Do better, be much better; my mea culpa blog

At my age, I wouldn’t have thought I’d still be capable of contorting myself in ways I shouldn’t be contorting, but here I was putting my foot in my mouth twice in less than a week.

The first time it happened was on a Facebook thread a day or two after Brienne Allen, a production manager with Notch Brewing of Salem, Massachusetts, set the craft beer world on fire when she shared stories of sexual harassment and misogyny in the industry through her Instagram handle, @ratmagnet.

Allen invited women to share stories about their experiences working in beer and the responses were both alarming and horrific, though to many women in the business, not at all surprising.

My friend Erin Broadfoot, owner and brewer at Little Beast Brewing in Whitby, was on Facebook after Allen’s revelations talking about the issue and I made the mistake of chiming in and saying the stories were sickening, but weren’t they almost all American submissions and isn’t the craft beer industry in Ontario so much better than that?

Erin was patient with me in her reply (as she tends to be), telling me there are hundreds of similar stories up here about women in the industry being harassed that are just not part of the public record.

I knew Erin got mansplained a lot (something that always mystified me because of the way she carried herself), but I didn’t realize she was on the receiving end of far worse abuse from men in the industry.

A tale I’ll tell you one day, she said, but that didn’t stop me from continuing my narrative that we were somehow above the kind of bro culture we were reading about in the @ratmagnet stories that were plastered all over social media.

Erin Broadfoot, Little Beasts

And that’s when Robin LeBlanc entered the thread. I have an enormous amount of respect for Robin, who was my Beer Writer of the Year in 2019, and that sentiment is shared by many others in the craft beer community here and in the United States, who welcome her voice, especially on social justice issues. She has a habit of breaking stories on critical issues in the industry – such as about racism and misogyny - and she let me know I was being naïve and clearly out to lunch on the matter.

Of course, the more I tried to defend my point the dumber I started to sound.

I knew about one of the founders of Four Fathers (Cambridge) sexually assaulting his girlfriend and I had heard of similar stories about the Ontario Beverage Network creator, I said. Then you must realize there are plenty more stories like that you HAVEN’T heard about, she countered.

I started thinking about the sexism that is still commonplace in beer labeling, and how important it is to speak up on the issue. I wrote about the sexist branding of Nickel Brook (Burlington) beers Naughty Neighbour and Immodest a few years ago and how pressure from people far more influential than I got them to change the branding.

I have friends who refuse to buy beer from Barrie’s Flying Monkeys, partly because of the Sparklechunks marketing fiasco of 2019 but also because of sexist beer names like Juicy Ass, which remain in the brewery’s rotation despite vocal opposition from people like writer and vlogger Robert Arsenault (Drunk Polkeroo) and outspoken homebrewer Linda Beer.

Because sometimes voting with your wallets is not enough.

Anyway, I came out of the Facebook thread bruised but still intact, and, I hoped, a little bit wiser.

But maybe not so much wiser, because a couple days later I was back in hot water, this time not for what I wrote but for what I didn’t write.

I had somehow managed to land myself a job for the first time since the pandemic started. And not just any job, but a full-time job in journalism (for the first time in two decades!) with an online newspaper organization called insauga.com.

And in a perfect storm of circumstances, two friends of mine who also happened to be two of my favourite brewers, were launching a new brewery in Oshawa – New Ritual - the weekend before my first day on the job.

This was going to be my first story. I was chuffed, to say the least.

I arranged with Tim Ferriman, the former Head Brewer at Town (Whitby) and Mascot (Toronto) to show up at the Wilson Road brewery in Oshawa’s industrial south-east end on Sunday, just before the opening bell at noon.

The New Ritual Brewing team

I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, what with it being opening weekend and all, so we chatted about the brewery and how the idea got its roots (I didn’t even know he had left Mascot) for a few minutes, and when Jim Gorry (Manantler, Chronicle) arrived I had a couple questions for my pal, before going home with a four-pack of their initial beers (Anthem Pale Ale and New Ritual Lager) in my hand and story ideas rolling around my head.

I worked on the story that evening – both Tim and Jim were guitar players who had played in numerous bands over the years so “Rock Star Brewers Open Brewery’ was my hook – and I had it ready Monday morning for insauga.

My boss loved it; my friends on Beer Twitter loved it; and it even got some publicity in the Toronto punk scene when Ralph Alfonso, the manager of iconic punk band The Diodes and former Toronto punk club Crash & Burn, re-tweeted the story after I had mentioned that Jim had played a gig with the band in 2015.

All those happy thoughts disappeared when I went back later that day to have another look at the story on the newspaper’s website. When I scrolled down to the comments section the first one I saw was from Molly Gorry, Jim’s wife and a full partner in New Ritual.

Molly thanked me for the exposure and said she appreciated all the kind words I had written about her husband over the years, but perhaps I should have learned about the contributions of her and Melanie Martins (Tim’s fiancée and also an equal partner in the business) before writing the story.

“Maybe we can chat further and you can better understand the background of Mel and myself - two women with interesting backstories who contribute immensely and equally to the operations of our business. “

If I felt the air coming out of my inflated ego, I was not prepared for the tone of the rest of the comments from other women who had read the story.

The story was called “reductive” twice (I had to look that one up), and I was told I was both “belittling” and “diminishing” Mel and Molly’s contributions to the business by “tossing them to the sidelines.”

I have to admit I was hurt by the comments. I know Jim and Tim as friends and brewers and I have never met Melanie or Molly but I would never knowingly overlook or dimmish their contributions in any way.

But my excuse that I was focused on the brewing aspect of the business and not aware of Molly and Melanie’s roles came off as hollow. As a trained (albeit rusty) journalist with years of experience, I should have asked the right questions, so that’s on me. Also, three of the four pictures I found on New Ritual’s website (including the one I chose to illustrate the story) had all four people front and centre, so that should have clued me in.

So I messaged Tim and asked for a little bit of info on Molly and Mel’s work with the brewery. And then I added it to the story. Two paragraphs  - about eighty or so words – isn’t much, but it made it a much better story, as well as a much better balanced story.

Then I reached out to both Melanie and Molly. I apologized, assured them it was not intentional, urged them to read the revised article and promised to do better next time.

I followed that with some private conversations with Erin, as well as my friends Candice and Greg, to try and hash out what I should do, and I also reached out to my college friend Steve, who got me the job at insauga. He advised me to "never read the comments" on news stories, which I understood as a general rule, but this one, I told him, was 'personal' because it involved my friends.

And then Molly got back to me and was understanding and thanked me for my honesty as well, so I am very much appreciative of that.

It was at that point I came to the conclusion there was not going to be much more I could do; except of course own up to my mistakes in a blog.

I looked at the article on the insauga site again that day and found a woman who read the edited story and was still unhappy, calling me “Bro Dude” (ouch!) and asking that I “edit again.”

I declined, saying I was satisfied with the new version, and thanked her for reading. And then sat back in my chair and realized that no matter how butt-hurt I may be, these women were right. I DID do Molly and Melanie a disservice, for which I have apologized and tried to make amends.

And I also realized I am never going to please everyone. All I can do is my best, and then the next day, a little better.

In the words of Beer Diversity’s Ren Navarro, “Do Better, Be Better.”

Cheers! (And believe women!)