680News - Lisa Brandt

For about six weeks now, I’ve been writing a weekly column for Sun Media. Turning Points appears in all of the Sun’s newspapers across the country including The Toronto Sun, of course, each Friday in the Money section.

I was asked to write the column based on my broadcasting career, the challenges I’ve encountered and how I’ve overcome them. It has been a lot of fun so far and I’ve received e-mails and letters from readers who want to share their own experiences or comment on mine. It’s fascinating to discover what strikes a chord with people. I’m finding that it’s not what I expect. Something I think of as a run-of-the-mill comment is what tends to touch someone who reads my words.

Writing an opinion and advice column is very different from writing news, which is based on facts and should be absolutely free of my thoughts and personal feelings. It’s a bit liberating, actually, to express myself in the way that I want to without the tight parameters that go along with broadcast news.

Radio and specifically 680News radio are my great career loves but some side projects can be a lot of fun. Many of us have other talents that we express in other types of media. For a few years, Paul Cook hosted a TV show called Agenda. You might notice a familiar voice or two from 680News doing voice-overs for television or DVD. As with Turning Points, these projects allow us to show another dimension of ourselves and reveal what else we’re capable of.

Everyone is perplexed by the apparent attempted suicide of actor Owen Wilson.

They say that genius is close to madness and it’s the laughing clown who’s always crying on the inside. Wilson is known for his comic turns in hit films including Wedding Crashers, Night At The Museum, the Shanghai movies co-starring Jackie Chan and You, Me and Dupree. He’s also a very talented writer, having been nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay, The Royal Tenenbaums. Owen and his brother Luke started out in the movie business together by co-writing and starring in the indie hit, Bottle Rocket. He seemed to have it all.

Sunday’s 911 call details have been disclosed and the call for an ambulance from Wilson’s home did come in as an “attempt suicide.” The 38-year-old actor is recovering in a Los Angeles hospital from an apparent overdose and possibly some cuts on his wrists. Reports vary. But it is clear that he was depressed and tried to harm himself.

As a society, we still know so little about mental illness and it seems we don’t want to learn more. I don’t presume to analyze the life of a Hollywood movie star, but Wilson, a legendary party animal, hadn’t been seen in public in some time. We need to recognize it as a warning sign when a friend suddenly stops accepting invitations to socialize. He had a very public break-up with Kate Hudson. We don’t know if that played a part.

We don’t really know a lot about what may have contributed to this sad situation but as Wilson pleads for privacy and time to heal, maybe we can all look around at those we love and just make sure everyone’s doing okay. Health experts say there are warning signs for depression and suicide. We all need to get better at noticing them.

Reporter Katie Simpson had a story this morning that hit home for a lot of us. It’s “September shock,” a phenomenon that kicks in after Labour Day for those of us who no longer attend school.

Everything becomes more serious, from dress codes to meeting schedules, which may have become lax while your colleagues and managers were on summer vacation.

There’s less sunlight and fewer opportunities to skip out of the office and maybe take a longer than usual lunch on a patio.

We may not have to pick up new binders and textbooks for ourselves but we will pick up the difference in tone on the job. Families are back in their routines of getting everybody up and out on time. It can take a toll on your state of mind as the same boss who lets you slack off in the summer cracks the whip on productivity as fall approaches.

You can actually feel the change in energy! And it’s only (gulp) a few days away.

The thing about working with journalists is, we don’t like an unanswered question.

Where someone in another line of work might muse aloud about something they see or wonder about and then move on, we will search relentlessly for the answer. With that in mind, I need to tell you how our colleague Ann Doose helped the entire 680News staff this week!

Every once in a while the fire alarm goes off in our building. In the control room, where our shows originate, a light flashes like a slow strobe. Sometimes it goes on for a long while. Occasionally we look out the glass walls and see our co-workers leaving the newsroom. While you have to have a certain amount of trust that they won’t leave you to be barbecued, you still have to wonder a bit when you aren’t actually told that things are going to be okay.

It happened again this week during the midday show, on which Ann doose is an anchor. Later, once she had left the station, Ann happened to see a firefighter. So she asked him about our lot in life in an office building downtown. We are on the fifth floor. What would happen if we needed to be rescued? It turns out, Toronto Fire has a truck right around the corner from us that reaches up to the seventh. We’re saved! Ann has been spreading this information and easing the minds of those of us who have wondered.

If you have a question, ask a journalist. They won’t rest until they find you the answer.

Radio announcers of all stripes and types are subject to the offerings of public relations professionals. In all-news radio there isn’t much room to use the average news release about an event or a product. If somebody is trying to get on the air, there has to be some legitimate news value to what they’re pushing. Too often it’s just an attempt to circumvent the usual process and “sneak one in” when we’re not looking.

I have received all sorts of gizmos and gifts over the years. Let’s call them what they are – bribes. But they’re only bribes in the sense that no deal has been made for them to be sent. The sender is operating on pure optimism alone.

Besides the usual promotional goodies, I was once delivered a fully cooked and stuffed turkey by someone wanting to talk on air about the new basting method a frozen turkey company was using to ensure the meat stayed moist. The bird was still hot out of the oven and it pained me to turn it and its deliverer away! I guess they thought no one in their right mind would turn down a cooked turkey but they were wrong.

The days of opening up the studio door to whoever drops by were over decades ago. We take our news tips by phone, e-mail or fax. And if you are writing a news release on a topic that may be of interest to our listeners, there are some general guidelines to follow.

First, get to the point fast. We don’t have a lot of time to wade through paragraphs of fancy storytelling before we learn what you’re trying to tell us. We are all working against deadlines and we like to take information the way we give it – quickly and cleanly without a lot of filler.

Explain to us why it matters to listeners of an all-news radio station. If you can do that, you may actually have a legitimate reason for contacting us. If you can’t then maybe you need to rethink your approach.

Find out to whom you should be sending your material. If it’s about a musician, then you need Rudy Blair. If it’s with regard to movies, you want Leslie James. Jennifer Young is our midday health specialist. If you take the time to find out who the right person is you’ll have a better shot at accomplishing your goal. I’m amazed at how many people call me in the middle of the afternoon and are surprised that I’m not at the station! I work on the morning show, people – I’m up at 3 a.m. so there’s no way I’m in the newsroom at 3 p.m.

It’s not always easy to get coverage but doing a little bit of homework before you try could end up paying off.

We are professional newscasters, editors and writers but first and foremost, we are human beings. So as we head into a precious summer weekend with thoughts of loved ones, get-togethers and down-time, we are very much aware that all this week we have been reporting on an unusual number of families in crisis.

The family of York Detective Constable Rob Plunkett, killed senselessly in the line of duty while investigating airbag thefts in Newmarket last week.

The families of the miners trapped underground in a Utah mine and their anguish over wondering whether the men are still alive.

The family of Christina Calayaca, the Toronto woman lost in the woods near Thunder Bay since Monday.

And those are just a few. They stick with us while we follow even the smallest developments in their stories as they unfold and we hope with everyone else for happy endings for all. But that’s not always how it works, is it?

Please do have a safe weekend, won’t you? And give an extra hug to those you love.

This is one of those types of stories that we receive on the newswire on a semi-regular basis, but may not ever make it onto our airwaves. Sometimes, there simply isn’t enough time in an hour to fit them in and more important news always takes priority. It all depends on what’s happening that day. But, I thought this was a tidbit worth sharing here.

Thai officials apparently have a problem with police officers getting into minor trouble on the job so they have come up with a unique way of shaming them into behaving better. From now on, any officer in Bangkok who shows up late, parks in a no parking zone or any number of other small infractions, will have to wear an armband featuring the Hello Kitty logo.

Hello Kitty is from a Japanese toy line that appeals to little girls. Higher ups in the police departments think the macho police officers will be so humiliated by wearing the cute little cat sitting on two hearts, that they won’t get into any trouble again. Under the new form of discipline, the officers will have to spend the day in the department office, wearing the Kitty logo in front of their peers.

It’s highly doubtful that we have the same kind of discipline problems on our police forces that they do in Thailand, but could you imagine if Toronto police Chief Bill Blair decided to impose a similar punishment, say, with Dora The Explorer ball caps or Barbie vests? For starters, the union would never stand for it but even as a concept, it’s just so absurd! We simply could never make this stuff up.

It happened again this week – a peril of the early riser. A courier came to my door in the mid-afternoon and rang the bell despite my clearly worded sign that reads: SHIFT WORKER SLEEPING – PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB! When I finally dragged my dazed and dozing self to the door, the courier held up a package as if it were a rare diamond and said, “I saw the sign but I thought you’d want this anyway!” Some people simply don’t get it.

Only people who have worked shifts can truly understand what it’s like to get up at 1:30, 2 or 3 a.m. each morning. Those are the various times members of the 680News morning show start our days. After more than eight years straight on these hours I think I have figured out a couple of things we are doing wrong.

First, we fake that we’re awake. Even when we’re dragging our behinds and feeling as frisky as a three-toed sloth, you’d probably never know it. We are so far past complaining about being tired that we just perk up and get on with it and we’ll admit that we have very little sympathy for anyone who joins us short term and whines about their lack of sleep. But we also give the impression that it’s no problem rising each day when many people are just getting to bed.

Second, we really love our jobs. This is a huge problem! If we love our jobs and the jobs require us to get up at 3 a.m., well, then, who is there to blame but ourselves?!

Each of us on the morning show has tales of thoughtless people who have interrupted our precious naps in some way and not even realized it was an imposition. My favourite was the sweet little boy who was looking for sponsors for a rope-skipping fund-raiser at his elementary school. After he woke me up with crazed doorbell ringing I asked him if he saw my sign. “I read it”, he said, “But I didn’t think it meant me.” He was just so darn cute that I sponsored him.

Have a terrific long weekend, drive safely and get lots of sleep!

We rely on you to help us blanket the city with our coverage of traffic problems. You would not believe how hard our traffic reporters work. If they’re not sharing info with each other or the News Editor they’re monitoring the Compass cameras, taking tips from listeners, keeping track of faxed, e-mailed and internet-posted construction and other related updates, making sure the proper sponsors are getting credit and, of course, going live on the air and making sense of information that’s just seconds old. It is quite a juggling act! And they do it professionally and they make it sound easy – but it’s not.

They also take a lot of unnecessary grief from some callers who don’t have their tempers under control. One of the unfair comments the traffic people get barked at them is, “why haven’t you been mentioning so-and-so problem or route?” The answer is quite simple; we didn’t know about it. That’s why we rely on drivers to call in and tell us about the troubles they encounter. We can’t possibly be at all places at all times, so if you’re not hearing about what’s going on with your slow drive, it’s because you haven’t called in to tell us there’s a problem. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. Call *680 toll free on your Rogers cell phone.

Callers sometimes expect us to make the phone calls that witnesses should be making. We are in the business of reporting on traffic as it pertains to our listeners and it’s up to you to do the right thing and call 911 or whoever is appropriate to the situation.

We also don’t have time to give personalized traffic reports over the phone. The whole point is for you to listen to the radio! We have traffic every 10 minutes on the ones plus if you miss a report, you can get the latest info sent to your cell phone by texting the word TRAFFIC to the number 680680.

No one feels the pain of frustrated commuters quite like our legendary traffic guru Darryl Dahmer. You won’t find a photo of him on this website. He’s an international man of mystery. But he knows this city better than anyone else and if someone has done something stupid and obvious to cause a crash, Darryl will say so. Our listeners love him for it. He’s also very funny and a real kick to work with, but don’t tell him I told you so.

You count on us for traffic but please don’t forget that we also count on you. It’s teamwork between our listeners and our traffic team that allows us to deliver Toronto’s most frequent and accurate traffic reports on 680News.