I am Jeff Lee, a writer, editor and beekeeper. I live in the Kootenays in Southeast British Columbia.
For 40 years I was a full-time practicing journalist, three-quarters of that time with The Vancouver Sun. It was a career framed around inquisitiveness and the desire to record, understand and share events as they unfolded. My benchmarks were fact-based writing, fairness, respect, and, I dare say, a level of courage to write things that sometimes people didn’t wish to read or hear about. I was not an opinion writer, a columnist, or an editorialist, except in my earliest years when I had a weekly column in small-town newspapers. I was a reporter whose stories were based in fact.
I continue to write. This is where you will find my musings, thoughts, and still, fact-based stories. I have a lot to say. Now, however, I do not feel the stricture any more to not express opinion. That rule was, and is, important to reporters called upon to be impartial to the facts, to seek and write the truth, and to not be drawn into partisan approaches. We’ll both agree that this isn’t always the case with journalists today.
I’ve heard an odd saying about the life a reporter lives. Straddling such a fence often leaves one with a sore crotch. It is difficult, after all these years, to put my opinions out there. Perhaps that’s because in this time of monumental change in the media landscape, when the immediacy of the Internet and the ability for something to go viral even if it is false or overblown, armchair quarterbacks suspend the basic rules of journalism. Is it true? Is it fair? Does it inform? Is it balanced?
These are the questions I wrestle with daily as I continue to write, even though I no longer write for newspapers, and as I run a business as a commercial beekeeper and honey producer.
There are some truths you will read about in these pages and posts. There will be stories of people I have met and who influenced me. There will be accounts of events I’ve witnessed, of discoveries I make as a continue in my life, of places I’ve been to and people I’ve interviewed.
I hope you find my observations enlightening and useful. I’ll start posting soon enough. For the time being this is a static page.
You can reach out to me at jeff (at) jefflee (dot) ca