When I was asked to do this project, I frankly had no idea who I was going to interview. That’s when I decided to reach out to Mr. Richard Dal Monte the Editor of our Tri-City News and he generously accepted to answer the questions for me! Mr. Dal Monte has been editing and formatting the amazing articles we see in the Tri-City News since 2001 and has been an inspiring journalist since 1986. You can visit Mr. Dal Monte’s Tri City News profile at https://www.tricitynews.com/authors?author=Richard%20Dal%20Monte and check out the newspaper at http://tricitynews.com/. He has won numerous awards for his writing and I had the honor of getting to ask him some questions about his journey and work toward where he is today.

Q: Why are you passionate about your job?

A:  Two reasons:

1) Because as a journalist, whether you’re a reporter, photographer, or editor, you learn something new everyday while often meeting interesting people.

2) As a community newspaper journalist, your job is to the serve your community, so you’re providing an essential service to your readers, and there’s a great deal of satisfaction to be found in that.

Q: What obstacles have you faced to get where you are today?

A: The main obstacle I dealt with early in my career was fear. it takes some courage — often faked courage, and especially as a young/new journalist — to walk into an editor’s office and pitch a story or sell yourself for a job, even more to walk into a stranger’s office or home and ask questions.

clipartpanda.com

Q:What advice would you pass on to someone interested in what you are doing?

A:You should only pursue a career in journalism if you have a passion for it. If you’re at all lukewarm, you should do something else. You’re not going to get rich doing this, so you need to do this work for the love of it. Which is not to say you have to love every minute — I never loved covering city council meetings, for example — but that your passion for learning about something, then informing and enlightening your audience sustains you.

Q:What inspired you to become a journalist originally, was it the career you started with?

suenos.me

A: Your teachers are going to love this answer: My Grade 12 homeroom teacher (who was also my English teacher) sat me down and said, “Richard, what the hell are you going to do with your life?” When I didn’t have a good answer, he said, “You’re a good writer, have you thought of journalism?” And so it began. The more I considered it and researched education options, the more it seemed the career for me. And it has been since I was 22. (FYI, I applied to Langara journalism school right out of high school and again after first year at university but was rejected twice. I completed a BA in English at UBC, then applied again and was finally admitted.)

Q:When did you decide that journalism was the perfect career for you?

A:When I got to journalism school at Langara. Once we started doing journalism — interviewing, writing, planning papers — I loved it. And again when I started freelancing and got my first part-time job. Loved the work, the people, the experiences.

From moziru.com/

Q:Would you be open to further contact from Riverside (my highschool) students and if so, how can someone contact you?

A:Absolutely. Best way to contact me is via my direct email: editor@tricitynews.com. I may not respond right away — especially if I’m on deadline — but I always respond.

Q:What are your roles and responsibilities as the editor of Tri-City News?

A:Generally, I’m responsible for and oversee all the editorial — i.e., non-advertising — content in our paper and at tricitynews.com. Specifically, I work with reporters to approve and develop stories and photos; edit virtually all the stories in the paper; select most of the photos; design and lay out the vast majority of the pages, including writing headlines; moderate comments below stories on our website. As well, I deal with the public, fielding calls from readers and sources. I also oversee newsroom budgets and deal with upper management on any issues related to the newsroom or editorial content.

I chose to interview Mr. Dal Monte because I myself am interested and love writing. I appreciate journalism and am thinking to possibly pursue a career in that direction. I definitely learned a lot from reading Mr. Dal Monte’s in depth responses and am extremely happy to have had the experience to hear from someone who has taken the path that I am thinking of taking too. I learned a lot about journalism because hearing it firsthand from someone that has experienced and does it as their career is extremely beneficial. I really appreciate that Mr. Dal Monte gave me the solid run through and made sure that their was no pretty cover up for the boredom that he faces in covering some articles and some of the challenges he faces day to day and what really keeps him going at the end of it all.

I would like to give a big thank you to Mr. Dal Monte for taking the time to answer these questions for me!

Don’t forget to go check out his personal blog at https://richarddalmonte.squarespace.com/ where you can see some truly inspirational articles.

Some work on Mr. Dal Monte’s Blog

Some more amazing pieces!