PHOTO: Edmonton Eskimos Win Their 14th Grey Cup

By Scott Billeck

The Edmonton Eskimos are the 2015 Grey Cup champions. Here’s a look inside the dressing room following their 26-20 win over the Ottawa Redblacks at the 103rd Grey Cup in Winnipeg on Sunday night.

What could I write?

By Scott Billeck

What could I write that would make you care about Beirut?

It’s a question that’s been running through my head now since Thursday night. But I really got to thinking about it more after the events in Paris on Friday.

What’s more baffling, to me anyway, is how hypocritical that all sounds in my life right now, but more on that in a bit.

On Friday, over 120 people died in coordinated terrorist attacks across France’s capital city. The attacks in Paris were, undoubtedly, tragic. They are an ugly reminder of the evil that exists within this world.

The media coverage was instant, as it should be. There’s a definitive newsworthiness to what happened. The attacks were vicious. They were planned. They were carried out by, frankly, the most brutal terrorist organization the world has ever seen. France closed its borders for the first time since World War II. The country declared a state of emergency. It was chaos.

Equally as tragic, a day earlier 45 people died in two suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon. And while all the same newsworthy notes apply – perhaps most notably it being biggest single loss of life in the country since 1990 during Lebanon’s civil war – there was just your routine, “Oh, look at what happened in the Middle East today. Again.”

Paris was front-page news. The stories were and continue to be incredible. Beirut, on the other hand, was stuffed in the middle. A continuation of a trend of unspeakable violence to a part of the world steeped in it. The story is the normal standard stuff. People died in a couple blasts, etc.

Elie Fares, in his column for A Separate State of Mind, spoke briefly on the lack of humanity in the news coverage of the Beirut tragedy. He had these poignant words to say:

“When my people died, they did not send the world in mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

Tragedy is a treasure trove for journalists. Stories burst to life out of the bloodshed. This one by the LA Times, for instance, is case and point.

Regardless of where in the world these atrocities happen, the stories need to be told. Who is going to care if they aren’t?

The story of Jerome Lorenzi is incredible. You care instantly after reading it. Hell, you care while you’re reading it. It’s journalism like this that every budding scribe wants to pen.

I surely do.

In fact, the LA Times story hit home for me in more ways than one. I’ve felt lost over the past couple of months in my own writing. The LA Times piece is a bit of a slap in the face. That’s what I want to be writing, but I’m not.

Instead, I’ve written some utter shit consisting of nothing remotely close to a human element. And I’ve been thrown through the ringer because of it, deservedly so. I’d like to think I’m better than that, but a couple rough months have been brutal for the good ol’ confidence.

It’s a frustration I haven’t felt before as a young writer and something not easy to navigate. I have a task of covering a bus route that runs right down the middle of Winnipeg’s most notorious neighbourhood. Some of my writing has made it out to look like Disneyland.

It takes an intrepid reporter to go out and find a story no one else is telling. It’s just unfortunate that brutal tragedies had to play a role in reminding me of that.

So, what could I write that would make you care about the North End?