I'm not complaining--there's nowhere else I would rather have been for the past three and a half years--but sometimes I feel like a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson is more like a Masters of Journalism, or even a Phd., condensed into four years. J-school critics must not realize how dedicated to journalism us students really have to be in order to stick with this degree--if my classmates and I aren't qualified as journalists when we graduate, I don't know who is. Writing for and producing the Review is like a full time job within itself. At the same time, we're producing freelance articles for a writing course, a detailed magazine prototype for an editing course, reading a book a week for an English course and attending a media ethics course.

For almost 20 hours a week, we're in the classroom. Whenever we're not, we're scrambling to make phone calls. As journalism students, we're expected to read a couple of newspapers a day and watch newscasts. As magazine majors and future freelance writers, we also need to read enough magazines to stay on top of what's happening in the industry. Most of us have part time jobs--many are journalism-related--and then there's the volunteer journalism work we do on our own time, for campus papers or other publications, in our desire to get published.

It's more work than any journalist in the real world would ever encounter. And it's unpaid. It amazes me that we continue to subject ourselves to this workload, which leaves absolutely no time for family, friends, ourselves, and sleep, even when we let certain areas, like our academic courses, slide. It sometimes amazes me that we're still here and enthusiastic about journalism, although really, that's no surprise considering our passion for the craft. I can't wait to see how great our work will be after graduation, when we can write and report full time, for a living.

Posted by at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The prime minister will meet with the GG today to dissolve his government and request a January election. The press gallery has a long and arduous campaign ahead. Seven weeks long and straight through the holidays. They mustn't be thrilled. For all our sakes, let's hope they don't shirk their responsibility so that readers and viewers can make informed decisions on election day. The sponsorship scandal will without question be the central issue of the campaign. It should make for great political theatre and sell a paper or two. But it's not the only issue and it's important for reporters, commentators and political pundits to run the gamut and engage the leaders of our political parties in meaningful discussion on policies and strategy that, should they be elected, will occupy their time in office. It's true that elections can be won and lost on a single issue but that's for the public to decide, not the press.

Posted by at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Aside from articles that provoke furious letters to the editor, it's not often that a newspaper story strikes such a chord with readers that it motivates them to action.

Although I am nowhere near being a scientific sample, the Toronto Star's series about Sunnybrook's critical care unit had this kind of effect on me. After reading the first story, "Saving Carlos," I not only had a new appreciation for doctors and nurses, but also felt a serious need to give blood (one of Carlos' many medical procedures was a blood transfusion).

Now, I haven't actually donated yet, but that is more a factor of needle phobia and suffocating deadlines than ineffective reporting.

I find some of the greatest stories to be things that happen every day but that we either don't pay much attention to, or don't consider putting into words.

Posted by at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's strange to be a journalist with a fear of phones. With e-mail, it's so much easier to fire off a short note to the person you want to interview than to be transferred from person to person...call an endless number of times...and yes, even get hung up on. But e-mails are so much easier to ignore than a person on the line, talking away. Do potential interviewees return calls quicker than e-mails? I know if I were the one being sent a request, I'd find it easier to e-mail back.

Posted by at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

With winter in the air and the Christmas shopping season heading into that frenzied "only (fill-in-the-blank) shopping days left" phase, today's issue of Saturday Night will be the last. The history of the publication is indeed impressive; it predates the Stanley Cup, in fact. In no small twist of irony, my online feature (I hesitate to tip off the title, lest an editorial decision render me a fool) goes up Monday and addresses the demise of this venerable Canadian institution. Since I haven't much to add to the article, I'll encourage all the would-be freelancers out there to do some more digging and judge for themselves the state of the magazine industry in this country.

As for me, it seems as if the free-wheeling American obsession with quantity over quality has for the most part taken root here in Canada (not by any deliberate choice, mind you, but as a result of the blind evolutionary forces of economics), yet the government is lagging behind in their policies. If a free market is what they want, why so many restrictions on the fundraising options available to publishers? Why so many headaches to get these restrictions lifted? If Canadian content is what they want (as the CRTC does for broadcasting), why make it so difficult for Canadian publications to pay Canadian writers a living wage? With a much smaller population and much larger land mass, Canadian lawmakers are living in a fool's paradise if they think open competition with the elephant to the south will help define and enhance this country's cultural identity, which is exactly what magazines do. Here's hoping Geist and Maisonneuve can follow in the footsteps of The Walrus and convince the government that some things are worth more than the paper they're printed on. And money isn't one of them.

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eye Weekly, one of Toronto's two alt-weeklies, recently redesigned, although purged is probably a more apt word to describe what's happened to the paper. It doesn't look all that bad, but it never looked all that bad in the first place. The increased emphasis on visuals has decreased story length and while this might be helpful to subway riders who are short on time, it's come at the cost of well-written, well-researched journalism. And it's not like Eye was running 4,000-word features before the redesign.

But it's the stripping of no less than five columns that really irks me. Eye boasted (and still boasts) some of the country's best political, cultural and arts critics but the redesign leaves no room for Jason Anderson's Medium Cool, former Toronto mayor John Sewell's Citystate, Gord McLaughlin's Moondoggie, Guy Leshinski's The Panelist, or Errol Nazareth's Sample This. What a waste. These columns were always smart, funny and driven by the writers' (thoughtful) opinions and personalities. With them went the paper's soul.

For three years, magazine journalism teachers have gone around on the first day of class and asked us to name our favourite magazines. I always named Eye. So I'll continue to pick up the free paper, scan the offerings, check out what Anderson has to say about the newest films, read a few music reviews (Stuart Berman remains Canada's best music critic), and check the listings. But I doubt it will make it off the subway with me anymore.

P.S. Anderson's feature on film adaptations in the latest issue of This Magazine rules.

Posted by at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Canadian scandals are generally quite boring. Softwood lumber disputes, anyone? No? Yes, that's what I thought. Also, the largest scandal in recent memory involves the words "ad revenue" and "Quebec" so that automatically warrants little to no interest among the general public. Sensing this lack of interest, I'm glad the Canadian news industry is finally back on track with stories that actually catch the public's obviously juvenile attention span.

Now, thanks to the teenage sex/racism conflict at your neighbourhood friendly high school, daughters drowning mothers, hitmen at every corner waiting to take out Paul Martin and 50 Cent being, like, totally banned from Canada until the end of time, the media has finally got our attention.

While everyone loves the random sex/gangsta rap/murder beat, can't us readers be trusted just a little bit? Can't the media assume we have just a wee bit of intelligence left? I want to learn more about the softwood lumber dispute, honest, I do. I believe there are a lot of readers out there who want to learn more too. But for now, I suppose we'll all have to be content with more media-savvy scandals.

A private plea to 50 Cent: Call Paul Martin and help make softwood lumber disputes sexy. Help us, 50. You're our only hope.

Posted by at 01:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Maybe its my love of the crime beat that makes Christie Blatchford fascinating or because she's a prolific writer. Or maybe it's just because her stories give a human face to victims and their loved ones.

Every morning I search out her column in the Globe and Mail. Lately I've been rewarded more often than not by finding her by-line on page one. In the last 12 issues, her column has made page one four times. On Monday I was so busy not finding her honest mug inside the paper that I forgot to check page one, and there she was - sans photo.

Just when I think I can't read another horror story, like the Jonathan case last year, where Christie zeroed in on the anguish of the mom of both the accused killer and the victim, or Alicia Ross, which chilled our bones this hot summer, I learn about two sisters who are on trial for drugging and drowning their alcoholic mom in the bathtub - and they bragged about it on the Net.

There's little Jeffery Baldwin, whose custodial grandparents are facing first degree murder charges for starving him to death. She has captured his pain and deprivation, while not sentimentalizing his horrid family background or the irresponsible antics of the Catholic Children's Aid Society.

And then she show's up at a hot yoga class in an October column. As a veteran of Bikram yoga, I giggled at her descriptions of buffed bronzed yoga junkies. When she's not running marathons, she's sobbing at Rememberance Day services.

But wait a minute...when did Christie Blatchford begin to define the Globe? It seems the paper is printing increasing amounts of crime stories and Christie is the cover girl. So I ask myself, am I really fascinated by Christie Blatchford, or can I just not get away from her? Hmm...

Posted by at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that I've finally hooked up an antenna to my television, I've been watching the news daily. Well the news on either CTV or the CBC, because they're the only stations that I get. I'm not a news junkie or anything, but after being surprised on more than one occasion at my disgraceful lack of knowledge of current affairs, I've decided to tune in as often as possible.

There's one thing that has struck me in the last three weeks, how much teens are making the news.

The CBC's Canada Now is running a special series called Generation Now, about teens today. How much do they know about sex? A tour of a teen's bedroom. How teens approach authority and so on.

CTV ran a story today about teens playing a deadly game called pass-out, trying to get a high by choking themseleves.

Oprah is talking about bullies.

And in Toronto, bullying is making its way into the news and the courts.

Is it just me or were teens always such a hot topic?

Posted by at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Come support the RRJ! Drinks, prizes, J-Skool students and profs--all at Supermarket Restaurant & Bar (268 Augusta Avenue, in Kensington Market). Tickets are $10 at the door, which opens at 9:30 p.m. Enter our raffle and you could win Leafs tickets, one night at a hotel, tons of magazine subscriptions and more! The Ryerson Review of Journalism's spring masthead hopes to see you there!

Posted by at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Apparently being the best-selling women's magazine in Canada doesn't cut it anymore. Chatelaine will now plan your dinner for you. Three times a week, the magazine will send you "mobile recipe alerts." At 5p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you'll receive a text message with a recipe and grocery list, just in time to stop by the store on the way home from work.

Readers trust their favourite magazines and depend on them for a monthly dose of entertainment and information. They look to their magazines for everything from fashion advice to relationship help to dinner suggestions. Now that most magazines have their own websites, they can give readers more content (and more advertisements) than ever. A reader's interaction with the magazine's creators is no longer limited to the "letters to the editor" page; they can chat with editors and publishers in forums and get to know other readers through message boards. And they can do all this for little or no extra cost (Chatelaine's recipe alerts cost a quarter each, charged by the cell phone service provider).

But at what point does a magazine stop being a magazine? Do we need (or even want) our magazine to be multimedia extravaganzas?

Call me old fashioned, but I'm still happy with a magazine just being a magazine.

Posted by at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was once among a legion of commuters. Cursed with motion sickness and an inability to read in moving vehicles, I was reduced to becoming a TTC zombie: staring out the windows, staring at the subway ads and, particularly, taking note of what other commuters were reading.

Reading material for many consisted of the Metro and Toronto 24 hours, among various novels and tomes of biochemistry perched atop their laps. One morning, I noticed several people in the seats surrounding mine who had their faces buried in copies of Metro, staring intently and not turning the page. Wondering what issue could possibly have captivated so many at the same time, I shifted in my seat to take a discreet look.

Big surprise: they were all looking at the celebrity page. Everyone at that moment who was reading Metro was all over one specific page splashed with photographs of celebrities we've all heard about far too many times. To be clear, this isn't the first time I've seen it happen and I know it's far from the last.

I know one of our writers is working on a story that delves into this very topic, so I won't steal her thunder. Still, I wonder why we're so fascinated with the lives of people we'll never meet or people we might meet either by obsessive stalking or purely by chance--and how reading about them might somehow manage to fill that void.

Nothing's wrong with a little entertainment. Everything in moderation. Right?

Except on the stands.

Or on the TTC.

Posted by at 04:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Wrong again, liberal media!"
- Homer J. Simpson, from that episode with the bear. No, the other one.

There's a widely held assertion (especially among US neocons) that the media somehow lost the Vietnam War for the US. The argument goes something like this: by presenting graphic images of the war into the living rooms of ordinary Americans nightly, the media demoralized the home front and shifted public opinion against it, eventually forcing an end to America's involvement in southeast Asia based on public disenchantment. Partisan arguments accused the media of presenting the war in a way that actively conflicted with the way military and state officials wanted to present it, all for the sake of a sensational story - a view that contributed widespread idea of "liberal bias" in the media that persists to this day.

In Daniel C. Hallin's seminal book, "The Uncensored War:" The Media and Vietnam, Hallin debunks this idea by countering that the media is, in fact, dependent on the military for most of their war reporting information. When you think about it, it's true: most information you see today from the Iraq war is largely correlated to packaged information handed out in shiny folders by US Central Command - from operations and their locations and codenames, to strategic maps, to casualty lists. While some American media outlets have assets planted in the war zone for independent news stories (mostly Iraqi staff - wouldn't want to risk American lives now, would we?), most rely on embedded media for "in the trench stories," which are, ultimately, compromised in objectivity. (Think the "Stockholm Syndrome.")

The argument is made that far from "losing" the Vietnam War with its reports, TV news merely displayed it - albeit with volatile imagery that touched the visceral core of the public. Journalistic objectivity through the fresh new lens of television merely showed that war is an extremely messy business. As the war progressed to the point of becoming a "quagmire," the contradictory and sometimes chaotic nature of Vietnam - the policy, the administration, and the foibles of the war itself - became readily evident. The US military effectively lost the capability to "manage" the media. Conclusion? The media didn't lose the war. The war lost the war.

Interesting parallels arise when comparing Vietnam to Iraq. Reports from Iraq near the beginning of the invasion were largely positive (aided and abetted by biased "embedded" stories.) But things seem to be getting out of control. Will Iraq (now in it's fourth volatile year versus Vietnam's ten year bloody sojourn) will end up the same way? Only time will tell.

Posted by at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey all,

Found the following article while on Slate, one of my favourite news websites around. The article's also by Jack Shafer, whom you've probably heard me babble about in class - he's an excellent media critic and a good writer to boot.

At any rate, this article is a think-piece concerning the post-boomer generation's eventual takeover as the dominant force in culture, including journalism. Shafer notes a couple of examples from the late 70s as cultural landmarks, when the flavour of newspaper headlines indicated that the baby boom generation was taking over. (For example, rock music lyrics being punned-upon or otherwise used in headlines). Shafer asks whether and when the post-boomer generation will create similar cultural landmarks and what they might look like. For example, the article suggests that once you see Simpsons dialogue showing up in newspaper headlines, it means the boomers have ceded control to the following generation(s).

As well as just being kind of fun - can anyone else think of any definitive signifiers that our generation will have taken over? - the article does raise a couple of serious issues. We're here learning about journalism and we're being taught primarily by boomers. But we're eventually going to be stepping into a world of journalism where we're going to be putting our own personal or generational stamp on it - or not. What's it going to look like? What are we going to have to say and how are we going to say it? And how is it going to be different from the Beatles-quoting journalists that preceded us?

Read the article and by all means, weigh in on the issue of Generation whatchamacallit and how we might help to define the culture of journalism in the future.

matt

Posted by at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On a similar topic to the previous posting, what would journalists do without technology? I know, I know, it seems like a silly question since obviously journalists used to manage just fine without tape recorders, computers, or the internet. But journalists today are very dependent on this technology.

Historically, people have always been resistant to new technology because they feared it would complicate their lives, corrupt society, or it just wouldn't improve how things are done. Even the telephone was subject to resistance because people who were used to sending letters didn't like the idea of their communication not being recorded in writing. Can you imagine reporting on stories if the telephone wasn't eventually adopted by society? It would be preposterous to interview someone who lives far away through letter correspondence (e-mail not included) rather than by phone. It would result in a very long reporting process. Just like it would be ridiculous for a journalist to go all the way to a library to look for the same information she could easily find on the internet.

Some people may call this lazy. I call it efficient (and necessary) in the ever-advancing world of journalism. Whatever lazy practices have increased in recent years can't be blamed directly on technology, but on journalists and editors themselves. The way I see it, technology has been far more positive for journalism than it has been negative.

Posted by at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Look at this picture.

Now, it's fairly obvious that the text in that picture is an error, but it says something significant considering it passed proofing at both Reuters and Yahoo before it was posted on the Internet.

I wonder the effect that computers and the Internet have had on people's work ethic. In the days of typewriters and manual presses, I'm sure much greater care was taken to ensure correctness and accuracy than is currently. Of course, the expectations of the audience were different as well: today, everyone wants everything instantly. I even find it difficult to wait those final three seconds for the microwave to heat my lunch. Three seconds -- it's an inconsequential amount of time, but it's far too long to wait these days.

Advances in technology are supposed to make us more productive, better at what we do. Sadly, they've just created lazy practices -- no one re-reads their work anymore, because that's what the spellchecker is for. Besides, if there's an error, it's simple enough to just edit the document and change what was written. Right?

So what happens when we extend these ideas further? Does the Ottawa Citizen distribute an edition announcing Al Gore as the next U.S. President? Does Fox News declare Yassir Arafat dead on at least four separate occasions in the same week? Does a writer from the New York Times submit an article that is ripped almost word-for-word from someone else's piece? And do all of these things happen because it's simple enough to just go back and change them?

It may seem that I'm attributing too much responsibility to technology in finding the root of these practices, so let me draw a parallel.

How often does your computer crash on you? Windows just decides to shut down, or a program doesn't want to function properly, or files disappear for no good reason? Even if it doesn't happen to you particularly often, it's bad enough that it's happened to everybody at least once. Prior to the Internet, software developers were much more careful in their releases: there was no feasible means to distribute patches and updates, so they tried to release finished products. DOS didn't crash. WordPerfect 6.0 never locked up. But it became common in the industry once the Internet made it easy to say "we'll release a patch later."

The same thing is happening in the journalistic world. People are being lazy about creating quality work because it's simple to just fix it later -- and the habit is spreading. It's not just about typos anymore; no one is doing proper research. They're just waiting to be spoonfed.

Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.

So take another look at that picture we started off with. There's a typo in it. It's funny. But it's also depressing, because that typo represents every lazy practice in journalism.

Or maybe I'm just bitter that I can't have my beef underwear.

Posted by at 08:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've always found the news about young people involved in gun violence in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to be pretty disturbing. One of the latest crimes to occur was reported in the Toronto Star last week about a shooting at a Brampton high school. It seems like such an insurmountable problem at times, that it is hard to know exactly what to do about it.

In my opinion, introducing and fostering a love of the arts in these young people would have a profound effect on their self-esteem, and slowly bring them to the realization that violence in not the answer. By arts, of course, I'm talking about everything from painting to music to writing poetry to sculpting. Let's get a trombone or paint brush in these kids' hands instead of handguns.

A good example of an artform these kids might enjoy is called Slam poetry; a more energized, adrenaline driven form of spoken word poetry. I wrote a class assignment on Slam last year, and I think it is part of a workable solution to this problem. It has been described as "the new poetry outlaw" by The League of Canadian Poets. It has been around for centuries, but experienced a rennaissance about 20 years ago in Chicago under the tutelage of poet Marc Smith. In Canada, this momentum was fostered by Dwayne Morgan, who is often referred to as the "Godfather of the Spoken Word."

You could have young and exciting Slam poets like Matthew Toth, who has made an impact with Slam in Toronto, go to schools to talk with the students about it. This would make them see that Slam and art in general are not only cool, but are healthier and more constructive ways to express your feelings. Let life's frustrations out on the canvas, the page, or verbally at a Slam poetry event, not with violence.

Ottawa based poet Oni the Haitian Sensation believes that Slam poetry's potential and impact is immense.
"If you are trying to make a change in society," she says, "then we must address all segments of society [with Slam poetry]. All inclusive, baby!"

I totally agree with her sentiment. A focus on Slam poetry, and putting a lot more money and effort into realizing an expanded arts curriculum in our schools would work wonders for many of these troubled kids. It would make them feel a sense of belonging to a more constructive cause; the creation and proliferation of art. I'm not saying that this will magically erase the problem of youth violence in the GTA, but it is certainly a fantastic place to start.

Posted by at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was sitting on a fairly empty TTC bus, when I noticed a middle-aged woman sitting across from me reading the National Enquirer. The headlines proclaimed that Muhammad Ali only had days to live, and Kirstie Alley's stomach stapling secret. As the woman sat there, engrossed in her tabloid, I began to wonder why tabloids still exist. Surely any intelligent person knows they're fake. Especially tabloids such as Weekly World News that are reporting sightings of Bigfoot daily and warning us about the coming apocalypse for the millionth time. Do people read them for entertainment, treating them like fictional novels, or do they (shudder!) actually believe them? But that's beside the point. What concerns me is that tabloid writers are a mark on journalistic integrity. All right, so they probably aren't even real journalists, but what if some people think of them as such? I remember when a friend jokingly suggested that if I couldn't find a job at a real magazine, I could always work for a tabloid. At least, I hope she was joking. Am I the only one that is tempted to give a mini-makeover to grocery stores? One that will result in conventional magazines and tabloids being placed as far apart as the space will allow.

Posted by at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

When the Kashechewan water crisis broke last month I remember feeling revolted but wondered what took so long for a story like this to make the front page. I mean, it's no secret that native communities face substandard living conditions.

And still, Yesterday's Star and today's Globe feature continued coverage of the story weeks later. Some natives have expressed their own surprise that the media has been giving them so much attention. The Union of Ontario Indians are even hosting a conference at Lakehead University that will touch on the media's Kashechewan coverage. A keynote speaker, Grand Chief John Beaucage, said:

The media reporting and commentary on the Kashechewan emergency demonstrated how little some journalists know about treaty rights and Canadian history. Columnists who have never set foot on a First Nation were saying the entire reserve system should be abolished.

I think that maybe this lack of understanding on the part of some journalists, coupled with the fact that major media outlets are based in urban centres has prevented more native issues from being reported. That's not to say that journalists don't try but it took Paul Martin's embarrassment to send national media into a finger-wagging frenzy.

Yet, if it weren't for continued reporting by the media, many Canadians (myself included) would've had no clue that 30 percent of Ontario reserves have to boil their water!

Posted by at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As promised, a few of Don's suggestions for inspiring journalists.

Read a book on the craft. I know reporters and editors who once a year re-read On Writing Well, by William Zinsser, or The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Do it. "Writing means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel. You will write only as well as you make yourself write." Zinsser reminds us that while writing is the hardest thing people do, it's a privilege.

Other interesting books on my reading list: Writing For Story (Jon Franklin); On Writing (Stephen King); The Art and Craft of Feature Writing (William Blundell).

Accept the challenge of routine assignments. I think reporters get a degree of pleasure out of another reporter's misery, knowing that the supposedly crappy assignment you got means they didn't. I had reporters scoff at my assignment on National Hugging Day. I thought it had potential. The piece made it onto Page One along with a picture (and four more inside) taken by my delighted sidekick photographer.

The challenge always is to find an angle. And on those stories that come around every year - your third year covering National Nutrition Week - the satisfaction is in finding a better angle than last year.

One of my reporting friends would tell me he was going to "write a story onto Page One." I thought he was arrogant until I realized this was how he put his "game face" on, this was how he challenged himself on even the most mundane of stories. Who doesn't want to be on Page One? Who says I'm going to write this story onto B9?

One more thing - get rid of the word "routine." Such a mindset will make a story routine. I've had too many stories that proved to be anything but routine once I got into them. The challenge was to take them beyond the routine.

Lower your standards. This isn't a licence to do poor work, but an acknowledgement that often we are too hard on ourselves. We expect to do good work all of the time...and that's particularly true of the perfectionists in the newsroom who can't bear to hand in a story if even one word seems out of place. An obsession for perfection can be debilitating.

Remind yourself that some days you are a hack whose job it is to get it done, get it right and get it in. There is much to be satisfied with in doing down 'n' dirty reporting to deadline. In fact, you often discover that writing flows better when you don't have time to let a cluttered mind - should I put this in, should I take that out? - get in the way of telling a story.

Appreciate a good editor. I know this is hard to swallow because of the "us" and "them" attitude among reporters and editors. I learned that a good editor could save me from myself. He (in my case) would catch those little errors that cropped up in my copy (a name spelled two different ways), remind me that not every anecdote was adding to my story, and ask a question I hadn't answered.

If you are trying something different (as in taking risks), you need to be prepared to explain what you are doing, defend it and discuss it. No point arguing with an editor if you can't make your point about why you wrote the story the way you did.

Remind yourself often of why you do this job. Maybe it's because you do different stories every day, because you like searching for the truth, you like talking to new people, you like writing, you like interviewing, you like surprises, you like getting out from behind a desk.

If you don't know why, keep thinking. Otherwise, you might want to switch to a job with better hours, better pay and less excitement.

Posted by at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was initially going to blog about something else, but after reading Jacqueline's post I wanted to add a related thought (sorry, guys, you'll just have to wait until next month to hear the other exciting thing I had to say). Anyway, I find the difficulty is not learning to love my job, but getting others to feel the love.

I respect journalism. And it is clear that those that I have interviewed for articles feel the same warmth; they have either (a) dissed me in person (b) not returned my phone call (c) told me that they are extremely busy but will spare me 5 minutes. OK, so not all those that I have interviewed have been this way, but whenever I'm doing an article people always cringe at my standard line: "Hi, I am a Journalism student at Ryerson, may I ask you a few questions?" People hate being interviewed! I was told celebrities would be flattered, but they are not!

To me, journalists will always be people that celebrities (and others) dislike. As nice is you can be to those you interview, they have busy schedules. Yes, they do politely (as best they can) answer your questions, but I feel that deep down inside they are thinking, if this kid asks me another question I will wring his neck. So my question to you is how to do stay on track with your article when sources aren't exactly cooperating? (Other than call them compulsively until they put your number on call block, like they do to me. I'm kidding. Sort of.)

Posted by at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those who haven't yet read Paul Wells' Back Page column about campus newspapers, here it is. It's worth a read.

And, of course, it begs the question... Where are our shining examples of campus newspaper journalism?

Posted by at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Those of our blog readers who are totally detached from the Ryerson Review have no idea that the first drafts of our feature articles are due in less than six days. And they have no sense of the craziness that has taken place over the last month, leaping from story idea to interviews, flying writers from coast to coast (yes, literally) and a couple of provinces in between, transcribing hours upon hours of tape, scribbling as the library's closing bells chime for a third time, eating little, sleeping less, and all the while, trying to gather portfolios, plan a party and keep production moving.

It's been a little exhausting.

Yesterday I was permitted a short reprieve when I stepped into the office of a former professor and dear friend. Don Gibb was my first-year newspaper reporting professor. I can't tell you how many times I took shelter in his office, often panicking over a story, but sometimes just sitting quietly in the corner reading while he did his marking. This time, I stepped in just as he was biting into a grilled cheese sandwich, with a side of hash browns. (Don!)

I can't remember how Don and I got on the topic of journalists who are disillusioned with their jobs, but we did, and Don mentioned a column that he was writing for the CAJ newsletter. Now, I don't think the Review staff are at that place yet, where we're fed up with our stories and annoyed by our "jobs." (Frustrated at times, maybe, and after all, we're just starting!) Don has encountered more than one journalist who is. And, as a self-described idealist with an obvious infectious love for the craft of journalism, Don wrote a list of suggestions for inspiring the love of journalism back into its practitioners. Who better?

Before I reprint a couple of Don's suggestions (with his permission), how do you stay inspired?

Posted by at 02:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Theocracy was attacked in principle in 1789 and killed in its incarnation in 1793.
-Albert Camus

After nearly 300 towns were beseiged by riots over the weekend, the cover of Monday's Dose offered an explanation as to "Why Paris is Burning": Racial, Economic, and Social. This simple breakdown was virtually identical to every other news source I researched, be they North American, British or French. Now for something completely different...

I will not deny that racism exists in France; it's everywhere. I will not deny that there are economic and social inequalities; these too are everywhere. Nor will I attempt to argue that la Republique is a perfect system. I will, however, challenge the standard argument that the root cause of these disturbances is entirely the result of (justifiable) discontent with racial, economic and social conditions. I offer instead a root cause ostensibly supporting the others: the clash between the uncompromising ideologies of French secularism and Islamic tradition.

Recognizing cultural and racial distinctions is one thing. Mixing them up with religious ideologies is quite another. Admittedly, religion is a significant element in any cultural identity; but just as Ville de Lumiere (the Enlightenment) was translated as City of Light, there are limits. And this is especially true where religion is concerned. Should we accept without protest sacred Islamic arguments for clitoral circumcision, wife beating or the "perversion" that results in the bombing of subway trains? Are we Islamaphobes or racists for pointing this out? The root of the problem, contrary to popular opinion then, could simply be: secularism vs. theocracy.

Orthodox Islam is incompatible with secularism. That is, in Islam there is no distinction between criminal or civil codes and religious law. Orthodoxy regards certain sacred texts as the only source of law and no legal or philosophic argument is considered valid unless it's rooted in those texts. Like Christianity, Islam is by no means monolithic and so there may be degrees of enforcement from country to country; but these variations amount to interpretation, cultural distinctions if you prefer. Ismaili Muslims have told me, for example, that hijabs are optional for them. But they have also told me that most of the other traditions don't consider them to be Muslim at all. To properly address the problem, then, journalists must be aware of and report these facts.

So what is France to do? Her soil has been fertilized with the blood of religious war for centuries, which is one reason why she is now so staunchly secular. Yet today cities are under seige because, in part, the majority of Muslims in the country, whose religion explicitly forbids them to accept French secularism, are having trouble integrating. If the French must compromise (as they surely must), then the Muslim population must be prepared do so as well. In 1789 the French took absolutist power away from the feudal artistocracy, clergy and monarchy: it was their first definitive step towards a democracy founded on reason and human rights. Must France now entirely abandon the experience and lessons of her own Enlightenment to accomodate Islam?

In my opinion one of the most disturbing journalistic shortfalls in this whole mess has been the coverage of Nicolas Sarkozy, a front-runner for the 2007 presidential election. He is often characterized as the government hard-liner refusing to compromise or enter into dialogue with disenfranchised Muslim youth. Yet this very same hard-liner, in his 2004 book The Republic, Religions, Hope, said that France should revise its 1905 Law for the Separation of Church and State so the government could begin financing the building of mosques. Will the real Sarkozy please stand up?

Posted by at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm opens her infamous book, The Journalist and the Murderer, with the line "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." She goes on to give a pretty convincing case based on her assertion that the interviewer/interviewee relationship has an inherent power imbalance which leads to exploitation, untruths and just plain lies.

On the topic of "morally indefensible" actions, last tuesday, another New Yorker writer by the name of Seymour Hersh stole Terry Woo's donut. To be fair it wasn't exactly stealing, he did ask first. I think he said "Gimme some of that bagel," to which Terry, a lover of donuts, replied a bit astounded "uh, okay" before relinquishing the glazed Tim Horton's.

This sounds rather benign until you understand the context. Hersh is arguably the most important investigative journalist of the century, famous for his work on exposing the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. On the other hand Terry is a journalism student and the author of the mildly succesful Can Lit novel Banana Boys. When Mr. Hersh, incredibly tall and imposing in person, bounded into the room with his immaculate blue suit and silver coif, Terry's donut didn't stand a chance. Talk about an imbalance of power, Hersh had an entourage at least three deep including Paul Knox the school's director.

If this sounds like I'm being harsh on Hersh, I'm not. At that moment he could have probably wrung Terry's neck, taken his donut, poured coffee on his corpse and still gotten away clean. If anything Terry shouldn't be feeling sore at all but thankful that he was allowed to live.

Posted by at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I miss home. I'm not homesick exactly, but there is some longing in my heart. When this happens, I keep up with the times by reading the Times! *insert groan at lame joke*

The Cambridge Times is the last surviving Cambridge Ontario newspaper since the 157-year-old Cambridge Reporter died in September 2003. I don't remember hearing about that, so I'm guessing it wasn't the talk of the town. Kind of heartbreaking that not enough people cared about a paper dedicated to their rapidly expanding city, including myself. You would think that in a city of approximately 120,000 there would be a market for a paid paper, but no. Instead, we rely on the Times (and CKCO), for all of the latest and greatest of good old Lamebridge.

Maybe it's not really the Times' fault that stories are generally unreasonably short and that, even though it's a free paper, the online archive doesn't go back farther than about two weeks. I think it is the Times' fault that when I'm online and click on a headline I am taking the chance of finding an actual story or just a picture aligned to the right with tiny, grey italicized text that is difficult to read. A community paper to the letter, the Times focuses on matters that range from pumpkin carving contests and school closings to hospital expansions and drunks trying to steal police cars (there's no place like home). I wish the website published births, deaths and engagements because over the last few years this section has held the names of people I know.

Don't get me wrong, the Times is a good little paper. I am eternally grateful to it for publishing my silly opinion pieces in their long-gone youth section four summers ago. I'd link to them but they're not around to link to and I'd probably embarrass myself. Without those clippings in my portfolio I would be finishing an English degree at Guelph instead of the greatest adventure of my life thus far (no offense JRADS! I just don't have your patience for more school).

My point of all this rambling? The Cambridge Times needs to get with the times for the hometown jetsetters. The boredom with which many young people speak in reference to Lamebridge has me expecting mass exodus each June (yet the population is growing, I know). They might miss home too and the Times is the only place to catch up on news when you're not in the Waterloo Region.

Posted by at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone interested in literary journalism should find a showtime, and go see Capote.

I haven't seen every journalism movie. But judging from recent cinema, the average moviegoer holds a warped perception of the job. Hollywood has managed to depict us in every way possible besides actually sitting behind a desk and typing away for 120 minutes (which is as boring as it sounds). Instead, we're busy faking stories, posing as high school students, or being beautiful while uncovering nuclear scandals.

Capote is the first movie in recent memory that examines the painstaking process of getting great journalism. That is, journalism a la Woodward and Bernstein or 60 Minutes. These movies are rarities, especially one that deals with one of the greatest stories in American history.

In Capote, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Truman Capote, who helped pioneer literary non-fiction with In Cold Blood. The facts behind the story, how two men came to kill an entire family with shotgun blasts to the face and the consequences thereafter, are well-known -- the onetime most famous man in America has had more than one book written about him. Capote spent three years of his life immersed in the lives of everyone affected by the Kansas murders. He befriends town sheriffs and dead little Nancy's best friend. Most importantly, he wins the confidence of killers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.

It's one thing to read about how Capote got the story, but another thing entirely to see it depicted on screen. Three years? Forget reporter Clark Kent, Capote is the real superman here. I can't think of many people who would sacrifice so much of their time and spirit to the cause of getting the story. It changes you, the film tells us. You can't spend every waking hour immersed in the lives of strange, morally reprehensible men like Perry Smith and walk away from it as if it were just a job.

Capote tries. He tries to revel in the impending fame that In Cold Blood will bring him in the literary circles of New York. He has no problem with consciously lying to Perry, coercing (my word) out of him the story of what happened that bloody night. He tries to ignore Perry's letters leading up to the execution.

But the writer is never bigger than the story. It near-jeopardizes his love life. Capote becomes infatuated with Perry, spending all that time with him and not boyfriend Jack Dunphy. The heavy drinking and chain smoking definitely speaks more to Capote's distressed mental state than the social norms of the 1960s. And it's perfectly normal, to me at least, to break into tears at the hanging execution of a man you've been emotionally intimate with for 36 months.

And how's this for an ending: Capote never finishes another non-fiction novel after In Cold Blood.

A flamboyant gay journalist from New York nearly destroys himself in the process of writing America's greatest literary non-fiction work. I'd watch that.

Posted by at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I am neither news aficionado nor buff, much like the cheese in the Farmer in the Dell, I stand alone. Though I am not a self-professed newsy I am not without comment on this crazy, mixed-up, thing called journalism. That said, I would like to venture into the realm of fluff, and ask the question no one else is asking:" Why are journalists so preoccupied with making news sexy?"

We all know sex sells, but making news sexy is like putting lipstick on a pig. The pig is no sexier for the rouge and comes off as a tease. By nature news is not sexy. There is nothing sexy about Gomery, Pam Coburn, or a Parliament filled with balding middle aged men in navy suits, typing away on their Blackberries, instead of paying attention to the Speaker of The House. But still, you can't knock a journalist for trying, or a pig for that matter.

Posted by at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I know that blogging about computer woes is completely derivative of the stuff Douglas Adams (RIP, you sooooper-genius) does for The Independent over at the UK, but I'm writing this and you're not, so nuts to you, copper.

Why the hell does it always happen before the on the eve of the biggest story of your life? A day before leaving for Calgary to do the interviews the ol' feature, my flipping laptop dies on me. Specifically, the video card was fried, leaving me to gaze on a blank screen with a series of pink and green vertical lines instead of your standard bland word processing interface of M(i)S(ery) Word.

This technological disaster had particularly unsettling implications for my pathetic journalistic hide: I do most of my interviews with an mp3-based recorder (Creative MuVo slim, 256 Megs of mp3 goodness), which I hook up to said laptop using a USB cable, and use WinAmp to listen to it while transcribing the notes. No video card, no video, no WinAmp, no transcribing.

No article.

Big trouble.

Fortunately, 6 years of engineering school and 8 years of software engineering wage-slavery gave me an edge. No, I couldn't fix the bloody thing (seriously, the technical part of my brain atrophied to dust about 2 years and a hundred beers ago), but I did make friends who could help me. In the end, my bud Gene, uber-engineer helped me migrate all the needed files from the fried machine to my old Windows 95 machine (yep, you heard right. I have a Win95 machine, with an operating system that's ten years old.) So I bought a new voice recorder (ca. $95 with tax), and brought it and this dino-laptop out with me to Calgary to do my interviews and writing. So it all worked out in the end.

But it got me thinking that we are, in fact, Borg. We are essentially these organic beings that have cybernetic devices that we're completely dependent on fused onto us. Laptop. Cellphone. Watch. PDA. Blackberry. Even credit cards, which connect us with a network that allows us to buy stuff like lunch, clothes, and internet porn. And if any of these devices are ripped from our bodies, we're left with a gaping, incapacitating wound, bleeding and helpless in the sombre wind.

In the end, the interviews and transcriptions did get done, which is why I'm blogging right now instead of hanging from the rafters of the mag lab. But it did take about a week for the laptop to get repaired (had to bring it to Newmarket of all places), during which time I walked around like a confused Borg disconnected from the hive mind, and jonesing for an internet connection every five minutes or so. What the hell has the human race become, I asks ya? What the hell, indeed.

Posted by at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a news-addict and journalism student, I hate to admit this, but I've never quite been able to follow the intricacies of the whole sponsorship scandal. Hence, I haven't been paying as much attention to the release of the Gomery report as I should be. But can you blame me? I think Antonia Zerbisias had it right in her blog Tuesday:

Yes, Gomery is a shocking scandal. Yes, the cost to taxpayers is outrageous. Yes, people should be made to pay. But Lord, why can't it be sexier?

I scan the papers and the odd newscast for the basics about the scandal, but trying to make sense of all those names, faces, relationships and degrees of involvement is just no fun. That's why I was interested in the way theglobeandmail.com and, believe it or not, Dose, covered the incident today. Both outlets had methods of trying to make Gomery sexier and easier to understand, but they still weren't effective enough to draw me further into the issue. The most interesting part of the Globe's Gomery page, an interactive feature displaying connections between the event's players, is a great idea in theory--like a Gomery Family tree of sorts, it lays out who's who and who knew who and what money went where--but the novelty wore off for me once I really tried to take in the dry material.

Dose's approach was almost comical: pages four and five of today's edition contained dry background on Gomery's ten principle players, an endless block of tiny text dressed up with subheadings and bland caricatures of each person. I'm sure the material was comprehensive and useful, but I didn't want to read it. And I haven't had the slightest urge to investigate what the fun, pink and black block letters on page two scream at me to check out: the full text of the Gomery report, real-time reporting and analysis, and video footage, all at dose.ca!

I admire Dose and The Globe for trying to get more Canadians into Gomery. But if it's not working on this journalism student, I don't know what will work on anyone.

Posted by at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

An Ipsos-Reid poll conducted in April shows many Canadians feel there is too much media coverage of entertainment (42%) and sports (38%), while a sizable minority feels religion (27%) and business (22%) receive too little coverage.

There are only a handful of religion reporters in Canada, and they all know each other. That means context is often missing or inadequate in stories related to faith and religion; the problem is compounded with stories that touch on the beliefs of minority communities, since much less is known about them.

The good news is there are reliable, concise resources available to journalists. Check out these useful guides put together by the Calgary-based Centre for Faith and the Media:

A Journalist's Guide to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism.

Posted by at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the last couple of months, Global News in Toronto has been running a series of "investigative" reports on pressing matters like getting lost in the city and being ignored by customer service reps at retail operations. In both instances they went undercover to find the real story. Guess what? It doesn't require undercover reporting to know that people get lost in big cities and retail clerks aren't always waiting on us with a smile.
Global claims their piece on customer service has forced some of the retailers(corporate ones) exposed to reconsider their service policy. I doubt it. Retailers have elaborate customer service plans already in place and they aren't going to change that because of a 15 minute clip of a reporter being ignored by a salesperson. What's more likely to happen is the employee -- making just over minimum wage and, I might add, is not immune to having a bad day -- has to face the consequence of being seriously reprimanded if not outright fired.
Call me old fashioned but when the media goes undercover it should be in the public interest. In this case, I don't think it is.

Posted by at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)