the journalism of sean arthur joyce
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates
It could be argued that journalists are hired to examine the life of a civilization on a daily basis. Unlike physicians, their job is not to diagnose disease and prescribe cures. That's the job of editorial pages, sociologists, essayists and poets. But by the very act of making the unknown known, journalists serve a vital role in society. Where would we be without the Bernsteins and Woodwards, or courageous war journalists? If indeed, it's a “rough first draft of history,” as former Washington Post editor Phil Graham once said, it's at least less manipulated than the histories written after the fact.
I began working as a freelance journalist in 1990, after becoming fed up with a decade of dead-end jobs. I learned on the fly, with a little help from a Magazine Journalism course at Selkirk College. My mother's adage served me well: “What you don't know, find out.” I started by submitting articles to the local entertainment weekly in Nelson, BC, The Express, wrote a video review column for the Kootenay Review for several years, and went from there to writing for newspapers and magazines throughout the Kootenays and Greater Victoria region. For five years (1996-2000) I wrote the weekly Heritage Beat local history column for the Nelson Daily News, with a readership of about 7,000.
At present I am the Arts and Culture Editor and freelance reporter for the Valley Voice. Based in New Denver, BC across from glacial Valhalla Provincial Park, the Voice is one of the last independently owned newspapers in Western Canada. The article samples on this page are merely the tip of my iceberg, having written by now hundreds of thousands if not millions of words for print journals. I have written reviews, interviews, hard news, investigative journalism, essays, poetry, and business profiles. For more recent work, please visit the Valley Voice website here.
articles
Links to articles available in PDF format.
- How Green is Green? - DreamScapes magazine July/August 2008
- Magical History Tour - DreamScapes magazine Fall 2010
- To touch the living past - Inland Magazine March/April 1998
- The Heritage Inn Reaches 100 - Venture Magazine March 1998
- Call of Nature - Venture Magazine July 1996
- Dreaming of the silk road - Inland Magazine March/April 1998
- Wo Lee Stories review - Inland Magazine
- The question of origins - Inland Magazine March/April 1998
- Author's CV