“You’re the witness, you’re the eyes and ears. And that comes with a burden, but it also comes with a lot of joy.”
Jane Sims/LinkedIn
When it comes to crime and justice issues in London Ontario, for over 30 years Jane Sims has given us the details after the ruling strike of the gavel. Working for the London Free Press throughout the entirety of her journalistic career, the path of journalism for Jane wasn’t always paved.
“I think it found me,” says Sims.
Attending Western University earning a bachelor of Arts and a degree in history, she was still unsure what to do after graduation. That being until a friend in one of her classes suggested journalism as a possible path.
“She said, here I’ve got an extra application. It was a one page deal. I filled it out. I sent it away with my transcripts. Next thing I knew I had an interview for the class with a lovely man now passed named Ross McLean. He interviewed me and I got an acceptance.”
After earning her bachelors degree in journalism, Jane went on to intern back in London at the Free Press. But crime, courtroom and justice reporting didn’t come straight away at first.
Starting out as an arts and entertainment reporter for three years, eventually evolved into regional reporting where Jane covered Sarnia, Lambton, and Chatham all from the Free Press. But Sims described how she admired the investigational aspect of covering trials, reflecting on a single case that changed her outlook on reporting.
“There was a huge trial in Sarnia that lasted 10 weeks, it was a homicide. And, boy, it had everything… my thinking was, I really like this, I really dig it, and I think it’s interesting.”
Since then, Sims has taken the title of a crime and justice issues reporter, describing her ever growing curiosity and newfound interests within this beat of journalism every year.
Sims is a four-time National Newspaper Award nominee and has won multiple Ontario Newspaper Awards and in 2018, she was named ONA’s Journalist of the Year. With such success Jane revisits the popular question of why she’s stayed with the same news firm for so long.
#ldnont London Free Press https://t.co/i0JcmEJMpT nominee @JaneSims, left, and, right, winner Heather Kok Wright of Petrolia Independent @PetroliaIndie in small media excellence category at Canadian Journalism Foundation awards #cjfawards2018 . Congrats to you both. pic.twitter.com/XTUilpO55O
— Greg Van Moorsel (@GregatLFPress) June 15, 2018
“The practical side of me went, Okay. If I want to have a family and I want to have a bit of stability in my life, I can do the same kind of news here, and probably have more opportunities to do it rather than scratching and crawling my way through a newsroom in Toronto.”
This practical side of Jane being one of the reasons why she is still reporting for the Free Press today. Concluding that she is more than happy they never ‘kicked her out’.
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