Medium Close Up

WAY, WAY TOO many years ago to count now, a very eccentric woman who worked as the head of the current affairs department at a network I'd worked at the previous summer offered me my first full time job. She paired me with a newly hired Executive Producer who'd worked at just about every network in Canada. He'd been the Senior Producer at The Journal, the Executive Producer of Canada AM, and the News Director at Global, and local CBC Toronto News -- among other places.

It proved, for me, to be a very fortuitous pairing.

Howard Bernstein was my first mentor out of University. He taught me most of what I know about telling a story visually, and story producing -- which gave me my first career in the business. But way more than that, Howard was the guy that first taught me, before I knew how important a concept it would be in later scriptwriting -- that the "best idea wins." He'd encourage debate in story meetings. He believed in constructive argument -- of challenging to get the right answer. In not being lazy, and pushing further -- as far as you needed to.

He also taught me a lot about the management of people. It was he who modeled, and espoused, a philosophy that I've tried to follow to this day; a philosophy that I've seen observed more in the breach than the embrace over the last two decades.

Howard's management style was simple and elegant: he believed you carefully vetted, hired the right people, let them have the space to do their best, and if they went off track -- then and only then would you reel them in. Howard inspired people to do better by giving them the space to try and, occasionally, to fail.

We worked together on a number of programs in my time at that network. He also recognized talent -- besides me, a guy who came on as a summer student would go on to work with him many times through the years. It was all par for the course for Howard, who joked that he had hired and fired just about everybody in Toronto broadcasting at some point or another.

Years later, when I made the transition to writing full time, it was a series that Howard was producing on the Toronto Zoo -- Zoo Diaries, it was called, that kept me afloat with a steady cheque while I took the mad leap into screenwriting. So he managed to launch, in a way, not one of my careers, but two.

Years before, at that small station, one of the shows I worked for him on was a media criticism show called Medium Close Up. It only went one season, but it tried to really grapple with ideas in the media from a newsy, insider perspective.

I remember well how Howard and I and Rich, who was working full time with us by then, would lament, in between discussions about Seinfeld and Murphy Brown -- lament that there was a really great media criticism column out there, waiting to be written...but you could never do it while you were still in the business.

Well, Howard's retired now. And he's gone back to Medium Close Up.

If you want the straight dope from a news perspective, this is a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried. And finally, now, he's willing to dish.

Go visit and welcome him to the blogosphere. Another Canadian willing to speak up. Still (sadly) a too-rare breed.