Donham and Meek, PR consultants
Two of Nova Scotia's best journalists, Parker Donham and Jim
Meek, have taken up public relations. "You've seen me do some things that
you know have taken a bit ofgumption," Donham wrote someone who'd denounced
him as a sell-out. "So why would you think that just because I've changed
to a different line of work I would suddenly abandon the qualities that have
enabled me to do that?"
By: Sandi Lamey
Posted: Oct. 21, 2002
"What is going on?" Parker Donham says to himself as he hangs up
the phone, bewildered. His freelance column for the Halifax Daily News has been
killed and he has no idea why.
"Parker," Bill Turpin says apologetically, "I have to kill your
column. As a personal favour, I'm asking you not to make a fuss about it."
Donham considers the debt he owes Turpin, the Daily News editor, for the friendship,
loyalty, and professionalism he's shown him over the years. He knows Turpin
must have good reasons for this request. Without hesitation Donham replies,
"Of course Bill."
Donham was one of Nova Scotia's most respected freelance journalists. He had
more Atlantic Journalism Awards to his credit than any other journalist in the
region. Besides writing two opinion columns a week for the Daily News, he also
appeared every Thursday on the CBC's political panel. But when he got that phone
call from Turpin, not long after Sept. 11, 2001, he lost the stability in his
life.
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Parker Barss Donham: "So all of
a sudden that line of work wasn't so far fetched, and moreover I was good
at it!"
PHOTO: KERRY DELOREY |
The CBC was under new management, which wanted to cut back on regional programming.
Donham knew he might lose his position. As a freelancer whose work consisted
mostly of Nova Scotian stories, he was finding it harder to sell his work nationally,
and to get the rates he used to. But he thought he could at least fall back
on the Daily News. Think again, he now realized.
Not long after Donham's first column was spiked, Turpin had to cut a few lines
out of another column because its criticisms of Israel were at odds with the
owners' editorial policy on the Middle East.
The paper was under new ownership, the Asper family's CanWest Global of Winnipeg,
and the way things had worked at the paper had changed. The Aspers had made
it clear that certain editorial points of view -- questioning Prime Minister
Jean Chretien's integrity, for example, or accusing Israel of unnecessary violence
against Palestinians -- would not be tolerated. But the full extent and force
of these policies was a closely guarded secret that Donham was unaware of when
his first column was rejected.
"Bill was struggling with trying to implement these policies that he personally
found repugnant," Donham says. Turpin wasn't obligated to tell Donham why
his story was being cut. But, unable to kill another one of his friend's columns
without telling him why, Turpin decided to tell him the truth.
"God, Bill," Donham remembers saying, "I knew the CBC was shaky,
but I've been thinking at least I have the Daily News while I figure out what
the hell to do with my life."
"Oh no, don't count on this place, Parker," Donham recalls Turpin
saying.
In the midst of all this change, a new career was making its way onto Donham's
radar. When he helped an old friend move a call centre from San Francisco to
North Sydney, he found he really enjoyed the project. He learned how to run
a business, and at the same time put his personal resources to use by teaching
these people everything they needed to know about how things work in Nova Scotia.
Donham says he'd worked with many outstanding people over the years at both
the CBC and the Daily News, but near the end he felt like the organizations
just didn't value his services. With the call centre project he found people
who really appreciated his work.
"So all of a sudden that line of work didn't sound so far-fetched, and
moreover, I was good at it!"
When Donham started to consider a new path he asked different people in the
consulting business for advice on pursuing that kind of work. From this new
insight the prospect of changing careers became more appealing.
He and two friends, Bill Richards, an environmental engineer with Nova Scotia
Power, and John Hugh Edwards, director of the St. F. X. University extension
department in Sydney, decided to form a partnership called the Kempt Head Institute.
All members of the volunteer fire department, the three would sit around the
fire hall talking about how their combined skills would be perfect for their
own part-time business.
The partnership began in September 2001 when they got a small contract with
the Department of Transportation. They handled the communications end of a project
to rebuild the Seal Island Bridge, near their home in Kempt Head, Cape Breton.
They informed the public about what was going on with the project and what to
expect in terms of delays. Donham says people don't mind delays as much if they
know about them before they encounter them.
A few months later, Donham learned from one of his consultant contacts that
Phonse Jessome, head communicator for the Sydney Tar Ponds Cleanup Agency, was
leaving for personal reasons. The position was open if Donham wanted to go for
it.
"I said, 'Well, I'm interested in the work, but I don't want a job.' If
they wanted to take it as a consulting contract with the Kempt Head Institute,
we'd do that."
A few weeks later Donham found himself chatting with the CEO of the agency,
Bob Fowler. The result of that meeting was a contract between the Kempt Head
Institute and the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency, and Donham's decision to end his
career in journalism.
Around the time these changes were happening in Parker Donham's life, Jim Meek,
who'd taken a buy-out from the Halifax Herald, was also drifting away from journalistic
work.
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Jim Meek: "I'm ambiguous about
the change. If I had the right opportunity to get back into journalism I
would do it tomorrow."
PHOTO: SANDI LAMEY |
Meek was a political reporter, editorial writer and columnist for the Herald
from the late 1970s, in Halifax and Ottawa. In 1997-1998 he attended Harvard
for a year of study, on a Martin Wise Goodman Canadian Nieman Fellowship. A
year later he left the Herald and tried his hand as a senior producer for a
year at CBC television. Now he's back doing freelance work for the Herald and
has started a new career in consulting.
Like Donham, Meek didn't want to be an employee, but when asked, he agreed
to do some consulting work with the Bristol Group, a Halifax marketing and communications
company.
"I provide editorial guidance on sectors I know, where they want some
help just on a knowledge basis," says Meek. These sectors include a bit
of everything from energy to fisheries to politics. His work also includes speech
and report writing and editing.
Unlike Donham's dramatic situation, where everything seemed to be going wrong
and he knew he had to get out, Meek says things happened for him quite smoothly.
He didn't intend to switch from journalism to communications. "People started
to ask me to do some things and at some point you find yourself over there more."
Going "over there," or selling out as it's often called because of
the tension between journalism and public relations, can often spark not-so-nice
opinions from former colleagues.
Donham says, for the most part, he has heard from disappointed but courteous
well-wishers. In fact, he says he received hundreds of kind e-mails when he
left journalism, but as luck would have it, he lost them all in an e-mail crash
before he could respond to most of them. He says he feels terrible about that,
but he did get a chance to respond to one person who had basically denounced
him as a sell-out.
Donham remembers writing, "You've seen me do some things that you know
have taken a bit of gumption. So why would you think that just because I've
changed to a different line of work I would suddenly abandon the qualities that
have enabled me to do that?" The man e-mailed him back an apology.
Jim Meek says no one has ever given him a hard time for working on the other
team, and he says if they did he'd tell them that he has to make a living too.
Meek says he enjoys his new work because it keeps him busy. He's also teaching
a feature writing class to third-year King's journalism students and has tutored
first-years. Bob Howse, editor-in-chief of the Herald, considers teaching a
good fit for him. He says Meek was well respected by young journalists at the
Herald, and was often asked for advice. Howse describes Meek as a humourous
and good-hearted person, who was always good at finding that different angle.
I learned the truth of this when I went to get a picture of him during his
class at King's.
"Do you all know Sandi?" he said, gesturing to me, red-faced at the
back of the class. "She interviewed me this morning." Then he went
on to talk about interviewing techniques, using me as an example for the class,
and complimenting me on my use of open-ended questions and silence during the
interview that morning.
From working in journalism, Meek has learned a lot about issues and how to
present information to people in a clear manner, which makes him valuable in
any communications job. Though the two fields are often at odds, he says many
of the values, from his point of view, are similar.
"If you were to define public relations, it isn't trying to manipulate
information, " he says, though he acknowledges that often it does. "It's
trying to present information, an argument, in a clear and lucid fashion,"
which is very similar to what journalism does. But Meek says the nature of the
two fields is quite different and sometimes he finds it difficult to walk the
line between the two.
"Journalism is a public trust, consultancy is a private contract, or something
like that. Journalism matters in a way that consultancy doesn't in the public
realm."
Some might say these two professions can't be mixed, but Meek says as long
as he can separate the two, there is no problem with doing both at the same
time.
"I'm not going to dance around on pin heads to justify what I do. I mean,
I think I can do both. I think I can do both well, and if you don't agree with
me so be it."
In journalism one might assume that public relations officers are trying to
hide something, and perhaps they are scared of the journalist portraying their
client in a bad light. But as a PR consultant, "you meet clients in a position
that's unsuspicious, a position of trust."
Parker Donham says seeing how things work from the other side is one of the
most interesting things about the switch from journalism to PR.
"I mostly wrote about government throughout my career and mostly Nova
Scotia government, and I sure didn't know much about it," he laughs. "The
way things happen and the way I thought things happened are quite different."
Now he has as much work as he can handle. As head communicator for the tar
ponds he advises the agency on how to inform the public about the cleanup progress.
He says too many people have a doomsday mentality about the tar ponds -- they
think that the waste can't be cleaned up, for example, or no progress has been
made, which is not true. Donham has even brought in bus tours to see the cleanup
progress.
He also has a few other contracts through the Kempt Head Institute on the go,
such as warning people about repaving that's happening over the next six weeks
on the Canso Causeway between Cape Breton and the mainland.
Even though he's happy with the change, Donham says it was difficult at times.
"I had always wanted to be a journalist; I never wanted to be anything
else."
Donham says his early years at the Daily News were the most fun he's ever had
in journalism. He worked with "superb reporters who went out on the street
every day and did their level best to kick the Herald's ass."
Doug MacKay, former editor-in-chief of the Daily News, sums up Donham's abilities.
"He would stick to the truth because he knows he has to defend it, and
because he's an honest man. But at the same time he knows what has to be done
to persuade people to a certain point of view." MacKay, who's now working
as a copy editor for Bloomberg News in Toronto, says Donham's a very experienced,
intelligent and opinionated guy, with a good sense for journalism.
Donham acknowledges that when he was referred to as a former journalist in
the news after quitting his column and the CBC's political panel, he felt a
bit of a jolt. He wasn't sure if starting this new career in communications
was the right choice, and he was scared of how it would all turn out. But when
he got into the work he discovered something: "I hadn't realized how deep
a rut I was in."
He says he doesn't regret the change, nor does he want to go back. "I
got to spout off my opinions for 30 years. I'm a bit like a sponge that's been
run dry."
Jim Meek says for him the change wasn't that difficult. Like anything, it's
something new and different to get accustomed to, but at a 40-50 per cent difference
in pay per hour, Meek says the money's good and the job really isn't a ball
and chain. However, if the circumstances were such in his personal life that
he could go back to journalism, he says he would.
"I'm ambiguous about the change. If I had the right opportunity to get
back to journalism I would do it tomorrow. In terms of where my heart is, that's
where it is. That's what I like. It's fun. It matters more."
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