“What makes you different or weird, that’s your strength.”

— Meryl Streep

There is something very attractive about funny, quirky and weird people — three traits I happened to pass down to my 18-year-old daughter (who can ride a unicycle and can really pull off a cowboy hat).

“Keep being your oddball self!” I remind her whenever we speak. Why?

People don’t remember just the good. They remember the different.

Throughout my entire life, people have always thought the way I think, what I write, and what sometimes comes out of my mouth is a little quirky. (And sometimes totally inappropriate and offensive to anyone who has no sense of humour.)

I’ve always been a little quirky. So for me, being seen as weird, odd, or quirky is no biggie!

More importantly, I’m also a bit of a shit disturber. Not in an illegal or evil way, but let’s just say I like to have a little fun with people. For instance, how I sometimes lie about what I do for a living.)

Apparently, my quirkiness — which some, as you will see, call “sass” — makes me quite memorable. Make no mistake, I’m not being cocky. Maybe just confident?

I believe you need to be confident, sassy AND a bit of a sh**t disturber — especially if you’re an aspiring journalist — in order to stand out and have your stories, articles, blogs, interviews or even your name for that matter, be memorable. 

Which is why this week, I’m going to share some of my “Secre:t Shit Disturbing Secrets” to help you get that exclusive interview or quote, with the goal of making YOU and YOUR ARTICLES stand out — a.k.a different — from every other publication and journalist out there.

Not every writer stands out, which, I guess, is good. If every writer knew the secret to standing out and being memorable, then nobody would stand out or be memorable. 

Here’s an email I received somewhat recently from one of my instructors when I was a student in the four-year journalism program at Ryerson University 25 years ago.  

“Rebecca, I have had a few thousand students over the years at Ryerson. I remember perhaps 50-100. You are in the top 10 of my memory. I think I can safely say you're number 1 in the sassy category. I have watched your writing career from a distance. Who’d have imagined that the student who landed Tyley Ross would one day return as a star herself?”

You may not know who Tyley Ross is, but at that time, he was the lead actor in the mega-musical Tommy. Ross is a Grammy-nominated recording artist and a Dora Award-winning musical theatre actor (amongst others achievements) and now lives in New York. 

I had convinced him — or rather convinced his publicist to convince him — to come to the Ryerson campus to be interviewed on camera, knowing the interview would not be seen by anyone aside from my 20 fellow students and instructor, who also worked full-time for decades at the CBC running all their “specials,” including all Olympic coverage, along with working alongside Peter Mansbridge. In other words, the dude my instructor was legit!

I continually begged the publicist, sending her multiple notes a day, calling and pleading for just 30 minutes of his time.

I probably lied played the damsel in distress — or,  rather, "student in distress” — saying that if I couldn’t get him in for an interview, I would probably fail the class.

I wouldn't have failed the class. But I did manage to land a celebrity interview, probably the first time my instructor had ever seen a student convince a star to come to the campus for an assignment.

Candidly? I have played “journalist in distress” numerous times in my 20 plus journalism career in order to get that exclusive interview or quote. 

When it comes to getting scoops or good quotes (and also bowling and bingo) I admit, I am quite competitive! 

As I say to all writers and my children, "Look into the mirror. That's your competition.”

Aspiring journalists need to know HOW exactly to get that exclusive interview or exclusive quote, and sometimes you do have to be a little sneaky. 

To spell this out clearly, you have to have a little shit disturber somewhere in you.

Here’s a little history about my journalism career and what a shit disturber I can be when I want to get my way score that interview, as well as how I go about it.

Once upon a time, way back in 2017, I used to answer “unknown” callers. On very lucky days, the calls were from telemarketers trying to sell me a subscription to National Post.

I fucking loved getting those calls!

I would say, “No thanks. Not interested!” The telemarketer would always follow up with, “Can I just ask you why not?” So, I’d say, “Well, I worked there for, like, a decade and then I was let go along with about 50 others. Is that a good enough reason for not subscribing?”

“Yes, that’s a good enough reason! I totally understand,” they’d say, always with a chuckle. And then we’d have a nice chat for the next 20 minutes about life.

Sometimes, I would be even more of a shit disturber with these newspaper telemarketers, telling them I missed reading “Rebecca Eckler,” to which they would say, “Am I not talking to Rebecca Eckler?” which confused TF out of them. Fun times!

Sometimes I would be truthful: “I’ve already read what they’ve printed somewhere online, often three days earlier!” (Which was, and still is, true.)

I really miss those calls. They always brightened my day! 

Sometimes, I still miss being a full-time journalist. I met wonderful and interesting people. And I like learning.

I was technically “let go” by the National Post in round three of their layoffs. They wanted to keep me as a regular freelancer, meaning no benefits and no guarantee that my ideas would always be taken. 

Frankly, my salary was too high — more than 100k in my 20s and early 30s, which was a lot back then, plus I had my own expense account and company credit card. 

If they could pay me, per article, rather than a yearly salary, why wouldn’t they?

I can’t stress this enough for writers: Whether you are an author or a journalist or a regular blogger, publishing is a business. A publisher will do anything to not lose make money.

I made it a tad bit difficult for the National Post to fire me. I decided to play hard to get. I knew they wanted to fire people in person (I know, how sweet!), so I made them chase me down, channelling Leo in Catch Me If You Can.

When they would ask to meet me in Toronto, I would reply that I was in Calgary. When they flew out to Calgary to fire their Western reporters, I would tell them I was in Toronto.  

This went on for a few weeks. It was fun. I'm not sure how fun it was for them, but whatever.

They finally gave up, called to break the not-so-surprising news, and sent my severance package.

When I looked at the papers, I thought, “Nah. I’m not taking this offer of a six-month severance,” which was quite generous but, again, I’m a shit disturber — or “sassy” — so I simply crossed that number out and added another three months of paid severance in. 

No one questioned me on this. I got the extra amount I added.

When I was on salary, one other shit disturbing thing I did (that I’m quite proud of) was telling the editor-in-chief that I wanted to be the New York correspondent. 

Their answer was an immediate, “I can’t let you do that. There is a process for those positions and so many other, more advanced, journalists would be furious.” 

“Well, what if I just got on a plane?” the shit disturber in me retorted. 

To which they answered, "Well...I can't STOP you from getting on a plane.”

Which I took to mean, “Wink, wink. Get on a plane!” 

I found an apartment, packed up, got on a plane to New York, and started filing stories.

So, I effectively became the New York correspondent. I didn’t get in any heat. I showed initiative, and also that if I really want something — like an interview with someone or to write from New York — I won’t take no for an answer. 

In fact, I think the editor-in-chief probably thought my “sassiness” was quite funny.

As my oh-so-lovely Zaida always taught me before he passed, “You don’t ask, you don’t get!”

When the National Post launched in 1998, I was hired as a city reporter for the Toronto section. The section editor hated me even before we met; he was forced to hire me by his boss, who convinced me to come aboard one week before the paper launched. 

We worked in an open office environment and —lucky me — my desk was right next to his.

One day, I was talking on the phone, and I could literally feel his hatred coming out of his pores, like how you can smell alcohol after someone has been partying all night and shows up to work thinking somehow, no one will notice the stench. Anyway, this arrogant male editor continually paced by my desk, a scowl on his face, his nose flaring, obviously waiting to lecture talk to me.

Trust me, I didn’t rush to end the call. The shit disturber in me liked feeling him getting angrier and angrier.

When I finally finished my phone call, the section editor — right on cue! — lectured, “You’re supposed to be working!”

“That was the chief of police I was speaking with,” I replied calmly with a poker face. I wanted to add, “So, fuck off,” but I was a newbie.

(You’ll see why in my “shit disturbing tips” in part two that I do not care what position you hold. I’ll talk to a celebrity or politician the same way I talk to the Amazon delivery person or Marco, the dude who clears the snow off my driveway. Lovely man!)

Let’s just say that the editor never questioned who I was speaking with again. And I will admit that a small part of me loves that memory of seeing his shocked face accompanied by a, “I thought you were talking to a friend. You were on the phone for an hour!”

After I was let go, I got a call from the very lovely National Post accountant, who still had her job. She asked me if I would like to keep my money that I had put towards my pension, or if I would like it back in one lump sum.

I don't think I have ever answered a question so quickly in my life.

“I’ll take the lump sum now,” I said, adding, “Do YOU think there will be newspapers around when I’m in my sixties? That’s like 35 years from now!” which made her laugh. (And — shhh — she agreed with me!)

I was already starting to feel about physical newspapers the way you feel when you’re about to get your period. You may not know exactly what day “The Red Curse” is coming, but because you have “symptoms,” like cramps, you go through 1,000 different moods every few minutes, you start to ugly-cry uncontrollably over a bruised banana, while also taking 7 Tylenols to numb TF out of your uterus.

Some say that newspapers will disappear entirely by 2040. Like, everywhere! In the entire world. I think I may still be alive to witness this…and I will cry. And then take my grandchildren, if I have any, to the museum to see the newspaper exhibit on the third floor.

All the “symptoms" were, and are continually, pointing towards the slow and painful death of physical newspapers.

Another symptom showing the demise? My son asked me one of the most difficult questions since I became a parent. (And I thought answering “What’s my eighth favourite reptile?” was hard!)

“What is this?” he asked when the National Post started showing up on my doorstep randomly for a few months, even though I was not a subscriber.

When I responded to my kid, “It’s a newspaper,” he looked at me baffled, as if I was speaking to him in Latin, before asking me an even harder question. Especially since I still consider myself a journalist at heart.

“What’s a newspaper?” he asked. He was seven! (Enough said?)

It felt like someone had just asked me, in a job interview, what 37 x 8 was. 

I imagine parents who celebrate Christmas are left in a panicked state of confusion when their kids ask, “Is Santa real?” They must use white lies, like I do when I’m eating something yummy and one of my kids asks for a bite, and I'll respond, usually with a mouthful of cheesecake, “It’s really, really spicy. You’ll hate it!”

So I answered to the best of my ability. “It’s like you watching TikTok or Youtube videos on your iPad but with news about what’s going on in the world, and it’s made out of paper, and you can’t enlarge the text like you can on your iPhone or iPad.”

Do you know how my seven-year-old responded? “I love the stories you make up, Mommy. You make them sound almost real!” 

For real! I suppose I could have tried to explain further what a newspaper is to the kid, but I could also technically churn my own butter. So, let's not get crazy!

Confessions: I do skim the paper when I visit my parents.

I know my dad loves the crossword puzzles, which is probably the only reason he still has a subscription. So, whenever I visit, I’ll secretly skim the paper while he’s busy playing with his grandkids. To be clear, not to read news that I had already read the day before from an online publication or from morning newsletters. 

I skim to find the crossword page. Then I fill in random letters to screw with my dad’s crossword. That’s right. Even my parents aren’t excluded from my shit disturbing tendencies.

I imagine after I leave that when my dad returns to his crossword, he may for a split second think he’s suffering from early-onset dementia before remembering, “BECKY. SHE WAS HERE! WHEN WILL THAT CHILD OF MINE STOP BEING SUCH A SHIT DISTURBER?” (In truth, I think my dad thinks my antics are quite hilarious!)

I never grew up dreaming of being a journalist. It was never a calling. It just became one. My parents were big into education. I had to go somewhere after high school. I’m not exactly sure why, but when I was at my locker, the drama teacher suggested I apply to Ryerson to study journalism. I never even took drama. Still, I looked into it.

When I found out that they received 4,000 applications but only accepted 100 students to their four-year program, that’s when I wanted in. (Like I mentioned, I’m very competitive…with myself!)

In our final year, we had to pick our majors, which included either the magazine stream, the newspaper stream, or broadcasting.

I chose broadcasting, not because I was interested in being on television, but because it was the most competitive and most difficult stream to get into. 

In any case, I highly encourage all aspiring journalists to read this heartbreaking 2020 piece by Russell Smith in The Walrus.

“Last November, I stopped writing a regular column on art and culture for the Globe and Mail, my job for almost twenty years,” Smith starts. “Nobody noticed. I did not receive a single reader’s letter. I had a polite message from my section editor. He was sorry things didn’t work out and hoped we could stay in touch. The note contained no sense of symbolic occasion. I knew what I did was no longer important, either to the national culture or to the newspaper’s bottom line…”

Smith’s once-widely read weekly Globe and Mail column netted him invitations to TV shows and invites to speaking events, conferences, and a lot of fun parties. 

“But, several years ago,” he writes, “I began to worry my readership was falling off. I would run into middle-aged people at functions and they would say, “I miss reading you in the Globe!” and I would say, “I’m still there, weekly, in the arts section,” and they would say, “Ah, I get it on my phone, and you don’t come up on the app.” 

In Halifax, his relatives couldn’t read him after the Globe stopped delivering papers in the Atlantic provinces in 2017. He taught writing to graduate students and had “given up” on expecting his students to know that he wrote for a national daily. 

“They rarely seemed to read newspapers, and certainly not that one,” he writes.

He noted that “…Print sales were sinking…I had no contract, no security. I was invoicing every week for $800. My editor at that time told me that I had to take a pay cut of $100 per week. I was spending a day on the column and filling the rest of the week with other freelance work to pay my rent. I could take it or leave it.” 

Smith took the cut. But once he went behind a paywall, even his friends stopped reading him, he admits.

According to Forbes, in 2020, the circulation, including print and digital, of weekday newspapers in the U.S. was just over 24 million. On Sundays, it was 25.8 million.

Twenty years ago, the weekday newspaper circulation was 63.2 million, and on Sundays, it was 62.6 million. Since then, circulation has been dropping, reaching an all-time low in 2020.

Pew Research notes newspapers in 2020 had generated more revenue from circulation than from advertising. All these “symptoms” mean successful newspapers will be dependent on digital circulation to make $$$ rather than advertising.

As newspaper revenue declines, obviously so have jobs. Since 2006, sadly, but not all that shockingly, the employment numbers for newspaper jobs have fallen every year. 

Eighty-five local newsrooms were permanently shut during the pandemic — a grim outlook for aspiring reporters or columnists hoping to land a full-time job at a newspaper. (Although, learning journalism skills can lead to jobs in public relations, marketing, advertising, copywriting, and speech writing, so it’s not all dire.)

The solution, of course, to get a job as a journalist is to be so good, and have a little bit of a shit disturber in you, that those who can hire you, will! 

And let’s be real. Many journalists aren’t exactly straight-up attention whores, but I have yet to meet a journalist who doesn’t like hearing someone say, “Hey, I saw that thing you wrote!”

Again, people don't just remember the good. They remember the different, odd, and quirky. 

On this note, check out part two: “Stand out! My Secret Shit Disturbing Ways to Get That Interview!”