Page 17 - Real Style August 2018

list to interview, Mesley is quick to answer.
“I would love to talk to Stephen Harper. He retired
from politics but he’s back in
it. He has a new book coming out in the fall, and he’s been getting involved in all kinds
of controversial politics these days. I covered him when he was an MP aspiring to be Prime Minister. He’s a big brain,” she says.
While it’s been a long road to interviewing the top newsmakers today, Mesley caught the reporting bug early, while helping out at a local radio station.
“I started off in high school answering phones at CHUM, and decided I wanted to
be a journalist,” she says. “I worked in radio while I was going through the journalism program at Ryerson. At the
end of that, I went to a CTV affiliate in Montreal. I learned
to speak French, and covered René Lévesque in the Quebec legislature for three or four years. I moved to Ottawa, and was the first female national reporter for the CBC covering the Prime Minister. I was there for four or five years covering politics. Then I moved to Toronto to do some anchoring and
do Undercurrents. I worked at Marketplace after that, and then The National for a few years. And now I’m doing this show.”
Still, the world of media has turned on its head in recent years especially. What’s changed the most about the work she does?
“What I do really isn’t that different; what has changed is the way people consume
journalism,” Mesley explains. “When I worked for The National, everybody watched it. It was very much appointment viewing. Now people aren’t watching destination television or reading newspapers the way they used to. With social media, people are getting news on their own terms. So we’re shrinking, we’re adapting, we’re having to find new ways of getting a story on the market. A lot of people check out our show on their
own time. People watch us on Sunday morning, and we have late night Sunday nights, which a lot of people watch as well. Our show is easily chunkable, so we take a topic and chop
it down to six to seven minutes and put it on YouTube, and now we have a great following. We also run on Periscope Live and a lot of people watch it that way.
Gone are the lengthy discussions; today Mesley is tasked with helping her viewers process the week’s news in a more active format.
“Thinking back to the glory days of television, the shot
lasts forever, and there’s way
too many words,” she recalls. “Maybe we’re all suffering
from having things fed to us so quickly and intensely now. Some of it is great—the demands
put on us to tell our stories in a more active fashion. The speed in which we try to do what we do, in The Weekly, is great. The downside is, because the audience is so fractured these days, people do follow niche news. It’s hard to get them
out and to think about other people’s points of view. It’s harder in this day and age to speak to a wide audience. And
maybe that’s okay. Everyone gets their news in their own way and we’re all adapting to that,” Mesley adds.
From fractured audiences to “fake news,” the media has taken a hit in recent years, Mesley admits. Still she’s optimistic about what the future holds.
“A year ago, I would have been more depressed about
the state of the media and journalism, partly because of what Trump was doing, fake news, and people entering niche worlds. But I think in
the last year a lot of things
have actually improved,” says Mesley. “The Washington Post has really fought back and done amazing journalism, and The New York Times. Canadian journalism as well—from The Globe and Mail to the CBC and CTV, they’ve fought back to re-establish trust for mainstream journalism, and there’s a renewed interest and respect
for investigative journalism. A year ago everyone was mad at the media. Now, they may still be a little bit disillusioned, but they’re realizing we do provide a service, and that some of us deserve to be trusted.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is Mesley’s passion for uncovering the truth and seeking out the answers to the world’s most pressing issues.
“I’ve always been interested in doing something that makes the world a better place,” she says. And with The Weekly, she may well be on her way.
Catch The Weekly with Wendy Mesley at 11A.M. on CBC, starting in September.
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