james arthur holt
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Granville Island - morning of my talk on investigative reporting at UBC

      

WAY  OF  THE  WEASEL

 
 
       It's a long long road to becoming a weasel.
 
       Ten years on the police beat forced me to become resourceful. Some (police) would argue it forced me to become a weasel.  Either way, I learned after being told repeatedly to 'get lost' (I'm paraphrasing) where to go to get the answers  I needed to do my job.
 
       Teachers at Ryerson Polytechnic University's School of Journalism invited me to share these insights with journalism students.  I called the talk: 33 Ways to Circumvent Police.
 
       Soon, the local police asked me to give the same talk to their police officers.  Although it was a bit like magicians revealing their secrets, to me it didn't matter.
 
       I was asked to give the same talk at the national level at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters in Ottawa and then at the international level to police detectives from around the world attending The 20th International Asian Organized Crime Conference in Toronto.
 
       With the advent of internet databases, I renamed the talk:  33 Ways to Circumvent Police before Breakfast.  That was before Sept. 11, when a reporter was allowed to be flippant about circumventing police.
 
        Despite all that, I still love to ferret out information and I still love to talk about that process.
















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He  Just  Won’t  Shut-up:

  • On Investigative Reporting at The University of British Columbia School of Journalism, March 29, 2006, in Vancouver, British Columbia.
  • 33 Ways to Circumvent Police Before Breakfast, on reporting tools & techniques at The 20th International Asian Organized Crime Conference, May 11-15, 1998, in Toronto, Ontario.
  • On reporting tools & techniques for Major Case investigators attending the Canadian Police College training session MC2 Public Appeals in May 1997, at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.
  • 33 Ways to Circumvent Police, on the same techniques to journalists at the Guelph Mercury newspaper April 23, 1997 in Guelph, Ontario.
  • 33 Ways to Circumvent Police to Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police officers Feb. 20, 1997 in Hamilton, Ontario.
  • Writing on Crime & the Courts at the 1st Annual Wordstock '96 series of seminars for working journalists at Ryerson Polytechnic University May 4, 1996 in Toronto, Ontario.
 

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Granville, again - the morning walk for coffee and news