New reporters covering underserved beats

By Lethbridge Herald on August 4, 2023.

LEAVE IT TO BEEBER
Al Beeber

Readers have in recent weeks noticed that we have two new bylines appearing regularly in the pages of The Herald.

Steffanie Costigan, who along with fellow Lethbridge College journalism student Justin Sibbet, joined us this summer doing freelance work, has since been hired as our Local Journalism Initiative reporter focusing on crime and homelessness.

These are huge issues in Lethbridge and Steffanie is working doggedly pursuing stories on these subjects from every angle possible.

We’re fortunate to have her dedication and commitment to getting all angles of stories contributing to the content of our pages.

Theodora Macleod is a recent university graduate who for now is working remotely out of her home in Edmonton but she will soon be relocating here to Lethbridge where she has assumed our LJI position covering Indigenous matters.

This contract was a renewal of the one which our dearly missed friend and coworker Ry Clarke handled so diligently and well while he graced our newsroom.

Theodora is handling all matters Indigenous for us and it’s my goal – as I told Pam Blood, the Director of Communications and Community Engagement for the Blood Tribe – to really put a focus on stories that are positive, affirmative, uplifting and show the achievements of the Indigenous population in southern Alberta.

If we want negativity, we can watch the Toronto Maple Leafs – or Edmonton Elks – on TV and those teams give us more negativity than anybody needs in their lives.

I’m hoping to get Theodora working on some feel-good stories which will also help break down barriers in our communities. We all need positivity in our lives and like Steffanie, she’s got real motivation and some good writing chops.

This newsroom is a vastly different place than when I first started here in August of 1987, a whopping 36 years ago.

If my aging memory serves me right, we had about 24 full-time staff and two part-time typesetters in Cheryl Crow and Shirley Plontke.

Our crew included three photographers in Elwood Ferguson, David Rossiter and Kevin Kooy, three sports writers who included Randy Jensen, Craig Albrecht and Ron Devitt.

Ric Swihart, Ron Watmough, Pat Sullivan, Garry Harker and Joanne Helmer were page editors, Garry Allison was city editor and John Fairington was managing editor.

We had a great diverse crew of young journalists, many of them recent graduates from Lethbridge College, a few who I still keep up with to this day. Jim Haskett came on board shortly after I arrived following Fairington’s departure and I have a lot of fond memories going on Herald ball trips with him in my Dodge Daytona with Dave Sulz squeezed into its tiny backseat. We also had correspondents who covered various areas including the Crowsnest Pass.

In that era, we covered southern Alberta in its entirety, not leaving any community untouched. I remember covering council meetings in Claresholm, Pincher Creek, Coaldale and occasionally even Vulcan for the paper when I first joined the staff.

While Delon Shurtz has been primary court reporter since he joined us two years after I did, when I started we new reporters rotated on the beat.

Over the years, the newsroom has evolved and now our once bustling newsroom is largely quiet during the day with rarely there being more than three people in it at any single time.

But even though our staff has shrunk and our community grown, we’re still giving the community strong local coverage.

We may not hitting everything all the time

And the arrivals of Steffanie and Theodora are going to enhance that coverage even more, giving us two journalists who can spend their days specializing on beats that are both under-served and important.

If you have any potential story ideas for them, please contact me here at editor@lethbridgeherald.com or by phone at 403-388-1153.

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