Your mission, should you choose to accept it: go to a city in the U.S. Midwest, learn about a certain line of farm equipment, interview sources, shoot them (with a camera) and then keep quiet.
Cue the Mission Impossible music. It’s that last part that seems like mission impossible for reporters, who are trained and paid to reveal information to others as accurately and as quickly as possible.
But keeping quiet is essential in this case, to preserve an embargo agreement with the source.
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I accepted the mission and true to form, the e-mail describing its particulars (a “tape” is so MI 1970s) self-destructed within 30 seconds, though only because I accidentally deleted it.
Nevertheless, the mission got underway last week and the Midwest proved most unwelcoming, with 35 C heat and humidity making it feel like
47 C, according to the heat index. In Canada, we have windchill calculations. In the Midwest, they have the heat index. It’s hard to say which one is more uncomfortable.
Typical of missions impossible, there were weapons involved – cameras, digital recorders, iPhones, BlackBerries, truth serum (aka booze) and the aforementioned punishing humidity.
The only things missing from the MI were the villains. To the contrary, the equipment folks embraced the vaunted midwestern friendliness.
There was information. There was recreation. There was celebration.
Why, by the time the secret thing was unveiled with much fanfare and exciting climax, I was ready to leap to my feet and shout, “I’ll take two!”
Fortunately, the cynicism ingrained in journalists prevented such a potentially expensive outburst. You want a mission impossible? Try getting a million-dollar purchase past the bean counters back at the office.
The people at the crux of this mission want to officially launch their new product at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, Aug. 31-Sept. 2. In aWestern Producerissue soon after that, the results of this mission can be revealed to you, the readers.
I could tell you now, but then I’d have to kill you. And given the readership of theProducer,that would decimate all of Western Canadian agriculture, leading to mass starvation and economic collapse. So just don’t ask me. As long as I don’t have to face 47 C heat again, I won’t crack.
