A quick introduction to our ever-changing team of journalists

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/09/2020 (1819 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Newsrooms tend to be unusual work places and spaces. At their best, they’re full of thoughtful, curious and interesting people. They can be stressful and busy, depending on the news of the day or the deadlines the staff face on any given night.

They also are as changeable as the wind. The characters who write news, take pictures, edit the stories and write the opinions in the editorial section all contribute to your daily newspaper, lending a piece of themselves and their personalities to the news.

And sometimes those characters move on to other endeavours, as in the case of our former health beat reporter Bud Robertson who retired from the profession at the end of August. In fact, there have been a few changes here in the newsroom and a few new faces to our staff that our readers should be aware of going forward. Chief among them is a change to our newsroom management.

As of Monday, Michele Taylor will begin her new role as night editor for the Sun. Taylor, who has spent the last 15 years in Northern Canada, served as the senior editor for Northern News Services in Yellowknife, N.W.T., for two years, and years prior to that was the Northern News Services photo editor/production editor. She has been a consultant for Journalists for Human Rights, though her most recent sojourn has been as a Local Journalism Initiative journalist for Yellowknife’s Cabin Radio.

She replaces the role left open by Tyler Clarke, who spent more than two years in the night editor’s chair. Clarke will reprise his former position as a reporter/photographer in our newsroom and will become the Sun’s new rural and military beat reporter, and will handle the lion’s share of reporting for our weekly publication, Westman This Week.

Another new face in our newsroom is Emily Klatt, a recent grad of the University of Saskatchewan who joined our newsroom just last month. She has assumed the health beat, which will include much of our ongoing coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this summer, former political reporter Drew May slipped into the court and crime beat, and spends a great deal of his time these days in the Brandon courthouse. Colin Slark, who started slightly more than a year ago on the education and business beats now covers Brandon City Council, and covers political stories both federally and provincially for the Sun. He will still be writing some business reports as well.

Kyle Darbyson, who has also just celebrated his one-year anniversary with the Sun will come off of weekends and begin work as the paper’s new education and arts/entertainment beat reporter, starting this month. Darbyson has also shown affinity for features on classic cars and their owners, so continue to look for his byline in the Friday Rides section.

Michele LeTourneau, who started with the paper in January, will continue in her current role as the Brandon Sun’s Indigenous Beat reporter, through the federal government’s Local Journalism Initiative program announced last year.

There is also a recent addition to our newsroom on the sports desk. Joining Wheat Kings reporter Perry Bergson and varsity sports reporter Thomas Friesen is Devon Shewchuk, who is following MJHL and curling action in western Manitoba. Shewchuk spend time as an intern at the Winnipeg Free Press last year, and in 2018 spend the summer as the media relations assistant for the Winnipeg Goldeyes.

And you can often find reporter-photographer Tim Smith out in the public looking at the community through a trusty camera lens.

These journalists, along with so many others employed by the paper, are part of your local news team in Brandon and western Manitoba. We take pride in what we do, and we aim to both serve the public, and reflect it — both bad and good — in our capacity as journalists.

I find that new people and new faces can often bring about interesting changes in the way we cover the news, and how we approach a story, because each of us brings a different set of life experiences and skill sets to the roles we fill within the newsroom. And variety is the spice of life, so they say.

Should you have any questions or comments about our coverage, or stories that you believe we should be covering, please contact our city desk line at (204) 571-7430, our general inbox at opinion@brandonsun.com or contact me directly at mgoerzen@brandonsun.com.

» Matt Goerzen, editor