2012 Atlantic Journalism Awards Finalists
Attachments
| Slug/Label | CHICKEN WAR |
|---|---|
| Date Aired or Published | Feb. 5, 2012 |
| Media outlet where first aired or published: | CBC Radio 1 |
| Name of Program: | Maritime Magazine |
| If co-produced, list partner: | Christina Harnett, producer |
| Location: | Fredericton |
| List awards, grants: | |
| Running time (TV/Radio): | 27:10 |
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Short explanation of the story and how it developed: A tiny village of fewer than a thousand people, split down the middle. A bitter dispute between two companies, fighting over the right to employ the same people, and to process and sell the same product. Family feuds, vandalism, lawsuits, protests and threats of violence. It had all the makings of a great story—a great business story—but it had been largely untold in New Brunswick’s English-language media. The “Chicken War” had been going on for four years when I traveled to St-Francois-de-Madawaska, at the northwestern tip of New Brunswick, in January, 2012. Christina Harnett and I had decided it was time to break through linguistic and geographic barriers, and tell the story in full for the first time to an English-speaking audience. Regular, incremental developments in the story had been reported in the francophone media, but for English news organizations, the issues in the Chicken War were complex, opaque, and lacking any human dimension. One of the antagonists, Nadeau Poultry, had hired a professional communications company to organize high-profile media events in Fredericton, such as news conferences and protests at the New Brunswick Legislature, designed to pressure the government to intervene. As a journalist covering politics for the English-language CBC, I had had my fill of these staged events. They provided only one side of a multi-dimensional story and were taking place more than 300 kilometres from the community most affected by the dispute. It was time to go deeper. I proposed to spend three days in St. Francois, to interview everyone I possibly could, and to tell the story in detail, in a thirty-minute documentary for Maritime Magazine. I was warned that gathering interviews would be difficult. Few were willing to talk in St. Francois, a tiny village gripped by division and apprehension. At first, this was borne out. When I called the mayor before my trip, he said he would not go on tape. I was told Westco, the chicken-farming company, would not permit me to speak to employees—mainly to protect them from hostile Nadeau employees. But—as usual—once you go to where the story is, things can change. Employees of both companies opened up to me. Nadeau workers choked back tears as they discussed their fear that they would lose their jobs. At the Westco hatchery, the CEO found it hard to refuse me access to workers on the site. By approaching people on Main Street politely and diplomatically, I was also able to get “streeter” interviews that revealed the stress and the tension among residents. The owners of Westco, caricatured as greedy villains, turned out to be savvy entrepreneurs with a compelling story to tell. I was also able to scoop even some of my Radio-Canada colleagues who had been covering the story: the president of the union local at Nadeau admitted the union itself was divided, with Nadeau “loyalists” pressuring colleagues to attend the Fredericton protests, and intimidating them from applying for jobs at Westco. In addition to telling the human stories, it was also important to explain the legal and regulatory issues at play—a challenge with a radio documentary, but something I was determined to include. I am proud of this documentary: it took listeners to a community far off the beaten path, in a part of the province most people never visit, to hear from CEOs, managers and employees whose stories they would otherwise never know. We overcome obstacles of time, distance and language to provide depth, context and emotion. In a multi-media, cross-platform age, it was an old-fashioned radio documentary, just me and my recorder, driving into a small town to get the story that needed to be told. |
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Resources of the newsroom (money and time) available to complete the story: The village of St. Francois, New Brunswick is about as far from Fredericton as you can get while still being in New Brunswick. It is tucked into the northwest corner of the province, in a panhandle of territory wedged between Quebec and Maine. This is one reason why the “Chicken War” was difficult to cover as a daily, developing story: the drive there and back would consume an entire work day. I spent three days in the community, the only way to do the story justice. This was a considerable amount of time for a newsroom that is now routinely short-staffed. My supervisor agreed to pay for two nights in a hotel in Edmundston, the closest city--a routine expense five years ago but a tougher one these days. I lined up as many interviews as I could before I went, leaving some holes in my schedule to attempt streeters or to react to unforeseen delays (or good luck). Each day ended up being jammed full. There were a couple of interview I couldn’t use because I had so much rich material. Once I returned to Fredericton, other work commitments meant I had to steal a few hours here and there to select clips and write the documentary: the equivalent of four or five days’ work, including two re-writes. The producer, Christina Harnett, vetted the script and mixed the documentary, devoting the better part of a week to it. We also assembled a photo gallery for the web, and I wrote a web version of the story. |
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