COVID-19 Closeup: Bernie Puchalski
COVID-19 CLOSEUP
SUBJECT: BERNIE PUCHALSKI, BPSN
What would you be doing at BPSN if the pandemic hadn’t hit? Bill and I would be working hard covering high school lacrosse, track and field and soccer and getting ready for the Canadian Secondary Schools Rowing Association regatta that would be starting Friday. The CSSRA coverage would hopefully include an advance story on a crew or individual chasing high school rowing’s Triple Crown providing the coach didn’t think it was bad luck to talk about it (one of the things that drove Bill and I crazy). We would also be writing about lacrosse and Niagara Spears football.
What are you doing now at BPSN?: We are desperately searching for stories to write about, fighting tooth and nail over the few story ideas that come sparingly across our desks and coming up with ideas like COVID-19 Closeup to make the content on our site not appear as dated as my wardrobe or my pre-pandemic haircut.
What is the biggest obstacle to doing your job during the pandemic? Duhhhhhh. Every single sport is cancelled.
What do you miss the most about the pre-pandemic world of BPSN? Hanging out with all the great people that make Niagara’s sporting community truly extraordinary and BPSN’s Muskoka summit meetings.
What do you miss the least about the pre-pandemic world of BPSN? Typing in and reformatting high school track and field results so that they are easy to read and make sense. By the end, my eyes were always blurry, I would have a screaming headache and I had no doubt made a number of mistakes that come with handling that volume of names and measurements. A close second would be trying to cover all the high school championships when seven or eight of them are scheduled on the same day.
What is the biggest thing wrong with your industry that you can reveal without getting fired or demoted for your honesty? Not worried about getting fired because we are our own bosses. If Bill fires me, I would fire him right back. Biggest thing wrong is that social media platforms take too much advertising dollars away from local media sites without providing any funding for the people generating content.
Is there an easy way to fix the problem? Have the government make sure social media platforms are contributing funding to reputable, local news gathering sources.
Is there a hard way to fix the problem? See above.
What would be one suggestion to make your industry better? Have more people working in the field at both our website and other local media in Niagara. It’s a shame how few people are allocated to cover the sporting scene in Niagara.
Has the pandemic changed how you will approach your work at BPSN when life returns to normal? No, but I will appreciate what I do for a living even more than I did before. There’s nothing better than making a living at something you love to do.
What is the first thing you are going to do when life returns to normal? Get a friggin’ haircut. I am tired of my family calling me shaggy, scruffy or Jimmy Neutron when they decide it would be funny to put product in my hair and shape it to appear even more ridiculous.
What daily activity do you miss the most? Eating out at my favourite restaurants and wandering around stores with no real aim or purpose.
What guilty pleasure do you miss the most? Thrift shopping with my kids at my favourite thrift stores in Grimsby, Beamsville and Pelham. There’s nothing quite like the joy of finding a CD or record of 80s music I don’t have or buying even more vintage stereo equipment to clutter up our house. It also gives Tess a chance to add to her burgeoning hoodie collection and Alex to gather even more books for her overflowing shelves.
What is your favourite outfit to wear around the house if you are working from home? Ratty pyjama shorts and a T-shirt. Usually after wearing the same attire until 4 p.m. for three straight days, someone reads me the riot act and inquires if I still want to be married.
What do you do to replace the time spent working on BPSN? Sorting, cleaning, snacking, fixing, procrastinating, worrying, gardening, walking, binge watching Netflix and Amazon Prime and cranking the tunes.
Are you most likely to be a hunk, chunk, drunk or sasquatch when the pandemic ends? A skinny sasquatch with a mean disposition.
What is the worst habit you have picked up during the pandemic? Sleeping in until after 9 a.m. My reasoning is the longer I sleep in, the less time I have to fill during the day.
What is the best habit you have picked up during the pandemic? I stopped going to Tim Hortons for coffee multiple times a day for no reason other than my caffeine addiction.
What is something good about yourself you have discovered during the pandemic? I am basically an optimistic person.
What is something bad about yourself you have discovered during the pandemic? I am a creature of habit and don’t do well with change. Working from home, I got used to having the run of the house and now every day is take your family to work day.
In the weeks ahead, BPSN is hoping to get people in Niagara’s sporting community to share their COVID Closeups. If you want to volunteer, shoot Bill or I a text. You have our numbers.
BPSN and the COVID-19 pandemic
Like all small businesses dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, BPSN is not sure what the business landscape will look like when things return to normal. Our website is financed primarily through advertising revenues and partnership agreements with many local sports and educational organizations in Niagara. Our goal is to continue providing our readers with the extensive local sports coverage you have come to expect from our site. Since our inception, we have written more than 2,800 stories on our local athletes and teams. Many of our readers have given us one-time donations or send us monthly contributions to help offset our costs. We would be eternally grateful if others would consider doing the same by using the Support Us button located on the right-hand side of our home page below the mosaic.
Thank you for your continued support.
Bill and Bernie.
