One of the beauties of the web is extended space.

A story that ran yesterday on the extradition of Kevin Maryk, the father of Abby and Dominic Maryk, said it could be delayed for months.

There's also a possibility that Maryk's friend Robert Groen could be deported, not extradited, said police.

Regardless, B.C. legal expert Gary Botting provided a LOT of legal insight on the matter, not all of which ran in the print version of our story.

Sometimes, as a reporter, a story grabs you by the neck and won’t let go.

A recent series I did on taxicabs weighed on me for months, after a pretty amazing woman I met came forward to tell her story.

She was brave and angry and motivated, and told the story of her alleged sexual assault by a driver.

The man is now before the courts – and the case hit the news because she made the choice to discuss it.

I received two interesting pieces of mail regarding a recent story I did on wait times for criminal record checks, based on the ones needed for those who work with especially vulnerable people like kids or disabled adults.

The issue isn’t new to Winnipeg, and has popped up in other parts of Canada (as fingerprint analysis is done through the RCMP, so it’s a federal issue). However, what recently caught my interest in Doug Goodman’s case was the fact this longtime foster parent and plain-spoken man presented himself as taking one for the team.

(Goodman said in an interview he knows lots of other people eager to foster who have huge issues with the checks. As reporters know... chatting publicly about anything CFS-related takes moxie, because in my experience anything CFS-related is usually placed in a cone of silence, with no help from this province’s restrictive Child and Family Services Act.)

Anyways, after the piece ran, I received two pieces of mail I thought worth running.

Good news for intellectuals, debaters and general rabble-rousers – dissent in Winnipeg is alive and well.

I’ve always told people the reason I got involved in journalism wasn’t the writing as much as the interviewing and observing.

It’s navigating those conflicts between peoples and person that add a crackle to the air and a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Anyway, I’m hoping the next two weeks should give plenty of opportunity for robust debate – at three public events I’ll be at on different areas on areas of crime and politics.

One day — though not today — I will write the top ten things I've discovered covering crime.

High up on the list would be the axiom you soon learn: if an object can be stolen, it will be.

So, that means items you'd never, ever, ever consider vulnerable to theft will end up being victim to sticky fingers.

In Winnipeg, that means I've heard of pilfered construction equipment and public art (a statue from the Leo Mol garden). Really?

I recently did a series called Danger Pay for the Free Press, focussing on how violence at work impacts different professions.

Figuring how to go at the story took time – reporters know from covering police press conferences and reading court dockets, as well as vetting public tips, about some of the most dangerous occupations when it comes to crime. For example, taxi drivers have always been front and centre of the issue, and led to reams of public debate on how to protect them from violent customers.

So what was the best part of the story, once I got amazing stats from Workers Compensation Board breaking down people who’ve missed work since 2006 based on their profession?

Well, what I didn’t expect... at all.

It’s one of the most famous lines of poetry: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

There’s been reams of insight on what that line by Yeats actually means, of course. (Heck, it`s not like I can take on Chimua Achebe .

But one that I often think about when it comes to journalism is reporters’ relationships with institutional/government/organizational hierarchies for information.

In my opinion, the news if often made when non-organizational sources (like witnesses of a crime, or families of a homicide victim, say, or an advocacy group) come forward with information or insight that force or compel these organizations to respond. Sometimes, the insight isn`t sanctioned, like University of Manitoba`s so-called `Don Quixote’, Gabor Lukacs.

Three words: judge, sex, bondage. Really, the story on Judge Lori Douglas indicates that’s there’s a never-ending public thirst for high-powered people doing smutty things, and where the debate over private life and public office begins.

Anyways, I’m not paid to ‘opinionate’ on the daily news cycle, and I try to be careful about where I editorialize on ongoing issues I may potentially cover.

(So, Lori Douglas, Jack King and Alex Chapman – the last of which I interviewed last week – you’ll be spared from my take here.)

What I do feel I’d like to address is what I affectionately call the Toronto Media Blinders.

The crime beat will bring you the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, a total roller coaster ride.

Sometimes, they’re all wrapped into one story. Take the court hearing Wednesday where I heard about the absolutely breath-taking forgiveness of a recently widowed mom. Her 21-year-old son, Nolan Kunz, died in a car crash in 2008.

The story that ran in our print edition didn’t fully document the woman’s amazing capacity to evade the insatiable thirst for “pitchfork justice,” a bang-on term coined by local Crown Tony Kavanagh in a recent law article.

Remember, this woman is so devastated she couldn’t show up for court. However, she asked Crown Joyce Dalmyn to tell the car’s 22-year-old driver Ashten Milne she didn’t want him to go to jail, because she didn’t think it would help a kid who hadn’t had many breaks in his life.

I blogged earlier this week on the West End violence, and the importance of looking at last week’s fatal shooting of 16-year-old Kyle Earl in a wider social context.

I’m not the only one, apparently.

Below is an open letter to the media from some of the city’s most well-known community workers on what they’d like to see in coverage of gangs. Hint: what they’re seeking isn’t salacious. I think it’s an interesting read that tackles issues of sensationalism and the aftermath of media reportage in a head-on way.

It’s from a listserv of about 300 people dedicated to West End and core area issues.

Ever feel like you're on repeat? Last week, as West End violence ramped up in the headlines, it seemed familiar, if deeply troubling.

Reports of an allegedly gang-involved 13-year-old and 16-year-old being shot on Toronto Street were downright disturbing.

The public's disgust barometer shot up further when an eight-year-old and 10-year-old were injured after another related shooting on Victor Street. Seeing stuffed animals in the window of their Victor Street home sent a chill up my spine.

It's the little things that stick.

The head producer of Hockey Night in Canada, Sherali Najak , contacted me Saturday night to let me know that there was an on-air tribute to Brock Pulock, 13.

It was tasteful and thoughtfully done. I wanted to give people a taste of the clip here in case they missed it:

The clip starts at the 7:48 mark, so you can scroll to the point it starts.

I have no other words: the Ross Avenue home where a 30-year-old woman died this week is a total dump.

There’s a toilet seat on the front porch, and an old mattress. I have an empty codeine bottle on my desk that came from a nearby sidewalk, never mind an empty hairspray bottle littering a vacant lot to the east side of the property. The doors are sealed with pieces of plywood, and I debated whether or not the property was vacant before someone yelled at me from behind a closed door.

(He didn’t want to talk to me. Fair enough. The other neighbours had plenty to say about screaming and ongoing violence there, as well as people they’ve seen going in and out of the home with jugs.)

I’ve spent enough time on Ross Avenue that the conditions of some homes don’t surprise me.