When disaster strikes, the first need beyond protection of life and limb is the need for information. People need to know what happened, how it happened, who was affected, the ramifications and the potential scenarios that might result.
That’s how it was with BSE.
The discovery was a shock and the ramifications were huge and many. Our job as a newspaper was to deliver as much information as possible to our readers so they could take stock, assess damages and make plans.
BSE was and is the biggest agricultural story of our time and we amassed and delivered reams of data.
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How much? The Producer ran about 650 stories in 2003 that mentioned BSE, and so far in 2004 it has published another 485. And counting.
Back in April, 11 months into the crisis, we entered stories from our early BSE coverage in the annual writing contest of the American Agricultural Editors Association. Last week, we got word that it had been judged as AAEA’s story of the year and that our reporting team had won first place in the team story competition.
It feels good to get awards and compliments from peers in the agricultural media – almost as good as getting compliments from readers about our coverage.
And we hope it’s a sign that we did a reasonable job of meeting information needs on the subject.
Like readers, reporters sometimes get weary of a topic about which the news is consistently bad.
Maybe that’s what photojournalist Michael Raine was escaping when he went out on a frosty December dawn to shoot a photograph. A cattle drive was under way near Blackstrap Lake in central Saskatchewan and Raine caught the scene: frost-muzzled cattle, shadowy riders and a chuckwagon rambling amid ice fog and the early tangerine rays of the sun.
Voila! The shot was judged photo of the year by the AAEA, and Raine was named photographer of the year. It’s the third time he has earned that title, and those of us who work with him can fully understand why.
Six other photo awards have Raine’s name on them this year, and our readers saw each and every one of the winners first, right here in the pages of the Producer.
See page 70 for another look at the photo of the year, plus a list of our awards.
There’s no better time than this to thank you, our readers, customers and sources, for helping us deliver information through this newspaper.
We promise that we won’t rest on these laurels, so now it’s back to work.
