With border closures, trade challenges and sundry other festerings, relations between Canada and the United States these days are cool or downright chilly.
And so we are sending an envoy.
In the clever guise of a newspaper publisher, as shown in the caricature above, Elaine Shein will soon infiltrate the U.S. agricultural press and begin reparations to international relations.
Well, that’s the most positive spin I can put on some sad news for The Western Producer. Shein, editor and deputy publisher of this newspaper, served her last day here June 13 and next week begins a new job as publisher and editor of Capital Press Agriculture Weekly based in Salem, Oregon.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Capital Press, circulation 40,000, is the largest farm and ranch newspaper on the American west coast.
Shein, 38, spent 14 years at the Producer, serving first as a reporter and then as Farm Living editor. She became managing editor in 1993 and in 1999 was named to the top job in the editorial department.
Of course, her interest in agricultural journalism dates back to her teenage years, when Shein became a member of the newspaper’s Young Co-operators Club. As Kountry Kid, she sent more than 100 stories, poems and essays, all of them carefully written from her childhood bedroom or the fields and granary rooftops of the family farm near Alticane, Sask.
Her deep connection and pride in agricultural life plus a consuming interest in journalism led her to this newspaper and to membership in various professional journalism organizations.
Did Yankee allures prove irresistible to our editor? In fact, the writing appeared on the wall in December 2002 when corporate restructuring prompted plans to eliminate the editor/deputy publisher position at the WP later this year.
So when Capital Press announced its need for a person with newspaper experience, writing ability, management skills and other talents, Shein fit the bill.
And it came time for us to bid her farewell.
Shein’s departure will create some challenges for us, but readers can rest assured that the standard of excellence she emphasized will be upheld. Letters will reach an editor, queries and story ideas will find an ear and the paper will continue as always to serve its readers.
Through speeches, letters, phone calls and columns, Shein has touched the lives of many western Canadian farmers and ranchers. No doubt they will join the rest of the WP staff in wishing her continued success in the newspaper field.
