal is very low. And the case rate is also very low. And this isn't really an issue and they don't need vaccines and edited, edited. And yes, I understand that Angola publishes case rates and that if you Google, you know our world and data will give you something but I've spoken to a lot of people who measure these sorts of things and they feel that there is very likely that much of the world is hugely undercounting, just because they don't have the capacity to be testing and to be recording deaths. You know, after h one n one, we discovered that, you know, tons of people had died in Africa that we hadn't counted during the pandemic and that is the expectation here that we will eventually discover that lots more people died than were initially counted. And so we didn't do any of that we probably shouldn't have explained it. We didn't. We did use primarily is data from UNICEF. So UNICEF was tasked with delivering all of the donated vaccines around the world. And so because they're kind of one central organization doing this for the whole world, they have really good data on like where vaccines are going, how many have been donated, how many of them pledged all that kind of stuff, and it's very accessible. It's very available data. And so that was one of our primary sources. In terms of that picture of, of, you know, who was pledging donations versus she was actually delivering them? Andrew Yeah, that's great. Yeah, the graphics were a great addition for myself, at least, to the piece. Now, you said you pitch the story through the James traverse fellowship. For folks who may not know can you maybe take me through what it is and maybe just the importance of the fellowship for this piece. Alex They are a foundation. They're based out of Ottawa out of the J school there. But it's done in memory of a journalist named James Travers. Also known as Jim travers, who he was an editor. He was a columnist. He was a foreign correspondent for a long time. You know, just kind of a lion of journalism in Ottawa and Canada, really. And so, he has passed away now and so his family has created this fellowship to try to continue that tradition of overseas reporting particularly now when you know so little of it is being done. By Canadian reporters, because that was really his efforts was that, you know, Canadian reporters need to be overseas to be, you know, bearing witness to some of the things that the Canadian government or is doing abroad or just, you know, major events that are happening in other countries and so they're really working to facilitate these projects. And so you can apply I believe applications are open now for this year. But you you can do any sort of project that you want. It just has to be for a Canadian audience, but the reporting done in another country and so typically they fund a project for $25,000. The year I did it, for the first time they split it between two of us, I think that probably had to do with pandemic concerns and fears that we may not be able to travel at all, but typically it's $25,000. And then, whatever the final project is, is typically published in a Canadian outlet. Andrew Lastly, I just kind of want to go through your journey as a journalist. I know you said you grew up in Edmonton, correct? Yes. So when did you kind of decide that journalism was something you wanted to pursue? Alex Um, I was. I took a I took the scenic route, I guess. I did not know early on. I know lots of people know when they're children. I did not. You know, I grew up playing sports, reading a lot but not being particularly on on journalism's radar. I didn't undergrad worked in tourism for a while traveled, lived in the mountains. And you know, I remember it being at my tourism job. And I loved it. It was really fun. But when I had downtime, I would sit and read the news. I just obsessively read the news. And I was just fascinated by what was going on. Even though I lived in this tiny little mountain town where, you know, global events weren't exactly coming to come into town very often, but I was just fascinated by it. And and actually, I just kind of went from that to I could do that. I think I could. I could write these stories. I wish it was a more sophisticated process than that. It really wasn't I started applying to journalism schools. Went to Carleton and Ottawa. Really wanted to work in radio. But my first job out of J school was in TV, did that for a couple years, got laid off. panics got a job in a newspaper wasn't really qualified, not sure how I got hired a newspaper. But that became that was Metro that became star Metro that we eventually got laid off again that became the star and so it's it's it has been us. Yeah, and even journey I guess, but I I've tried to stay open to new opportunities, tried to learn anything I can. It's really important to me to keep developing my skills, keep learning new things. And it's allowed me I guess, an interesting places, if unexpected places. Andrew Yeah, so I guess just in the future, are there some stories that you'd kind of like to tell going forward? Alex It's a good question. I mean, there's big categories that are gonna be big. I think climate change is going to be it's gonna be the next COVID I think and that it's going to be part of every beat. I think the transition out of the pandemic is going to be a huge story that hopefully we're going to be able to tell her start dialing relatively soon. Yeah, I guess just to and I personally am really excited by a lot of stuff happening in startup media right now. I'm really watching some of these little guys that are starting to pop up and so when I look at the future of journalism, I'm thinking I think not necessarily always about what the stories are, but who's telling them and how, and I think there's some interesting stuff happening on the horizon. MUSIC INTRO Andrew Great. And that's the end of the fifth episode of our season. pull quotes is published by The Review of Journalism at X University. Our show hosts are Gabe Oatley and Rahaf Farawi. Our podcast team also includes Annika Forman and myself, Andrew Oliphant. Technical and audio support is provided by Angela Glover and web support by Lindsay Hanna. Our executive producer is Sonya Fatah and the music is by Harrison Amer. Join us in about 10 days for our next episode. Take care. MUSIC OUTRO