Kid reporter inspires me in Toronto

Nine year old reporter Brennan LaBrie started his own newspaper
This youngster renews my passion for journalism and my job
By Kris Scheuer

I have been a reporter and editor for 11 years and I love journalism.
But I have to say I have good and bad days like everyone else when it comes to feeling inspired.
My focus in on Toronto politics, people and news but I just had to tell you about nine-year-old Brennan LaBrie who lives in Port Townsend near Seattle in Seattle in Washington State.
It was a joy on Sept. 5 to come across a posting on the National Public Radio site about LaBrie’s hand written, self-published paper The Spruce St. Weekly.
I read the story by Ned Wharton about this young journalist LaBrie who interviews people, writes their stories and includes a section called This Day in History, plus fun facts and a hand drawn comic strip. He photocopies his weekly 2-page paper and sells it for a quarter to over 100 subscribers.
But it is watching the You Tube Video of LaBrie talking in his own words about why he enjoys being a reporter that really made me smile.

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Words of the day

By Kris Scheuer

Words are how I earn a living. That’s because I’ve been a published reporter and journalist for eleven years now. And I am always looking to improve on my writing style by adding new words to my written and oral vocabulary. While I try to focus on words in everyday usage, sometimes I pick words that aren’t practical as regular lingo but draw my attention nonetheless.
Here are my trio of words for the day.

This looks like a fun word  – pugnacious. It’s and adjective that means readily disposed to fight or belligerent. Perhaps you know someone that this describes? Happily, I don’t.
Paramour is a noun meaning a married person’s lover.
And putrescent an adjective meaning becoming putrid as in a state of decomposition. With Toronto in its 12th day of a garbage strike some of the temporary and legal neighbourhood dumps are surely housing bags of putrescent, organic waste.

Words of the day

By Kris Scheuer

As a Toronto professional reporter and journalist, I am always trying to vary my written vocabulary. I am referring to words that sound great, but also have everyday meaning in society and aren’t too removed from how we speak.
Here are my three words for the day:

A new word for me today is inamorata meaning a person with whom one is in love, a lover from Latin amore or amor.

A fun word that I like is loquacious an adjective meaning a tendency to talk a lot. I first remember coming across this word in a headline “Why Lord Black is loquacious no more ” by Ian Brown describing how former Canadian media baron Conrad Black was not too talkative during his trial.

A commonly misspelled word is affidavit (not how it sounds affidavid) a legal term meaning a declaration in writing made upon an oath that something true.

I have several good vocabulary, spelling and grammar books but one of my favourites is Build Your Power Vocabulary published by Random House, that I bought in the city about two years ago.