Hot Hamburgers and Bricks: Michael Dick's Road To The CBC
by Alison Lang (BJ '07)
Michael Dick covering the G20 protests in June of 2010. (photo courtesy of Michael Dick)
A lot of journalists can remember the moment when they realized they wanted to pursue the profession for the rest of their lives.
For Michael Dick (BJ ’04), that pivotal moment includes former King’s radio professor Bruce Wark - and a hot hamburger sandwich.
“I was in his workshop at King’s, and I was the beat reporter for that day,” Dick remembers. “Bruce took us out in his car to look for a scoop. We ended up at this greasy diner - the Midtown Tavern - where he bought us sandwiches, and there were all these different people who worked as journalists in the city.”
Dick was floored by the way Wark and the group of veteran reporters treated him like an equal. He left the greasy spoon knowing that TV reporting was his imperative.
“That’s one of the best things about King’s – they don’t treat you like a student. They treat you like a reporter trying to improve,” he says. “That was the moment I knew I had arrived as a young 20-something reporter. I always knew I wanted to do broadcast journalism from then on.”
Dick dove into broadcast headfirst after graduation, graduating on a Thursday and heading to work at CBC Fredericton on the following Monday. That was eight years ago, and he hasn’t stopped working since. His career in CBC Television has taken him from Thunder Bay to New Brunswick to Toronto to Edmonton. He’s covered protests, royal visits, forest fires and complex municipal issues and has been nominated for two RTNDA Awards for his work. Now, he’s returning to work as a VJ for CBC Halifax, the city that sparked his initial interest in broadcast journalism.
Growing up in Thunder Bay, Dick had always felt the tug towards a career as a journalist. But his high school experience, in his words, was “a wishy-washy time.”
“ I wasn’t sure I could get into university,” he says. “For awhile I was like everyone else in Thunder Bay – I wanted to be a hockey player.”
Dick spent his undergrad at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS, thinking he would pursue a graduate degree in law. “I didn’t think there were many jobs for journalists,” he says.
The size and reputation of King’s was enough to convince him otherwise. “King’s was this tiny school, and it felt very prestigious,” he says. “I remember filling out all the application forms and thinking, ‘Will this work?’ Getting in felt better than getting into an Ivy League school.”
While at King’s, Dick immersed himself in his classes, absorbing the advice of King’s profs. One of his favorite aspects of the workshops was Nova News Net – the infamous early morning course where students learn how to summarize the morning’s news in an online digest. (It's now known as UNews.) Many King’s journalism students struggle to work at such an early hour; Dick says he loved it.
“Nova News Net was the first deadline-oriented thing I had ever done,” he says. “I remember those mornings – that’s what sticks when I think of journalism. You have to meet your deadlines quickly and accurately. And it was so great to have your name put to something. I remember sending every link to every story I wrote to my parents.”
Television still remains closest to Dick’s heart. After watching some of his news clips, it’s clear that he attacks the process of TV reporting with the same type of wholehearted enthusiasm he feels towards seemingly everything else in life.
“TV is such a process,” he says. “Anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit of a big personality. TV has allowed me to showcase my personality and engage the audience through storytelling. It’s three-dimensional. It truly allows you to see the emotion of a story.”
In a story shot just before the 2009 May long weekend in Ontario, Dick illustrated the dangers of the still-frigid waters by giving himself hypothermia under the watchful eye of a medical expert. Even in a state of obvious discomfort, Dick was able to relay information about his dwindling body functions to the camera with focus and poise. “I can’t feel my legs very well,” he reported from within the frigid tank filled with ice and freezing water. “I’m actually pretty scared right now.” His voice remained measured and calm throughout the segment.
Michael Dick's report on hypothermia, 2009.
Dick’s journalistic mien was tested again in June of 2010 while he was covering the G20 protests in downtown Toronto. The CBC ensured that he and his team were wearing flak jackets, gas masks and helmets, and the group received military training preparatory to the protests. While Dick was doing a live report, protestors began throwing bricks and rocks at the CBC van and the TV crew. A brick whiffed by Dick and nearly hit him in the face. Although he was rattled, he managed to complete the report. His work covering the protests led to a nomination for a Monte Carlo Television Festival prize.
“In those kinds of situations, you have to really love what you’re doing,” he says. “Journalism is an act of trust. I trust the people around me to know what they’re doing. I trust myself that I’ll know when it gets to be too much.”
Incidentally, he still has the brick. It was presented to him as a goodbye gift from his Toronto colleagues prior to his move to CBC Edmonton, and now sits on a bookshelf in his dining room. “It’s a badge of honor,” he says. “It’s still the biggest story I ever covered.”
As Dick returns to the city where his love for journalism first sprouted, he’s eager to visit his former King’s professors, especially Vice President Kim Kierans – “She’s my journalism mother,” he says.
He also hopes that one day, he'll be able to pull a Bruce Wark on an up-and-coming journalism student and make them feel the way he felt that afternoon at the Midtown Tavern.
“We have an intern right now, and I’m just waiting for that Midtown moment I can pass onto them,” he says. “That hamburger sandwich reinforced who I want to be.”
