One thing learned pretty quickly in the journalism field is that past experience invariably comes in handy. Even when it seems unrelated to the story at hand, life experience and the corresponding ability to understand or analyze or empathize is a key element in the reporter’s repertoire.
Doubtless that will be the case for Daniel Winters, the Western Producer’s new reporter in the Brandon bureau
news. He has travelled widely and has worked in the news business off and on since 1996. Now he has returned to a job near his home and synonymous with his interests.
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Originally from Oak Lake, Man., Winters was born and raised on the family farm. Several summer sessions as a tree planter in Ontario earned money for travel; first to California, and then to Europe, Turkey, Rhodes, Cypress and Israel.
Another summer of tree planting, a job he says he fell in love with, launched other trips. A three-month tour of India was particularly memorable.
“That was really an eye opener for a prairie farm boy, to see how poor people can be,” he says now.
When it came time to choose a career, the potential excitement of journalism attracted him to the field, when he and a friend enrolled in Creative Communications at Red River College in Winnipeg.
“We wanted to be war correspondents, hard drinking war correspondents, dodging bullets,” Winters says of his early goals. But flying bullets weren’t part of his first journalism job at the Humboldt Journal, and there proved to be a similar shortage at his next stop with the Grand Forks Gazette in British Columbia.
By then the travel bug had bitten again, and Winters took a job in Thailand. He became a copy editor at the Bangkok Post, where he worked on the business and international desks and learned to speak fluent Thai. He met and married Apinya, and they had a daughter, Katya, who is now 7.
It was at the Post that Winters’ dream of being a war correspondent died a timely death.
“I saw how unremarkable it was when a journalist gets killed. It’s common and the world moves on. And now that I have a family, I would like to do something that’s more positive than body count journalism.”
He moved with his family back to Oak Lake and back to his roots.
“I eventually realized that I am a farm boy and that’s what I like doing. And I like reporting. It’s something I’m good at and something I like doing.”
Winters started work with the Producer last week and can be found in the newspaper’s office in the Brandon Chamber of Commerce building on 11th Street.
Give him a call at 204-726-9463.
