The Rural Voice, 1981-11, Page 21Wainman
Continued from page 9
beat, it's also part of his nature to plan
ahead. "I tend not to like things
happening to me. I prefer to happen to
things."
"I was raised on the hot pavement of
Windsor, Ontario," he recalls, "but like
most of us,you have a lot of relatives. if
you go back, who were brought up on a
farm. My father was brought up on a farm
near Orillia. But people started leaving
the land in the 20s and 30s."
So, until he became involved in
journalism, Wainman's was a long
distance connection to farming, and you
can only raise so much corn with the long
distance feeling as fertilizer.
The real step came when he moved to
Maclean Hunter in the 60s to work for a
magazine called Food in Canada, a
publication for the processing industry. "1
found it fascinating," Wainman says, "so
when I came to the Free Press in the early
'70s, I requested the farm beat." A year
and a half later, seven years ago. it was
his.
Wainman says he tries to reach a
general audience as much as possible.
"The bulk of my readers mayor may not
be farmers," he says. "I've taken the
approach from day one to consider two
audiences. I have to write something
people can be interested in, and en-
courage them to read it.
"One group is the general readership.
If I can make an agricultural story apply to
the general readership, I will write my
lead that way. like to consumers. Then
there are stories for farmers only,
generally speaking, stories with in-
formation, information farmers need to
know. 1 do write stories the general
public may not be interested in."
Writing, for Wainman, is the bottom
line. The print medium is for him.
"I basically don't have any constraints
on my time, like television for a half an
hour a week, or on radio for ten minutes
every morning. Generally speaking, I
think the print medium may have a better
opportunity to report agriculture, but TV
is improving and radio has always
been solid.
"But most, I enjoy writing. I'm not sure
I would enjoy being in front of a camera."
Still, if the reporting were agricultural
and had to be delivered from behind a
microphone or in front of a camera, it
would be only a minor surprise to hear the
news coming from anchorman Wainman.
That's because as the discussion winds
down, Wainman's concern expands from
southwestern Ontario, to Canada, and
from Canada to the rest of the world, and
that makes it very, very important.
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262-5681
THE RURAL VOICE/ NOVEMBER 1981 PG. 19