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In response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the faculty and staff of the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies began working from home and teaching online. Now that faculty and students are returning to campus and having more opportunities for face-to-face interactions, we almost feel like we need to re-introduce ourselves to our colleagues and students. The same is true for other schools and departments in the College of Urban Affairs and across the university. Since we boast a new podcasting studio and classes in podcasting, audio announcing, audio production, and audio storytelling, we believe that the best way to introduce ourselves is by sharing the personal stories and backgrounds of our faculty and staff. The goal is to introduce each of our faculty and staff members to students, the public, and each other. Starting with these podcasts, we hope to build a podcasting network devoted to helping students and the public meet the people who teach the classes, conduct the research, and manage media operations. We also hope to get to know each other better and build a richer academic community. So lend an ear to the personal stories of the faculty and staff preparing students for a promising future.
Well, welcome to the Inside JMS podcast,
featuring our faculty and staff
and even our part time faculty
here in the Hank Greenspun
School of Journalism and Media Studies.
I'm Kevin Stoker.
I'm your host with my co-host,
Dave Nourse.
Always a pleasure to be here, my friend.
I should say Dashing Dave Norris.
I brought my face for podcasting today.
We we are really excited.
We have a great guest
today, Patrick Blennerhassett,
who has been a
he's a student in our master's program.
He's a part time instructor.
He's a man about town
who's been, you know, works at the RJ
is basically you're the real estate,
not reporter.
Well, tell us more.
You'll say not not.
It's not a beat to be
Now, I cover real estate, housing,
and then the economy.
I do mostly residential.
A little bit of commercial.
We split the beat into two recently.
Myself and my colleague Eli Seagull kind
of tag team that we sit beside each other.
We're both hockey players.
So we get along really well. But.
Yeah. No, it's it's funny.
I've been covering real estate
for a long time and it never ceases
to amaze me.
Or dumb found me
with whatever's happening in the market.
It's just absolutely crazy. So.
Well, one of the things you probably tell
listening to Patrick
is he is from Canada.
Some, some we already heard,
some some in Canada for like 12
and still hanging around 12 years.
It can hang around forever.
Just think about me and my Idaho accent.
It's been 40 years to take the man
out of Idaho, but not Idaho.
Yeah, yeah, I you know,
Patrick has been around the world, and
I know I was in Korea and I used to speak
Korean kind of in a John Wayne accent.
Well, on Young Pilgrim,
but we're here.
Patrick,
I'm really fascinated by your journey.
And, you know, let's start in Canada.
Let's start growing up.
What were your aspirations and goals
and what, what
what led
do you gallivanting around the world?
The million dollar question.
It's funny,
because I'm doing a faculty presentation
for you guys in a couple of weeks, so I'm
doing a bit of a history because my.
Yeah, it is
it is a super messy, disjointed journey.
But I would say there's sort of two
defining moments for me growing up.
One, my my mom was a librarian,
so that was sort of
she would come home every day
with books, newspapers, magazines,
and I would sit on the floor
in the living room and just like
have the newspaper spread out,
read a magazine, read a book.
I think I read Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas
when I was like 11 under S Thompson. Wow.
Yeah, I got
I got into like Noam Chomsky at like 13
and started arguing with my teachers
about like American imperialism.
And the teachers would, like,
talk to my parents at the PTA.
Like, you really need to
stop giving your son books.
Just my class with this.
Like talking about banana republics
and the CIA in South America.
Like,
come on, we're teaching geography here.
Like so.
Yeah, for better or for worse,
that kind of that really
kicked it off like that was
I was off to the races.
I wrote some letters to the editor
of the local newspaper.
I was in high school.
My hockey career stopped
before it even got going.
I got injured in my major
junior draft year,
which was like
the start of the pipeline of NHL.
So I never really got that opportunity
to play in the NHL
or to even try to get there
or to make hockey a career,
which I look back in
and out, was a super blessing in disguise.
Like all the guys that grew up with
that went that route.
You know, they're used car salesman
and and real estate agents back in Canada.
Nothing against real estate agents
or used car salesman,
but their knees are blown out.
Their faces are messed up.
You know, they're all living in the old
glory days of when they used to play.
Yeah. So, yeah,
it kind of started from there.
And then, after high school,
I went to college
and started writing freelance
for the local newspaper
and then,
you know, went to journalism school.
I don't know how deep
we want to go into all of this.
Yeah. Where'd you go to school at?
I originally started school,
the University College of the caribou,
which is now Thompson Rivers University.
That's in Kamloops.
Started going there.
I had to work up
north on the rigs to pay for school,
because this was back in the day when, you
know, couldn't really get student loans.
And being a varsity athlete
didn't mean anything.
Tell us about that experience. Yeah.
I spent two summers working on a diesel
generating power plant in a Kalua.
None of it.
Which is like like how how high,
how how far north is that?
Very close to the Arctic Circle?
Yes. I went into the Arctic Circle.
Beluga hunting one time.
Yeah. Pretty well.
Unreal.
Yeah.
And, so that was crazy
because you could go up there
for four months and make, like,
a hundred grand.
But every day you were kind of
taking your life in your own hands.
Like it was the second summer that I went
up, which was the final summer.
One guy got crushed by a
they had these piston heads
for the engines,
so like, the size of a person.
And he got crushed by it.
And then another guy,
a ATV, flipped over on him
when he was out checking a pipeline,
and they both died.
And I sort of thought,
okay, probably, not do this money.
The money may not be worth it.
Yeah.
yeah, I actually ended up dropping out
and then I, I, I guess maybe like the
I kind of got the travel bug there
because I was like okay, well I can,
I can go work up north and with,
you know, the toughest guys in the world,
I can, I can do this type of stuff.
So dropped out of university
and just moved to Hawaii
and started working at a yoga
resort as a landscaper
and smoked a lot of pot or marijuana
and did a lot of surfing
and a lot of soul searching
and then realized like, you know,
I don't want to,
you know, do that, do that
lifestyle, and came back and,
and went to journalism
school down in Vancouver.
So, yeah.
And then, that's my career
just kind of took off from there.
I didn't even get a chance to graduate.
They let me skip the first year
because I had did an internship
at the Daily News in Kamloops
and got hired, like, literally finished
my final exam on Friday, over to Victoria,
started working on Saturday.
So 2002 I was like
full time newspaper reporter
in, in the world of journalism
and pretty much have done everything
since then.
I don't know
how deep we want to go into this,
but one of the first things
that I really kind of cut my teeth on
when I was in Victoria was back then the,
the Hells Angels still kind of quasi
controlled some of the port
and the import export business.
A lot of the drug trade was coming
through.
Canada was coming through Vancouver
and Victoria's port.
Yeah.
So I started as covering crime
and then covering courts,
which is usually kind
of what young journalists kind of get on.
If you can hack it,
you get thrown on those beats
because nobody wants those beats.
Yeah, they're awful,
like they're super fun, but they
they weigh on you like, I, I covered a, a
a murder suicide with this guy.
Killed himself and his whole family.
And I had to cover the the trial
from start to finish, like, it was wild.
Yeah. Emotionally. That that that does
take something out of you.
Takes a toll. Yeah.
And but I would recommend it, like,
because you really find out whether or not
you can hack it or not.
So if you're like a young journalist,
I would recommend
like getting on a heartbeat.
Like see if you're
if you can take it because I found
I was like, oh, I can take it.
You know, I started drinking a lot, which,
you know, I guess young journalists
or journalists in general,
or maybe writers in general
do to kind of cope with that.
But anyways, the biggest thing
that sort of happened in Victoria
was the hells,
like I mentioned, the Hells Angels.
So one day on the on the daily sheet
at the courthouse,
I saw this assault charge and
I went to like the other TV stations
and the other newspapers.
And I was like, how come nobody's
going to cover this assault?
They're like, oh, that's the Hells Angels.
We we don't cover them.
And I was like, well, why not?
I was like, well, screw that.
So I go into the courtroom and there's
all these guys with the patches
sitting down,
and they all I'd me up right away
and I just started covering them.
I started covering all the the stupid crap
that they were doing, like,
they're I can say this now
because they were pretty much
wiped out there, very immature people
and they just do stupid stuff.
And so they were getting caught
all the time.
And this was back
when the RCMP was really like,
all right, we've had enough
of organized crime in Canada.
We're gonna much like the FBI
taking on the mob, right?
They did this
kind of the same thing in Canada.
They're like,
all right, we're fed up with this.
We're going to take down the Hells Angels.
And they took them down.
So this is kind of the tail
end of the Hells Angels really kind of
being having any kind of impact.
So I continued covering them.
And then it just got crazy,
like death threats.
Oh, you you were death threats to you.
I'm showing up on wiretaps like,
we need to we need to off that.
That little reporter.
I get a bullet in the mail.
You know, I'm getting police
escort to work, and I'm, like, 21, 22.
I'm loving this.
Yeah, I have no idea. My license. Danger.
I'm just totally.
And it was really, like,
a very empowering thing
because the cops loved it.
The cops would like, come drive
by my house, hang out for a couple hours.
I'd go out to, like, play hockey.
They'd be like, hey. See you later.
You know? They're like.
They're like, good.
You know, you're on our team. Yeah, right.
So that was really cool.
Really cool to see sort of the police
kind of like back
me and be like, we got this guy's back.
If you touch him, we're gonna, you know.
And so that that was probably
the craziest thing that I did in Victoria,
but that really kind of,
cemented me.
And I was like, okay,
I can make a difference, right?
Like, I can actually change the world
if I'm willing to just,
you know, deal with death threats.
So the news outlets in Victoria
and Vancouver were not covering the Hells
Angels, probably because of exactly
that experience that you had.
They're like, we don't want
to open ourselves up to this.
What was it about your outlet
that essentially gave you the green light,
like your editor had to have had a real
I mean, they had to be brave themselves,
but also have that faith
in you to really say, all right,
you know what you're taking on.
We're going to back you for this.
That's
that's quite a vote of confidence. Yeah.
I had some really great editors in
they really stood for journalism,
and they were almost
just waiting for a reporter
to come along to say, I'll cover this.
And as soon as I did, they're like,
we got your back.
And those guys are kind of a rare breed.
All of those guys got wiped
out of the industry,
a lot of them in 2008, a lot of them,
you know, they were willing
to lose their job for their principles.
And they did, you know, the editor,
that editor at that time,
a guy named Keith Norbury,
he he lost his job for standing up.
Really quick. Interesting story.
We, we they discovered that you could
drive over to America, buy a car,
and then come back to Canada and sell it
and make money.
Right? It was back in the early 2000.
And one of our biggest
advertisers was a used car.
Outlets, you
know, they had all these used car lots.
And so the advertiser
went to the publisher and said, stop
covering the story.
And editor was like, no way.
And they continued to cover it.
And then they're like,
if you keep covering this, you're fired.
And he was like, well, fire me.
And then they fired him. Wow, wow.
And so it was like seeing things
like that, where people were willing
to stand up for their principles
and, like, lose their job and be like, I.
This isn't just a job for me.
I believe in a free press.
And so those guys, I think, like that
happen a number of times when I was there.
And that really shaped me.
That was like, this is a calling.
This is not a job.
It's not a 9 to 5, it's not a career.
You're doing this because you're a part
of Western civilization.
Free speech.
Your part might be small,
but like, relish that opportunity.
So that really shaped me 100%.
Yeah. So what about the next step? You.
So you were there and and you must
have got your degree eventually, right?
No, no, I didn't get my degree until 2016.
I was
working in the industry at that time.
You know, if you got a job and nobody's
going to go back to school.
But then, like everybody, you know,
2008 happened and it was just a bloodbath.
It was a brutal bloodbath.
They, like, walked into the newsroom.
We had an editorial staff
at that time of like 25, 30 people.
Like, that was the tail
end of the golden age of journalism.
You could go off for a couple of days,
do a story, all that type of stuff.
And then 2008 happens
and they like walk into the newsroom
and they're like, you, you, you,
you and you were all fired.
The rest of you do their jobs
also take photos, also do video.
And everybody was like,
oh my goodness, right.
And it didn't get any better.
It just got worse from there.
So even though
I was like winning awards,
I was like one of the top reporters.
I was like, I, I quit, like, I just quit.
I was like, I don't want this to like,
destroy my sense of journalism.
You know?
I don't want the subprime mortgage
crisis of America
to ruin my sense of journalism.
So I quit and went back to own the cameras
for a little bit,
and then was lucky enough to get picked up
to do
media relations for Vancouver 2010
the Olympics.
No kidding.
Oh, wow.
Wow. Okay, so tell us about that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well that was I didn't sleep
for like, two weeks
after the Olympics was on.
Right?
It was like,
I. I still look back on it now.
Every night we would go and party
and work hard and like, sleep in the.
We were down on Robson Street,
like right in downtown Vancouver.
People with like gold medals
walking by you.
They're super famous people,
you know, hockey players, Canadians. And
yeah, that
really rekindled my sort of love
for for that type of stuff.
So many great stories and like,
yeah, I just
I still look back on that
as that kind of like saving me.
And then the Olympics were over
and then I, I got hired to do government
public affairs, first in Kamloops
and then in Vancouver.
And that was awful.
That was like the complete opposite
of the Olympics because, you know,
the bureaucracy was so stifling
instantaneously.
It was just like,
I was like, I can't work at the speed.
Give us an example of that.
Like they would come to me
and they were like,
oh, Patrick, we need a press release.
I was working for the provincial Health
Services Authority.
We need a press release for this.
Can you write it up?
So I'd write it up in like half an hour
and they'd be like, what?
What are you done?
You need to slow down. Yeah.
You're like, no, no.
And then get five bosses to check it.
And it would come back with all these
track changes in like a week later,
I'd like I would be like, oh my God,
what are you who do I doing here?
So that was wild.
And then, you know, you're,
you're on the other side
and you're sort of seeing it
from inside the machine.
And I really didn't enjoy
I mean, I sure loved people enjoy
working for government and they enjoy the
I, the idea of being a public servant,
they actually have subscribed
to those values.
Both my parents were public servants.
My dad was he really subscribed
to the idea of considering himself
a public servant?
A lot of people that I worked with,
they just the only thing they cared about
was like not losing their job.
So what they would just do whatever
they need to do not get lose their job.
And it was hard
to get fired in government.
But I, I did it, I got it.
So now tell us about that.
Oh yeah. Yeah yeah.
I just after a couple of years
I was like okay, this I'm done with this.
And meanwhile I published, two books.
Two fiction books in Canada.
2008 and 2011.
So my writing career was still kind of
going all that type of stuff.
And then I was like, you know, I was like,
how hard it is to get fired
from the government.
I'm going to find out.
So I first I stopped doing work.
I just I would go to I would go to work
and then I would just work on my book.
And then if something would come to me,
I just wouldn't do it.
And so that lasted about six months.
And then
I'm like, they're not gonna fire me.
They're just gonna let me sit in this desk
for the rest of my career.
And I'm like,
all right, I need to kick this up a notch.
What?
Have I stopped coming into the office?
I'm going.
Gonna make them call my bluff over here,
guys, let's kick this up a notch.
So I stopped coming into the office,
and another six months,
I was like, four months.
Then finally, they're like,
all right, they call me in.
That was a really surreal experience.
When you get fired from the government
in Canada, they call you into this room
and they they give you a phone call.
It's like you've been taking a prison
or the office.
And I was like, And then I found out
I got a year severance,
so I was the happiest.
You're kidding me. Yeah,
it's the Canadian government.
It's like a socialist dream. Right?
So since I found that,
I was like, oh, the happiest guy,
right?
So I get a phone call and I'm like,
who do I call?
And my dad was actually in Nicaragua
at the time he had retired,
and he was going down there
and hanging out and like,
so I call up my dad
and my dad's like, or people listening.
I'm like, yeah, yeah.
He's like, well, come down to Nicaragua.
I'm like, I'll be there next week.
Is that it? He's like, yeah.
He's like,
all right, we'll see you in a little bit.
And yeah.
So then I went down to Nicaragua.
I like through all all this,
did a bunch of traveling,
went to India, South Korea,
all over the place,
you know, Europe, Italy,
you know, Mykonos, Greece, lots of trips,
lots of traveling and lots of
seeing the world, all that type of stuff.
And then I,
I think that was probably like 2012,
2013 ish.
And then I came back
after I exhausted all my free money
from the government
and, got back into journalism
and started working at a business magazine
in Vancouver.
The former there, the editor
there at that time,
she went to school with me
at journalism school.
So when they were hiring, she's like,
oh, I just, you know, you were the
I was the editor
in chief of the, of the school magazine.
So I was like off the top,
the top job there.
So she hired me
out of all the other applicants.
So, yeah, I started working there
and, that was great.
That was awesome.
Lots of that was really interesting
because that was when obviously
they kind of came in and they said,
you know,
we're doing podcasts, we're doing video.
I know you guys are print journalists.
We want you to host panels.
We want you to do radio.
We want
this is what they're trying to expand out.
And a lot of the journalists were like,
no, I'm I'm a print journalist.
You know, I'm I'm like,
Shakespeare in my desk, leave me alone.
And I was like, yeah, let's do it.
Yeah, I'll do a podcast.
I'll go on TV, I'll host events.
So I really, really expanded my,
my sort of experience into television,
into radio, into podcasting,
really kind of embraced it there.
So yeah, I
was working there and then I went to India
on a official journalist visa
for my book Forgotten Legend,
which was a bestseller in Canada.
That was a surreal experience,
going to India like,
and that book did really well,
did amazing.
What was so surreal about the experience?
Just know.
So yeah, I would love to hear about it.
I remember I got out of the airport,
not in Delhi,
but then we flew somewhere else,
I think it was in Punjab and Chandigarh
or something like that.
I literally
got as soon as I got out of the airport,
I got hit in the face by a chicken.
Well,
that's a great way to start the trip.
Yeah, that probably summarizes
how easy it kind of comes at you.
It is of Texas, maybe not much bigger.
There's no personal space,
no privacy, no comfort, no rules.
You know, it's just wild.
And, when you're going around
as a journalist,
you know, people know your journalists,
you know, the
the country,
the government knows you're a journalist.
And what I was doing
there, they did not like.
So it
was a sort
of luckily, the guy that I was there with,
he was sort of the handler,
for the book that I was working on,
he was able to sort of explain
a lot of the cultural stuff to me.
But yeah, super wild experience.
It's, I still look back on that
and being like, Holy geez, you know, just
so I did that.
Well, I was still working at a business
in Vancouver,
and then, I come back and.
Yeah, and then I had an article, a feature
article come out in the Guardian,
about growing up in Kamloops, apparently
growing up in Kamloops in the 80s.
And 90s was like a Canada
growing up in rural Russia, like
like the murder kind of crime.
You know, drugs and alcohol rate was,
like, incredibly high.
I mean, I didn't know any better.
You know, when you're kind of growing up
around in that environment, you think that
that's just how everybody grows up.
You know, it's just rough and there's
fights all the time and all that stuff.
But it was normal for you
that that was just how you grew up.
Yeah. You don't know any
talking to my wife.
She obviously she fought in the UFC,
but I tell her stories about growing up,
like waking up in the morning,
getting into a fight at hockey practice
before school,
going to school,
getting into a fight at school
and then after school,
getting into a fight, you know.
Well, you know,
and so it's just like chaos and and,
I lost my, my two best friends
have passed away to two drugs and alcohol.
So that was sort of the
the two closest guys
that I grew up are gone because of that.
So I wrote the article about that.
But going back to my hometown
and it did really well.
It went mega viral, doing interviews
all over the world, like BBC stuff
like this, you know, sort of exposing
this dark side of Canada and, how's I go?
I should go to graduate school.
And so I
apply for UBC thinking like I'm a shoe it.
Yeah, yeah.
And, I didn't get in.
I don't know how
deep we want to go into this
or how, like, controversial we want to be.
But I was told why I didn't get in,
and and that was another defining moment
for me with with Canada.
And I love Canada, and Canada
is always going to be my hometown
and all that stuff.
But part of me felt as if the ideals
that Canada was standing for at that time
had kind of turned its back on me.
So, yeah.
Are places
were they uncomfortable with you
as a journalist?
They're uncomfortable with?
my race, my sex and my sexual
to white, two straight and two male.
That was really weird to hear.
And because I had published a best
selling nonfiction book in Canada,
I probably could have taught classes
at the graduate school,
but I was not selected because of,
you know, who
I am, things that I didn't get to decide.
Sure.
And I'm not going to go and say
that I have struggled more than
whoever or whatever.
And I don't know, that's
that's their experience.
But for me, in that moment of time,
that really hit me and I was like, okay,
I don't like this direction.
I don't like
the way that we're doing this.
So I'm gone.
Is that when you headed off to Hong Kong?
Now, how did that come about?
Why Hong Kong?
Yeah.
So, I had
when when I was at business in Vancouver,
we had a bit of a relationship
with the South China morning post.
And the Vancouver correspondent
for the SNP was based out of Vancouver,
and I had met him a couple of times,
and that was back when Alibaba bought S&P.
Jack Ma was trying to do his best.
Jeff Bezos impression buys the newspaper.
Just like throwing money at it.
Like just like hiring hiring blitz.
And so I was talking with Ian one day.
He's like, dude, you should go over there.
All you got to do is book a plane ticket,
show up
and on Hong Kong soil,
and you become a local hire.
So you want to hire internationally.
It's like in America, you want to hire
somebody from outside of America.
There's a whole visa crazy process.
You have to prove that, you know,
you can't hire an American for that job.
But in Hong Kong,
if you're hired on Hong Kong
soil, doesn't matter where you from.
So all I had to do
was show up at the office.
And and so I did.
And the managing editor.
You know, excuse my language.
He's like, you've got some balls on you.
You just showed up here like,
all right, you're hard.
The gamble paid off.
It was.
I look back on it now, what the hell?
But I think you need to be willing
to take some of those risks sometimes.
Right.
And that was a huge risk for me to do.
But my life in Canada was clearly
not going the way that I wanted to.
And I've always subscribed to the idea
of economic mobility, social mobility.
We have the,
the luxury in the Western world to move.
You can
if you don't like where you're living,
you can move, you can go somewhere else,
you can go to a different country.
You can expand your skill set right.
I think a lot of people get kind of
trapped in this like, hometown mentality.
Anyways, I don't want
to I don't, you know, I'm sure there's
lots of people who stay in their hometown
who really love it, but yeah.
Anyway, so I got hired.
I decided my pick of the litter.
I was like, okay,
I'm gonna work on the sports desk
because at that point
they had, Tokyo was having 2020.
Beijing was having 2022.
China was using basically a sports
as a soft power,
and I didn't really want to go back
on, on like the business desk.
I was like, you know,
let me try something different. Sports.
I'm the sports guy.
And they had such a crazy budget
I traveled to.
Like,
I can list all the places I went, like
Dubai, Australia, Thailand.
And you're saying it was a good gig?
It was amazing
because they were turning the South China
morning post
basically into the New York Times of Asia.
The money was rolling
in where everybody's doing great.
I went to Chengdu
to cover a CrossFit competition
on the mainland for like four days.
Everything
that was like, wow, this is unreal.
Yeah, this is like a weekend.
I'm going to South Korea.
It was wild.
It was awesome.
And you know, I just kind of, you know,
I really threw myself into the job.
And you're working seven days a week
and all that type of stuff. So
so fast forward to Las Vegas
because it sounds like you got a dream job
doing something a little bit different,
but obviously you've got a passion for it.
You didn't want to be in business yet.
Here you are in Las Vegas.
So I, I just I think we need to hear
one story from Hong Kong.
I don't I don't want to wait.
I know we want to get the lawsuit.
I know, but I there's two things
I want to know about Hong Kong, okay?
One is tell us
about how you met your wife.
Okay, well, I don't know how much time
I'll keep.
I'll go short and sweet.
Everything was great in Hong Kong.
And then the protests started.
Yeah, everything was got super crazy
really quickly.
Right.
And then they passed
a national security law.
And basically the national security law
said we can extradite you to the mainland.
So essentially the Hong Kong,
which is supposed to have the tournament
lost its autonomy
and it was a complete free for all, like
Western journalists are fleeing en masse.
And I did the opposite.
I was like, give me a call
and let me write about this.
And I had editors over there
seemed like in Victoria, let's do it.
And I started writing articles that were
critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
Daryl Morey tweeting, while he's in,
I was in Shanghai
when Daryl Morey sent that tweet,
Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets.
I'm in Shanghai.
When that tweet they start pulling
they're pulling posters off mall. Yep.
Right.
And so I continue to write post
national security law.
I'm basically being told
that the chances of me being thrown in
jail are pretty high.
And we're not talking like Western jail,
talking
like Chinese or Chinese labor camp jail.
And I'm like, you know, screw it.
You know,
I wouldn't have a girlfriend and have.
And I was like, let's do this.
I'm I'm willing to do this.
So I continue to write.
And then I met a lady and like,
everything changed.
You know, I met Ramona, who's not my wife.
And it was like, a really super fast.
You know, know, and then she came in,
and you met her at a UFC. She.
You covered her fight, right?
Well, yeah,
I had written some articles on her.
I was like, man, this is a type of
I like this, you know, I, I like finding
excuses to, like, text her for articles
and, and then she, like, comes to me
one day and she's like, hey, I'm moving
to Las Vegas to fight in the UFC.
And at that point,
me getting out of the country
was, was a, yeah, an issue.
I had been in meetings
like blackout meetings where they, like,
sweep the room for bugs
and everybody turns the phone off
and they're like,
we're pretty sure that they're going
to make an example of one of you guys,
one of you Western journalists.
So I go to them and I'm like, yeah,
I don't want to go to prison anymore.
You know, I'd like to move to Las Vegas.
So they basically
I basically went on vacation
quotation marks and fled
and moved to Las Vegas and,
got a got a visa job
as the editor in chief of a CrossFit blog,
because that was the only company
that would put in the,
I think it was H1
or the HB, the extraordinary worker.
And that job was awful.
And then obviously, as soon as I got here,
I made inroads with the Review-Journal
and then got fired from morning shakeup
because the owner of the company
was harassing a female staff member.
And so I reported him to the board
and they fired me.
So I got fired again and then had 60 days
to find a job where I get deported.
Called up the Review-Journal.
Pete Johnson,
the editor of the business at that time,
I was like, I love your work.
Looks good. You're hired.
And so that was it.
So yeah,
now I'm at the Review-Journal. Sorry.
the detour there.
No, I, I, I
it was an important detail and, and I,
and I knew that we were going to be able
to get from Hong Kong to the review
journal because I had heard part
of this story before, and
you filled in an
important blank for me, which was
there was this moment
when you met your wife.
Yeah. Where it was.
Now I have something to lose,
it seems like.
Not that you didn't have something
to lose before, but you know, it.
It was.
It was not just about you
anymore, Patrick.
And and and that was.
That's
kind of an interesting transformation
in your own personal
as well as your professional life.
Yeah.
There's a sense of reckless abandon
that, you know, it was like, whatever,
you know, take me.
I don't have anything, you know,
obviously a family and all that stuff.
But my experience with the Hells
Angels was like,
I'll call you a bluff, you know?
But Hells Angels are a little different
than the Chinese Communist Party, right?
So at some point it got to the point
where, like, I couldn't sleep,
you know,
you're waking up
in the middle of the night
thinking the cops
are going to break through your door
and you're thinking, this is the last time
I'm going to have a slice of pizza.
This is the last time I'm going to be able
to go to a sporting match.
It's the last time
they will go for coffee with my.
And you really start
to weigh those things.
And then I met Ramona and so that.
Yeah. If.
Yeah that that really
that really changes things because I do
I, I've met a lot of journalists
who have been in the same situation of me
and they said, no,
I'm not going to report on this.
I value my friends, my family, my life
more than
pushing this button,
which brings danger with it.
And that's cool, and I understand
and and I don't know if I would push
that button anymore.
Now, you know,
because I have a wife to think about. So.
But it is a question
I think journalists should ask themselves,
you know, are you willing to go to prison
for your reporting?
Are you are you willing to go to jail?
Are you
are you willing to die for journalism?
You know,
because there's journalists who have died
for the idea of free speech, right.
And so
it's probably good to find out
if you're doing this as a job
and you want a career
or you want to be famous, that's fine.
All the power to you.
Or do you believe
in this idea of Western values
and that free speech is bigger than you
and can be bigger than you?
And if you're not willing to defend it,
then who is?
And if we all decide
we're not going to defend Western values,
we're going to lose.
We're going to the West.
Well, well, now take us.
You you started our master's program.
Yeah.
And, you know, Ramona started at first.
She did.
And then she, like her business, took off.
And then I remember
we had some discussions.
I feel so bad.
If I drop out, Kevin's gonna
be really upset, and, Yeah, I think she.
He still is.
You should see he's fuming over.
I I'm excited for it.
I think that's awesome.
Yeah. She's done really, really well.
She's found her well for an athlete.
What do they say? Athletes die twice.
Once when they retire and once
filters to
see her go through that and to her.
proud of her.
So it's good.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Well and then we got you into teaching.
Yeah.
So tell us about that experience
and that making that transition
I No, I, I, I think it's been really good.
I, I think with every class
you obviously get a mix.
I think you get some students
who are just there for the credit.
You get some students
who maybe don't want to be there or they
they are upset that they're there
or I don't know,
but I, I do feel like there's
a portion of the class that come in there
like, wow, I'm learning from Dave.
Kevin, you know, Patrick,
guys who've been in the
the trenches, in the field,
they've talked to, you know,
these guys can teach me stuff
that can help me get a job
when I get on the real world.
And I think you kind of
maybe identify those students
and and not focus on them,
but lean into them.
And then you can capture maybe
some of the other students along the way.
I remember when I taught it in person,
we had this one student,
she she was sort of missing classes,
and I was kind of coming in.
And then one day we worked on headlines
like, you know, read a headline
and we're going to go up
and we're going to scrutinize it
in front of everybody.
And I called her up to the board,
and I could tell her
she didn't want to be there.
And then we like,
dissected her headline for like 20 minutes
and her
and it and then at the end of it,
it was ten times better.
And I literally saw her go from,
I don't like this
class to I'm going to be at this class
every class.
And so little wins like that
for me are like, I was like, oh, cool.
You know,
you can actually change somebody's
mind because like, next class she comes
in, she got her hand up, she's talking.
She's like, wow, I'm actually learning how
to write better headlines, better leads.
I'm how to find my audience.
All the type of stuff.
This isn't just some class that I'm taking
to tick off the box for a great degree.
Right?
So those wins I really enjoy
because I'm sure you guys have had those.
They're very tangible, right?
Like, you can watch somebody change,
like real time.
One of the things that you mentioned
that I think is so important that we do
as a faculty is even still those values,
those Western values
that you talked about, that you know,
the freedom of the press
is built into our Constitution.
It's the DNA of who we are as a society.
Given your life experience
and your professional experience,
you've lived that.
Yeah.
Do you find that, as you mentioned,
journalism isn't just a job,
but it is a calling.
Do you find that as you are
dating elements of that in your classes,
that some people really, you know,
they get it and other people,
I mean, again, no, no,
no disrespect to anybody who's just like,
I need a paycheck.
That's understandable.
But do you find that there is a particular
element of a student's personality
where it's like, okay, this is somebody
who I can see quote unquote has it versus,
you know, okay, this one could do it,
but they don't necessarily have it.
What do you think that element is?
I guess I'm curious about that
from your perspective,
because you're working with our students
in that 207 class relatively early on?
I don't know, I'm
just curious, your perspective, I,
I will say
this is Western civilization flawed.
Yes. Is it perfect?
No. Is capitalism flawed? Yes.
Is it perfect? No.
But do we want to replace it
with communism?
I, I saw that firsthand.
You do not want that, right?
I think a lot of sometimes
the students come into the class and,
you know, they're born in Las Vegas,
or they're born in another city,
and they come and they've seen stuff on TV
and they haven't
necessarily lived and felt
and really sort of a experience
that sort of threat.
Right.
Like if you're born and raised in America,
you won the lottery.
Right.
And I think a lot of people
don't necessarily realize that,
but you don't necessarily have to go
piss off the Chinese Communist Party to,
you understand?
You know, we have it pretty good here.
Can things be better? Of course.
And so I think I've seen some students
that have that curiosity.
And when I share my experience with them
and say, here's what it's like
on the other side, you know, here's
what it's like in Nicaragua
when the military runs the country, right?
You know,
and you get shaken down in your car
by cops because the cops work
for the drug cartels.
Right.
And you share these experiences with them.
And I think they see you
and they hear you,
and they approximate the smells
of this person who's like,
I was there, I lived it,
and I'm going to share the story with you.
And I've seen some of them
that have that curiosity go,
okay, I'm hearing another viewpoint here.
I'm not hearing ra ra America,
but I'm hearing,
you know, we should have
a bit of appreciation for this.
So I think the curiosity is really key.
And then you do get some students
where they, they
you can tell that they've,
they've gone into an echo chamber
and they don't want to hear a few points
that are dissimilar to them.
But it's really difficult to disagree
with somebody
who literally got into a fistfight
with the Chinese Communist Party.
Right.
So my lived experience, consent of sort of
say to them, okay, here's what I got.
You read an article on the New York Times.
It says America is a poopy place, right?
Who do you really want to believe?
So that's sort of the way I look at it.
You know, we can always get better.
America can always strive to be better.
The West can always strive to be better.
But I
really fear having seen the other side.
If you burn this down for something
else, it's not a good thing.
And I've seen that that other side
and what that other side
looks like, it's very, very scary.
So I love what you said though.
Be curious. Yes.
Ask questions.
I think that comes down to keep an open
mind.
You know, if you've got an open mind,
if you can,
can you continually ask those questions?
That's kind of the building block
that everything else is scaffold on.
Yeah,
I think that's always been the thing.
Like at like
the new shopping mall
or the new housing complex or, you know,
we go, we go and we get a creamery
after going for pizza.
And I'm asking the guy who works there,
you know what he does?
He's going to UNLV,
you know, but he didn't get student loans,
so he had to drop out, right?
Like, I'm always asking,
what's this guy's story?
You know,
and you're gathering information.
There's this curiosity
about the world around you.
And what that does is it also equips you.
You know, knowledge is power.
And the more knowledge you have about your
surroundings, the more you can navigate.
Like if you refuse to be curious,
you're not going to learn,
you know, where are the pressure
points in the system?
Where can I who do I need to talk to
to get a job at the Review Journal?
Right.
And what you learn these systems
and where the pressure points
are by being curious and making calls and
and getting out in the world.
And you can use that to your advantage.
And that's the thing
like the thing with Hong Kong,
you know, I was like,
how do I get hired there?
And he's like, well,
I heard if you show up on Hong Kong
soil to get a job, I wouldn't have gotten
that information if I hadn't
been here.
Yeah, right.
And then you just sort of
need the fortitude and and the guts to go
and execute it.
So that's kind of
how I've always kind of lived by,
you know,
I have a sense of sense of adventure, too.
I mean, there's a whole world out there.
It's not as scary as you think.
I think where I'm giving the instance
that it's super scary.
It's not. It's really not. Yeah.
So, Patrick, if there a question
we should have asked you that we didn't.
Oh, I like to say that sometimes
to somebody
somebody asked me consider that payback.
I would say yes,
I do have regrets
because you always hear people say,
you know, do you have regrets?
Would you do it all the same?
And they say, yes, yeah.
I wouldn't change a thing.
I would change a lot of things.
Yeah, right.
And so I think that I answer that question
differently.
People are like,
you know, would you change anything?
Would you go back
and do things differently?
Of course not. I, I would change a lot.
I would change what I had
for breakfast this morning.
And so I
think that critical lens of yourself,
but not necessarily in a negative way.
Yeah. So nobody's really ever asked me
that an interview.
But now now you have.
And yeah, you know, I,
I would have done things way different.
I would have been way more efficient if,
if I had another chance
at this
life, I'd have been in Hong Kong at 21.
Right. So,
Yeah.
Well, Patrick, thanks for your time. It's
been a pleasure.
This is great.
This is awesome.
Yeah.
Thanks, guys. You.