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When I first started Ryerson I was told you couldn't possibly be a journalist unless you read at least two papers a day. But in the past two years I have gone from reading one paper to skimming the A&E section and listening to CBC radio for my news.
They were right.I couldn't possibly be a journalist.
Tidbit Uno:
I'm surprised by the lack of fanfare about this brief from a few weeks ago: The provincial Freedom of Information Act is now (finally) being extended to Ontario universities. As of June, you will be able to FOI Ryerson and U of Toronto, amongst others, just like any other publicly accountable organization.
Now, student press and education reporter alike can request information of institutions that, as self-governing entities since 1988, haven't exactly been forthcoming. I've seen many a request, made within the old "honour" system, submitted to the hallowed halls of academic bureaucracy that never surface again, or only at the president's discretion.
Now, simple costs and budgets are only the tip of the journalistic iceberg. I want to know how much that Coke contract made ancillary services. Or how much that Starbucks supplements university coffers. Or what it took to get that ad in front of my eyes every time I take a piss.
I want to send Ontario university administrators a jolt like this:
It isn't just student newspapers that can be affected by this act. In British Columbia, where universities are included in the Act, Sarah Schmidt of Canwest News Services uncovered a scandal at the University of British Columbia. Administrators there were reorganizing class sizes and manipulating class enrollment in order to get a higher rank in Maclean's yearly university ranking. Schmidt was able to unveil these facts by requesting inter-department memos under the Freedom of Information Act.
I may be graduating in three week's time, but just the thought of a FOI free-for-all will have me picking up campus papers for some time to come. Hopefully, a Caroline Alphonso or Louise Brown will join the fray.
Remember, Ontario universities take up (a piddling) $6.2-billion of taxpayer money. Wouldn't you want to know where all that cashola is going?
Tidbit Dos:
I once asked Terry Woo, front of book editor by day, novelist by night and daily Globe and Mail reader, if he happened to have the Real Estate or Auto section on him. He didn't -- he throws them out before he even heads out the door. I've got no interest in things I can't afford, he said.
Turns out Terence was on to something, says the WSJ:
The decline adds to the woes of the newspaper industry, already losing circulation to the Internet. For years, fat sections of car ads were a dependable source of business for newspaper publishers, accounting for 30% of the industry's total classified ad revenue of $16.6 billion in 2004, the last full year for which figures are available.
So goes the woeful auto industry, so has a reliable source of revenue for the staid newspaper. Independent of the journalism, good or bad, found in your auto and real estate sections, these are, or were, essentially bankable cash cows for papers already sustaining losses on the circulation front.
The culprit? This wily online beast that's long been taking its shots at the print world. Cheaper rates and more potentials eyes equates to flimsier printed classifieds.
However, the autos and real estates of the world won't be pulled from newspapers any time soon -- you'd be surprised how many affluent readers are passionate, or at least obsessed, about their home(s) and car(s). (How are people in Vancouver enjoying their new Globe Real Estate?)
They're simply in need of a slight rejig to get the green flowing from them again. Something online. Something sort of cool, advertised by a penguin on zamboni. Globeauto.com anyone? Any brief read of the Globe as of late will tell you the advertising department is pushing the site, and hard. Will it be successful? We'll see next fiscal quarter.
I know the Hamilton Spectator has been revising itself like crazy, but I was still surprised to come across a recent addition to its website today--something I haven't seen on the website of any newspaper before. The focal point of the
The quality is low, and it's a move away from traditional news coverage--the space the videos occupy takes away from headline space on the homepage. But the videos are an interesting way of attracting visitors and drawing Spec readers in further--almost a sort of brand extension. With content like this, it'll be interesting to see how the Spec's website continues to evolve.
As reactionaries will no doubt tell anybody who cares to listen, what we are witnessing in France is by all accounts par for the course in la Republique*. It was, in fact, par for the course long before the birth of la Republique*. Governing the French is unlike governing North America's more passive brand of citizen. "Pissed off with the government? Vote them out at the next election," goes the reasoning here. The French just take it to the streets: "If the government needs toppling, so be it. We've had enough merde," reason the French.
The issue at hand is the CPE, a new law that would allow employers to fire any worker under 26 years of age without cause, provided the termination takes place within the first two years of employment. The law was introduced to address the high rate of unemployment among this age group; many of these jobless youths are also immigrants, and they too rioted extensively last October, as everybody knows. Evidently they are assimilating better than anybody thought.
But the problem in France is rapidly reaching a point where the country might well be crippled just in time for the summer tourist season. Students (both of the high school and university varieties) have been joined by the country's largest unions and the country at large: nation-wide strikes may be in the offing. Better cancel that trip to Cannes...try the Sundance instead.
Of course, all of this strike talk strikes freedom-loving North Americans as just another example of the lazy French demanding protection from the rigours of competing in a free market economy which is, as everybody knows by now, the only sane economic system ever devised by humanity. The French however, as their propensity for street demonstrations clearly demonstrates, are anything but sane. In July 1789 a Gouveneur Morris wrote: "This country is at present as near to anarchy as society can approach without dissolution." The Revolution would take another decade to run its course before Napoleon's coup d'etat*, so we ain't seen nuthin yet.
The question that always comes up, "What is this CPE, Contrat Premiere* Embauche, that provokes the wrath of young citizens?" is by no means rhetorical because the students respond by pointing out the facts. "Last week, it was announced that the French multinationals had made a profit in 2005 of 84 billion Euros*. It is a politician's trick to try to convince us that we need to make sacrifices so those companies can become even richer." In other words progressive, left-leaning political parties in France see this as an opportunity to fight for the principles that gained the upper hand in 1789: the freedom from being treated as feudal chattel (now corporate). All the CPE will do, in effect, is allow employers to fire people at will, resulting in higher unemployment figures for those older than 26. How much of an improvement can that be?
The French reaction, then, is something so foreign to us that North Americans could never display a similar disregard for the rule of law for something as petty as the airing of grievances. Or could they?
*Editor's note: our Anglocentric software doesn't seem to be able to publish French accents or the Euro symbol. If anyone knows why, feel free to comment.
Last Friday evening I sat in front of the TV watching CTV's local news and flipped through a magazine. But when a story about Sunday's St. Patrick's Day parade came on, I sat up to pay attention. I love a parade, especially when its route is down Yonge Street and past my work. It means that for at least a half hour I can stand at the window and watch the festivities instead of helping customers.
CTV showed clips of people finishing up the elaborate floats for the parade - one was a majestic, green dragon. Last year's floats were almost entirely Irish people dancing or singing on flat-bed trucks. But from watching CTV's story, this year looked like it was going to be amazing. There was even going to be a float competition that weather man Dave Duval was judging.
I walked to work Sunday and remembered with excitement that today was parade day.
At 12:30 I stood in front of my store's large windows and waited for the floats. I watched radio host Erin Davis, Shetland ponies and Irish dancers pass. There were police department bands, firefigher bands, a steel drum band and the Philippine Heritage Band. There were floats, but nothing spectacular...I was waiting for that big, green dragon.
It never came.
I watched for an hour and a half until the parade finished. No dragon.
And then it hit me...there never was a dragon. CTV had shown clips of a some other parade to lure viewers out on Sunday.
So my question for CTV is this: What else are you repackaging and not letting viewers know?
At least this time it was only a dragon.
I don't really get queasy when I see disturbing images. I like thriller movies and I don't cover my eyes when someone is killed. In fact, I just watched, and enjoyed, Saw II last weekend. But some people do find blood and dead bodies disturbing. So how do news broadcasts get away with showing this stuff? On the news tonight, they had a shot of the civilian who was killed in the taxi by Canadian troops. The man's body was covered with a blanket, but there was a shot of his face and a puddle of blood beside him. I know it's not the most disturbing thing that could be on TV, but I'm sure some people weren't pleased. And thinking back to the coverage of Hurricane Katrina...every time you turned on the news you'd see another bloated body floating face down in the water. Have we become so desensitized that no one is bothered by such images, or do news stations simply ignore any complaints?
I discovered New York magazine last year, and since then, it's become a habit to check out the website every Monday to read the latest issue. It's a city magazine through and through, but until recently, offered a lot more than just listings and reviews. They publish some great features and I love the city so it's a fun way to keep up on what's going on there. The website was easy to navigate and easy to read - the feature articles and my favourite weekly departments popped up at the top of the page, and the ads didn't really get in the way. But the best part was that the entire magazine was published online, for free. Of course, all good things must end. It's still free, but nymag.com was redesigned about a month ago, and, at least in my opinion, not for the better. It feels too much like a Toronto.com, with a few features (which seem to be getting shorter and increasingly fluffy) buried within the listings and ads. We're losing Maisonneuve as it becomes a Montreal city mag, and we may be losing the best of New York (at least online) too...
Plummest?
Anyway, I've been taking a look at the journals of some movie and film critics who have been reporting from events like the Sundance Film Festival and the SXSW Music Festival, and I've become even more convinced that being an arts reviewer is the cushiest job in journalism. Jobs have been much on the mind lately, for myself and everyone else I'm sure, and although I've done my share of freelance reviewing and interviewing of film and music types, I'm wondering how one makes the leap into a full-time gig. There's some real journalism involved, of course, but how sweet is it to make a living almost entirely on your subjective viewpoint?
The downside is that I sometimes think arts reviewers live entirely inside their own little bubble, unaware of what the general populace feels about such things. What kind of importance do people put on reviews in general? Do people out there have favourites that they rely on, do they go by overall critical impressions or do they ignore reviews entirely? I've often wondered, as I write and ruminate on the relative merits of the latest Sum 41 live album, why anyone in the world would care what I think.
The late Jim (Shaky) Hunt and Trent Frayne.
It's not just the on-ice greats that are passing on in recent weeks. Toronto sports writer Jim Hunt died of a heart attack last Wednesday. He was 79. He'd work with most everyone of his era, from the Star's Milt Dunnell, 100, to the Sun's George Gross, 83.
(Jim) always was in a good mood, jovial and laughing, often reminding us of the good old days of journalism when the likes of Ted Reeve, Milt Dunnell, Trent Frayne, Scott Young, Jim Coleman, Jim Taylor, Jim Kearney, Red Fisher and a handful of others used to write poetic sports columns.
Sun columnist Bill Lankhof uncovers a gem about Jim Hunt's legacy, courtesy Scott Young:
In the 1970s, former Globe and Mail columnist Scott Young told about Shaky holding the title of Noisiest Man In The Press Box. Noted Young: "He paces behind the stolid rows of working stiffs giving a running commentary on what he sees, which is rarely something he likes."
I had a chance to speak to Hunt last fall for the purposes of the Review. Or rather, I left a message at the Sun, which was then relayed to his Riverdale hospital room. (Hunt had broken something, I believe, but it certainly wasn't his heart.) Twenty minutes later, I get a call back from Hunt, as eager as ever to talk about sports, sports journalism and the good ol' days. Half an hour later, I had to ask Hunt to stop, or else he would have went on all night.
He ended by asking me about journalism at Ryerson, and whether I knew his grandson in second year. I said no, I hadn't, but told him to tell his grandson to come write for me at the campus paper.
So to throw it out there now: I've forgotten your name, but your grandfather was a great man. If you've got even half the legendary energy he had, you're definitely in the right business. So come write for me.
In an interview last fall,Trent Frayne joked about him and his buds being dead or dying. So it was unfortunate to hear, over the course of factchecking, that Frayne has been admitted to the hospital, too weak to speak because of cancer.
Get well soon, Trent. I know it's inevitable that you're all going to go someday, but let's hope it's not all at once.
Edit: In further factchecking, he seems to be OK and vacationing in Florida. I'm not sure what's the truth, but apologies if anyone was misled.
So I went to a semi-formal dance yesterday at the Pantages Hotel. I left the crowded third-floor dance area to go sit in the fireside lounge near the lobby, and while I was there a miscreant-looking tattooed group was escorted in. I didn't want to be in their way, and I had my own party upstairs, so I stood to leave. The hotel employee who'd escorted them in said it was okay if I stayed, but I said I was just going back upstairs. As the elevator doors were closing, he stuck his hand in to open them, then leaned in and told me (in a way that announced to the whole elevator) that he was sorry and didn't mean to interrupt me, but Tommy Lee wanted to sit in the lounge.
Then he left.
The other people in the elevator stared at each other in silence for about 2 seconds, then someone asked "What did he just say?" in a way that meant she knew exactly what was said, she just wanted to hear it from someone else. Within five minutes of my leaving the elevator, people were rushing for the elevator, while others ran around screaming "Tommy Lee! Tommy Lee!"
I don't care about celebrities, so I didn't even know who the group that came into the lounge was, but seeing everyone's reaction in such a short time really made me think about the way news spreads.
On September 11, 2001, at around 9:30 a.m., my OAC english teacher walked into our Writer's Craft class and said, "You all won't believe this, but a plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York." He was met with an almost uniform "We know" from the class. We not only knew, we'd been discussing it while we waited for class to start.
Whether it's about a celebrity or a significant world event, people like to talk. And they like to talk about what matters to them. People have a desire for information -- new information, more information. We discuss things to gain new insight, to learn new developments, to know. And it isn't enough to just talk over the fence with your neighbour. We go down to the coffee shop, the bar, church, the community centre -- we link with complete strangers who also want to discuss news. And now, even that isn't enough. We go to online forums, congregate in a virtual space around global events that don't have anything to do with us. We have deep discussions with people we will likely never meet, all because we want to know.
So whose job is it, if not ours, to provide a medium for these discussions? Our charge, after all, is to give the public news.
There's constant talk of "the changing audience," "people's new desires," and "different expectations of the media." Well, let me give you some news. People have always been this way. The Internet has just provided a means for us to do this on a scale that's threatening the media's business model. Really, bringing people together to discuss things should always have been a responsibility of the news industry. Someone should have realized the Internet's potential years ago, and this should be as natural as reading the morning paper by now.
But even now as we have the chance to fix that, everyone's slow to start. Most news sites still have no room for their readers to discuss articles, and it's hurting them.
Let's resolve to fix this. It may be two months past, but considering how slow things have been to implement, I think that's okay.
1. "I will discuss more, talk less."
2. "I will dare to wiki."
3. "I will be more interactive."
4. "I will seek out 'citizen advertisers.'"
5. "I will learn to turn free classifieds into money."
6. "I will publish where the young people are."
7. "I will devise a better Web site registration scheme."
8. "I will become a podcast god."
9. "I will not become complacent; I will remain alert."
If you want to keep your audience, cater to their needs. Take a little responsibility.
Give them somewhere to scream about Tommy Lee.
The Globe and Mail sometimes comes loaded with extras that spill messily on my doorstop when I fetch it in my blue terry-cloth bathrobe and bunny wabbit slippers - circulars, inserts, special sections, and my favourite: free magazines. Today's edition came with a perfect-bound-matte-finished magazine called Driven. With "life in motion" as a tagline, it's essentially an advertiser-funded magazine that splashes pictures of toys for boys - cars, suits, gadgets, colognes, Tag Heuer watches the size of an anvil. An 82-glossy-paged view into a lifestyle for someone with no discernable lifestyle, no discernable life, no Calphalon cookware.
While the journalism is marginal, the magazine itself is impeccably designed - sleek, precise, machined like a Tag Heuer watch. Even so, with a cover price of $6 ($8 in Canada), it's hard to picture myself slapping down a sawbuck to look at stuff I will likely never be able to afford (as I write this, I look down at my watch, forgetting that I drew it on this morning with a Sharpie.) So thank you, Globe, for weighing down your delivery boys like Spartacus in order to bring me a piece of a world I will never be part of because of the career of penury I've selected bringing the harsh light of journalistic truth to the masses in order to prepare them ultimately for the apocalypse that will consume us all likely within the next five point three years. What do you know - newspapers do, indeed, make a difference.
A couple of months ago, I decided to hell with newstand prices, I'm going to save money and buy subscriptions to some of my favourite magazines. One of those favourites is Maisonneuve Magazine out of Montreal. It's a smart well-designed publication full of interesting articles that really keep my attention. In fact, its a publication I'd very much like to write for in the future.
Or, it was. A month after I sent my $30 draft on its way, Maisonneuve announced it was "transforming itself from a national arts magazine into a magazine of Montreal life and city culture" The new Maisonneuve will be called Maisonneuve: Montreal's Magazine and it launches in September 2006.
No doubt, the change is being made for economic reasons. I'm sympathetic to the harsh realities of the industry but the reader in me is pissed about the change. I don't live in Montreal and I don't want to read a city magazine about it. I mean, I live in Toronto and I rarely read Toronto Life.
But maybe the worst part about all of this is the effect it will have on aspiring writers like myself. In the two years since its launch, Maisonneuve continually provided writers across the country a platform to create original and engaging narrative journalism. Come September, I worry that much of that content will be replaced by service-journalism-in-the-can.
Yesterday, the first issue of my subscription arrived in the mail. The welcome letter didn't mention the impending re-launch and the omission stirred my simmering anger. But then a quick glance at the magazine and its cover lines reminded me why I subscribed in the first place. Before I knew it, I was finished reading the feature on ghost writing and was knee deep in the article lamenting the state of political speeches in Canada. The end might be near but I'm going to enjoy it while I can.
Do you know why I really look forward to checking out thestar.com every morning? Of course you don't, so stop guessing, I'll just tell you. I love the A&E section!
Ok, I do want to find out what's going on before I leave the apartment so that I don't look foolishly uninformed when caught in a discussion about current events. It was also handy a few days ago when I read about the explosions in Brighton because my cottage is near there, I have family ties to the area, and it gave me a good excuse to call my mum and fill her in rather than just the usual calls to ask her for money.
No, I don't really just call for money, I love my parents and call them at least once a week just to say hi!
The Star's A&E site amuses me to no end. There is a little sidebar of the blurbs I was attracted to at Much Music's Much News, and then there are longer features about everything A&E. Imagine that eh?
Every once in a while I find a piece of gold that sticks with me, and I'm sharing the most recent it with you. Vinay Menon's bit last week about The Bachelor just before the finale of season 8. I would say it's bad enough the poor guy has to sit through the show, but he gets paid to write "To all aspiring Mr. Bachelors" which just seems like too much fun, so there's no empathy here.
This article is a letter dishing out important lessons to be learned by any aspiring gentlemen who find themselves wishing they could be The Bachelor. I won't go into detail, waste some time and read for yourself. Have a good laugh, I did, and I honestly haven't watched the show in at least 2 years.
Ok, fine, I watched some of the finale. Stop laughing, you probably did too. It's better on mute, just a head's up for next season.
I'm agreeing with Cliff. Think back to any big news event, and chances are that it is the images of that event that you remember. Take a look through the World Press Photo site.
On a completely different note the Poynter Institute offers a service to journalits facing big ethical dilemmas in their work. They have a line you can call to speak to other professionals who will discuss the ethcics issue with you and hopefully help you reach a good decision. I didn't know about this and think it's a good idea. Nevermind your editors or colleagues, call Poynter.
And again on something different:
We've had another research presentation, this time on 'creative non-fiction', which apparently can be referred to with a slew of other names such as literary prose and ... I don't remember the other ones. We had a good discussion about it. It was interesting seeing people be so adamant about the line between what is journalism and what isn't, then become so flimsy about it the next.
I, for one, don't think you can change the background setting of an interview just to prove your point and call that real journalism. Where's the credibilty in that??? Adding small details that you don't know actually happened, if they're going to be included at all, should be preceded with phrases like 'might have' 'could have''probably did' etc etc. Though according to the presentation some will argue that these phrases mess up the flow. I disagree.
And something else. Last time, I promise.
I like Seed magazine. A friend suggested it last year. It was also written about last March here on the RRJ site.
"I will be glad when your rag goes out of business. Real men marry women."
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