Conflicts of interest can come from the strangest places. The Site C dam being an example of Provincial Government spending for no other reason to “create jobs”, but alternatives were never looked at, the environment was never thought about, and all sorts of groups of people are willing to do anything they can to make those understand how much of an environmental hazard it could become.

As a budding reporter trying to do a good job, it’s better for you to get to the heart of the story that to right fluff pieces about how great it is because you’re in a relationship with someone that works there. You’re willing to overlook things, or ignore problems, sacrificing how weird it is, to stay in a relationship that bleeds into your writing. (most times, it doesn’t sound like a great one either.)

That kind of stuff can really bite you in the ass in the end.

This is what I’ve learned about conflicts of interest. Even if you’re in a small town news paper, never find yourself in a small town paper willing to fluff an article for others that don’t care about you as much as you’re willing to fluff. Then I half to read about it, and get exhausted.

Today’s Sunday Social Club is not in the direction that you think it’s going. A bunch of Langara Journalism students and I, are starting a podcast in a specific direction that is both fun, and learn-ed.

We don’t have a specific name for it right now, but I’m willing to call it ‘News Friends‘ give it a listen and be critical of how we’re doing on our “figuring it out” episode of this thing.

We will also be at the 420 event at the Vancouver Art Gallery to do some hard-hitting journalism for somebodies birthday, so if you’re there when we are, come say hi. (oh god, oh wait. that could have been a pun. That was so close to being a pun that I’m actually kind of glad that I didn’t write it out there.)

That guy that really likes screwing around with a hot ball of nickel is at it again by putting it on a jawbreaker to see what happens. I used to like that candy as a child, but as I was getting older my jaw became larger and it was less of a jaw-breaker to me and more of a ‘take-up-space-in-the-mouth-er’. Still neat though.

Here’s a gawker article about Buzzfeed and advertisers. because that’s a thing that would probably happen to that company.

Is this starting to look like a regular Sunday Social Club now? sweet! One last thing to share that I find absolutely interesting to read. $750m class action lawsuit against Bell for an alleged privacy breach on it’s customers. I’ve never liked Bell, and I used to work for them. But I never wanted to be their customer for reasons I like to think are great. This article doesn’t mean that I saw this coming, it’s just to show what kinds of mistakes companies make, or the things that others think companies are making.

In this day and age, our privacy is crucial. It could just be one of those things that Canadian phone companies don’t understand yet.

I’ve got my eye on you Rogers.

That’s it for the SSC this week. If this goes back to being a regular thing, then great. But there are big plans to come during the summer till I eventually have to go back to school.

Big plans.