The care and feeding of reporters: A lawyer's guide

• Author: Tracey Tyler
• Pages: 331-339

331

g Sring 2011

e care an eein  eers:

A LAWYER’S GUIDE

TRACEY TYLER

Journalists and lawyers seem ever-fascinated by each other’s

work. Perhaps it is the case, to borrow from Harry Kopyto, that we are

stuck together like Krazy Glue.

I once had a call from a lawyer with a case he wanted to publicize

and a plan for making that happen. He decided to provide documents

in advance to my colleague Kirk Makin so that he could break the story

exclusively in The Globe and Mail. According to the plan, I was to come

along the following day and write a “softer” story about his client.

More recently, in another memorable encounter, I found myself at a

legal conference seated beside a veteran criminal lawyer who was quite

curious about how much I made. I didn’t tell him, but his interest in the

subject wasn’t abating. He said he was shocked to discover most print

reporters in Canada earn less than $100,000. With pity in his eyes, he

told me how tragic it was that I would never know the thrill of going

to the Kitchen Table grocery store and lling a cart with $100 worth of

impulse buys, as he had the previous weekend. In retrospect, what was

most astonishing about these conversations was that I was having them

with lawyers – members of a profession to whom words matter, but

who, at those moments, seemed to have little appreciation of the eect

of what they were saying.

It happens. Lawyers are human. Sometimes, in dealings between

journalists and lawyers, it’s the non-verbal issues that trip you up. It can