I have to admit that I'm not at all disappointed that today is my second last, scheduled day to blog for the RRJ. I've hated the word blog since the first time I heard it and I think the word blogosphere is ridiculous. Only last year my friends and I giggled like hyenas every time we heard the word blog mentioned in class, pinching our nose shut and mocking in nasal, tech-geek voices: "Whew ya, I can't go out 'cause I'm going to go blog later, whoa." Goodbye chess club nerds and Trekkies. We no longer need you to make us feel hip. We now have the modern blogger.

Not knowing anything about blogs, I imagined them to be strange cyber worlds, intangible, not anchored to my physical surroundings or even the language I use. Eventually I learned a little more about them; my opinion shifted to seeing them as nothing other than a convenient venue for narcissistic people with too much time on their hands to fling their unsolicited opinions about anything and everything at the world.

A year later, after being forced to blog (how embarrassing, I thought the first time, me blog??) for the RRJ and familiarizing myself with more blogs so that I might really and truly understand what was expected of me, I have finally developed an appreciation for them. Not all or even many of them. But there are one or two or a few I now scan almost weekly. Okay, biweekly (I'm still not comfortable with admitting this - insert nervous laughter). What converted me are the city blogs - blogs that offer a form of civic discussion and involvement I hadn't been exposed to before. During the recent 'snow storm,' in the city, there were a few days where I had to take transit to school (usually I cycle even in the dead of winter). One afternoon it actually took me an hour to get from Yonge and College to Clinton and College. I could've walked home faster. Every one of those days I had to use the TTC something equally and unbelievably frustrating happened. I found solace in reading others' transit woes on the Toronto blogs, like Torontoist.com. Here were people with common sentiments. But what I enjoyed most was reading about all the related civic activity. People were using these websites to reach out, educate, inform, and make a difference, both on the blog and in the community. I still don't enjoy being forced to blog, but the experience has, if nothing else, stopped me from using that condescending nasal voice to separate myself from the blog squad.

Posted by Lisa Paul at 09:55 AM | Permalink

So, who watched the Academy Awards on Sunday night? The glamour. The glitz. The red carpet. Each year I get so excited about the Oscars. I host a themed party and I make my guests fill out a ballot. But by the time the award show begins, I remember how much I hate the redundancy of the red carpet.

Aren't the Oscars supposed to celebrate the film industry? Each year it becomes more and more about who's wearing what and who's dating whom. The talking heads that are lined up along the red carpet exhibit some of the worst of journalism year after year.

Take, for instance, Joan Rivers and her equally irritating daughter, Melissa. Their inane commentary on the red carpet just keeps getting more painful. And this year Ryan Seacrest added a new level of brutal interviewing skills as he stumbled awkwardly to improvise questions while holding the mic for E! And don't even get me started on Ben Mulroney.

I know that there is not much respect in the journalism world for the people who tackle celebrity news. But some of us viewers are intelligent people who enjoy the Oscars for the magic of the movie business. Why can't the journalists on the red carpet offer interesting, thought-provoking discussion about the very focus of the awards: the films?

If you missed the show and the red carpet (and if you did, consider yourself lucky) check out Katrina Onstad's play-by-play Oscar blog at CBC Arts.

Posted by Jennifer Paterson at 01:35 AM | Permalink

I was researching on the Internet the other day when I stumbled on a wiki. Before then I thought wikis were the long-haired animals in Star Wars. Apparently, wikis are also the newest craze on the web.

According to the most famous wiki of them all, Wikipedia, "a wiki is a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available content." WikiWikiWeb was the first such wiki software to hit the Internet in 1995. It was the brainchild of American computer programmer Ward Cunningham, who named his software after the Wiki Wiki shuttle bus that runs between airport terminals at Honolulu International Airport. Wiki is a Hawaiian word for fast.

After a simple Google search, the WikiIndex led me to a page listing numerous wikis, covering topics from business, politics, coaching, and natural healing. There is even a wiki called A Cornish Wiki, a wiki "devoted to the history, culture, language, places and people of Cornwall."

The whole idea of a wiki seems odd to me. But then again, I didn't get blogs when they first came on the scene and here I'm blogging.

Posted by Dayna Dayus at 01:20 AM | Permalink

Sometimes it only takes a couple of words to really piss off a person. This reporter unleashed Bjork's wrath of surprising fury after greeting her in Thailand.

Ever since CityTV reporter Peter Silverman was attacked by an optician on King West, I have been showing friends and colleagues the clip.

There is a lot of mixed reaction to it - some think Silverman acts bravely and admire the consumers' rights journalism he practices, others think the 75-year-old got what was coming to him by sensationalizing consumer complaints through his series. It seems that when reporters get attacked the best and worst tenets of TV broadcast news are exposed.

So, I have compiled a series of clips I am calling Reporters Get Rocked Vol I. When the reporters become the news, what journalistic denominator have these journalists achieved?

Here's probably one of the most-publicized attacks from our good friends at Fox News:

Why journalists are never hip:

Not really sure what's happening here:

And my favourite one. Even children like bullying journalists:

Posted by John Mather at 11:22 AM | Permalink

We are living in a time when reporting on the minutia of every aspect of the lives of celebrities is considered news. Two of the most recent examples of 'news' that are overshadowing the stories from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan are the death (and what will surely be the following years of legal precedings) of Anna Nicole Smith, and the rehab visits and radical haircut of Britney Spears.
It goes without saying that this coverage of these essentially pointless stories is too much. But according to canoe.com, the media frenzy surrounding the Anna Nicole Smith hearings to determine where this (B, perhaps C list) celebrity will be buried has attracted more media attention than has really been seen before. There are more than "100 journalists" camped out to cover the hearings, and the collection of satellite trucks, electrical cables and generators is spread out over "a half-kilometre" area.
This is not the extreme part (see Michael Jackson trial, OJ Simpson). The extreme occurrence came in the frenzy to try and get the exclusive. Reporters have been seen "jumping over bushes and trying to outbid each other for exclusive rights to interviews with the major players". In the melee to get a shot of Smith's former husband, one photographer was toppled from a ladder and was injured (perhaps his pride more than the cut he received).
Let's send our reporters who are willing to be put in harm's way somewhere where the end result might have some worth.
Let's hope none of us ever stoops so low. They didn't teach self-defence or first aid in j-skool.

Posted by David Pratt at 06:01 PM | Permalink

Dear friend (It looks like you're writing an letter. Would you like help?)

You were conceived a decade ago to replace 1995's cutesy, overly-involved Microsoft Bob--which offered a diverse selection of helpers, from Bob the yellow dog to Digger the Irish earthworm to a cartoon Billy Shakespeare. It was so ambitiously unhelpful that it made PC World's 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time list.

And then there was you, the all-knowing paper-clip, ready to interfere with deadlines and stall my writing mid-sentence. Every time I typed a date or added a bullet (or any other turn of phrase those Microsoft wizards figured I'd need help with) you'd pop up--3D and glassy-eyed, eyebrows raised--ready with some irrelevant advice. People didn't like you very much.

But that hardly seems important now that Office 2007 left you to rust in the digital dustbin. Even though you've been uninstalled, may you take comfort knowing your skills (It looks like you're writing a resume. Would you like help?) as mass-annoyer and deadline-bungler will not soon be forgiven. Er, forgotten.

RIP Clippy 1997-2007

Posted by Dana Lacey at 02:11 PM | Permalink

As someone currently steeped in fact checking the Ryerson Review, I was dismayed to learn that judges in the US have been using Wikipedia to support their rulings. According to an article in the New York Times last month, there have been more than 100 rulings where this was the case -- including 13 in circuit courts of appeal (one step below the Supreme Court). Some of the odd citations involved defining "booty music," which had been played in a wet T-shirt contest, as "a slightly higher dance tempo and occasional sexually explicit lyrical content," and defining "beverage" in a tax case involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even Wikipedia itself has an article titled "Researching with Wikipedia" that includes disclaimers such as: "Keep in mind that an encyclopedia is intended to be a starting point for serious research, not an endpoint." Don't get me wrong, I love Wikipedia and how easy it is to use. (I also love feeling superior to US judges and their law clerks.) But I also think that court decisions should at least be held to the same quality control standards as our little magazine.

Posted by Gena Smith at 09:49 AM | Permalink

It comes but once a year. No, not Christmas or your birthday, but Canadian Music Week. On March 7-10th, around 300 bands will play nearly 40 different venues across the city. As glorious as that sounds, it can also make for disaster. Fear not, here are my top three hints to ensuring that every music journalist will have the best experience possible.

1) Plan Ahead. Make a schedule of where you want to go, and who you want to see, and divide your time accordingly. When it comes to this festival, it's obviously best to see as many acts as possible. The problem arises when several great bands are scheduled to play at the same time. There are two ways to approach this situation. A) Decide which one you want to see the most or B) Watch part of one set, jump into a cab (or run down the street depending on the proximity) and head to the next show. Repeat if necessary.

2) Stick to the plan, but don't be obsessive. My partner in CMW is usually my dear friend Angie. Her OCD can sometimes keep her from enjoying the present moment. Things are bound to go wrong, sets can be late etc. Just go with the flow and don't obsess if you are a few minutes behind schedule. (It will only put a damper on your evening.) Bars like the Horseshoe and the Bovine have an extenended liquor license, so you can make up for lost time.

3) Be aware of the people around you. I know, as journalists this is obvious but it's true. Sometimes the best interviews are from musicians that you see on the streets, who may not even be playing the festival but are out to see the shows. Also, stay in the loop because surprise shows are always being added.

Well that about wraps up this edition. Au revoir.

Posted by Ann Ruppenstein at 09:41 PM | Permalink

So we're in the pre-pre-election phase; that time when no election has been announced, in fact politicians actively say they don't want one, but all the parties inexplicably launch campaign ads. The media world starts to feel claustrophobic, controlled. It's hard to say which side, the politicians or the media, but the pre-pre-elections make someone a lot dumber.

The Conservatives launched their new attack ads during the Super Bowl, apparently made in somebody's parents' basement with the help of the Global voice-over guy.

The Conservatives, who obviously "would have got it done" as long as it fell in one of their green periods (1984 or some time in the last three weeks), are in trouble over this for more than just lowering the quality of videos available on YouTube.

A consortium of television networks pooled together resources to film the Liberal debates. As follows, the footage belongs to the networks and the Conservatives need permission to use it -- permission they apparently didn't get. The interested networks got together to launch a group complaint but one of the major privates backed out at the last minute. Says Zerbisias :

"...because joining the protest might not serve its best interests. This network has a major deal up for approval before the CRTC.

Watch for it to land more softball exclusives with Prime Minister Stephen Harper."

The operative issue here is "fair dealing," which neutered version of the American "fair use." Under fair use, the Conservatives would be able to use the proprietary footage to criticize Dion. Fair dealing allows some leeway in using footage or photography without permission (for example if they were talking about the video's brilliant cinematography), but it likely doesn't cover the Conservatives in this instance. The television networks can dictate where the footage ends up and at least one, CPAC, doesn't want it used for partisan ads.

It's wrong. Ignatieff publicly accused Dion of being weak and no one should be able to control how many people see it. These are politicians; we have a right to know.

But you'd think someone in the Conservative campaign would stop and think "if we're going to use copyrighted footage, maybe we should ask permission." This is apparently the world's only political party completely free of lawyers.

So not only do they have these ham-fisted, unprofessional looking ads, they have an entirely avoidable copyright controversy on their hands because they no one's thinking.

The Liberals, on the other hand, did not release any counter-attack ads. Instead they waited for Harper to spray paint himself green and then released a letter in which Harper calls Kyoto a "socialist plot."

I wonder how long they've been sitting on that latter.

We bought it. It was the perfect news item: timely, controversial and a little absurd. The two parties set out to do essentially the same thing -- one was going at it like an excited child playing a crane game while the other was writing the newspapers.

The Liberals have more practice as Big Brother -- they're better at it.

Posted by Joe Rayment at 07:10 PM | Permalink

By now it's old news that Toro, the Toronto based general interest men's magazine, folded last week. When speaking with former editor Derek Finkle this week I expressed my condolences and told him of the memorial that was established in the RRJ magazine lab. Our memorial, erected by my fellow Sr. Editor Mr. Silnicki, consists of several issues of the defunct mag and a lovely illustration of a head stone. Derek told me that he knew going into this whole general interest mag business a few years ago that the odds were stacked against him. It's tough slugging in the advertising world to sell general interest space he told me.

Perhaps this was the reason that Toro was so eager to join the Print Measurement Bureau's (PMB) readership survey.

Magazines use the PMB's survey results to lure advertisers. The information gathered can tell a magazine how many readers they have, what their readers do in their spare time, their income bracket, family life, etc. Essentially, a magazine could bust out their PMB results in front of the advertising representative of Manolo Blahnik and prove their readers wear and buy designer shoes. Bang! An advertising sale is made.

Toro, unfortunately, seems to have entered the PMB game pre-maturely. Their results weren't all that hot. If you check out page 141 of the results for 2006 you'll find that, of the population surveyed, Toro only managed to wrangle 0.9% as readers. Ouch.

Advertisers pay attention to this stuff too, you can be sure, and knowing you'd only be reaching 0.9% of magazine readers if you advertise with a certain magazine isn't much of an incentive.

All that being said, I was personally a big fan of Toro. I loved their distinctive front pages, their informative and fun content, and the general art direction. I even dreamed of pitching my fabulous story ideas to them. Guess I'll never have the chance now.

Posted by Rachel Hahn at 01:44 PM | Permalink

Because even cynical hacks surreptitiously check their lucky stars in the daily paper. (These would have been available to you the day after St. Valentine's, dear pilgrims, but the cosmos conspired against our server and rendered us crippled... Alackaday!)

Aries (March 21 - April 19) - The Anchor. You're confident, energetic and adventurous - a reporter who tracks down the difficult stories, does hand-to-hand combat with them, and drags them kicking and screaming before your admiring audience. Bob Woodward (March 26, 1943) is an Aries, but before you go off uncovering any Watergate-sized scandals, check yourself to see if you're being impulsive, impatient, or just plain full of it.

Taurus (April 20 - May 21) - The Mind-of-Steel Editor. Sometimes you're tempted by sources who try to buy their way into your good graces, but you're cool under pressure, practical and reliable. Your dedication and determination have no bounds: Edward Murrow (April 25, 1908) and Nellie Bly (May 5, 1864) were both as bull-headed as you.

Gemini (May 22 - June 21) - The PR Darling. You're a restless social butterfly and all about communication, but be careful of coming across as superficial or lazy. Watch out for unreliable sources this month, or it could mean chaos and misunderstandings. If you're a famous journalist born under the sign of the twins, let us know. (Anyone know any twin journalists?)

Cancer (June 22 - July 23) - The Gonzo Reporter. Your changeable nature makes for quicksilver journalism as you pull all sorts of pranks to chase or even create a story. But that doesn't mean you don't have a romantic, writerly side, often sinking into melancholy when your muse doesn't sing to you. Hunter S. Thompson (July 18, 1937) was a Cancer - imaginative and intuitive, but also prone to mood swings and depression.

Leo (July 24 - August 23) - The Community Liaison. You're creative and self-motivated, and no one can resist your warmth and generosity. Don't be too gullible, though - not everyone wears their heart on their fedora like you do. Famous Leo journalist: Peter Jennings (July 29, 1938).

Virgo (August 24 - September 23) - The Dedicated Copy Editor. Diligent, analytical, and modest: you seek perfection... and you're always going to be frustrated. Things don't always have to be in order. Embrace the chaos. Just look at Bill O'Reilly (September 10, 1949) and, uh, Conrad Black (August 25, 1944).

Libra (September 24 - October 23) - The Interviewer. You balance your ideals with the celebrity media circus on your pretty set of scales. Charismatic and diplomatic, you're in your element when staking out a patch of red carpet to catch A-listers, always with a ready smile for the cameras. Truman Capote (September 30, 1924) was a Libra - charming and refined, but with tendencies towards indecision, deceitfulness and insecurity.

Scorpio (October 24 - November 22) - The Undercover Trainee. Passionate and focused (some would say obsessive), you guard your journalistic secrets carefully, afraid that a colleague would one-up you. This month, let go of stubborn grudges and control that green-eyed monster. Famous Scorpio journalist: Dan Rather (October 31, 1931).

Sagittarius (November 23 - December 21) - The Foreign Correspondent. You're all about the travel perks. Dynamic and compassionate, you win friends and allies wherever you go, but don't let your pride get the better of you. Famous Sagittarius journalist: Joan Didion (December 5, 1934).

Capricorn (December 22 - January 20) - The Business Reporter. You work hard and everyone in the newsroom knows that they can trust your judgment. You've got the smarts and the patience to climb very high on the corporate ladder - how does the title of publisher sound? - but never forget the human angle of your stories! Howard Stern (January 12, 1954) is a Capricorn. He's not really a journalist, but David Bowie and Elvis are also Capricorns, so you should be satisfied.

Aquarius (January 21 - February 19) - The Investigative Journalist. Your work is one of a kind: creative, challenging, provocative. But don't just randomly choose to be a rebel - as the Star tells us, ask why! Famous Aquarius journalist: Gay Talese (February 7, 1932).

Pisces (February 20 - March 20) - The Literary Journalist. Some call you fickle and passive-aggressive, but you're just a romantic at heart. Your friends praise your wit and affection, but this month, they're itching to tell you about your hypersensitivity and paranoia. Famous Pisces journalist: Tom Wolfe (March 2, 1931).

Posted by Andrea Lau at 11:23 PM | Permalink

Within media circles, there's a lot of talk about the "blogosphere" - a word said usually with a touch of disdain... and perhaps even fear. There is much concern about the rise of the Internet, which leads only to the demise of traditional news sources such as print and broadcast. All the consolidations and all the magazine and newspaper deaths that have taken place over the last couple years have been blamed, at some point, on the fact that the Internet has become the primary source of news for pretty much everyone under the age of 70.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Sure, the Internet isn't going away any time soon - the speed and ease of which news is disseminated online ensures this. But newspapers and network news have a future online as well - they just need to stop complaining about how scary all this web stuff is and focus on offering a higher quality web product.

It's annoying for readers who want to read the National Post online to be attacked by ads, which seems to be the only things that ever load on the Canada.com network. And it doesn't help that every story you want to read is locked and requires signing up for yet another online account. The site is bland too, with few - if any - images. It's no wonder Perez Hilton is more of a hero to my generation than the Aspers.

The bloggers may be a threat, but clearly, we have a lot to learn from them.

Posted by Jennifer Fong at 01:50 PM | Permalink

Well, as everyone has noticed, our website was down last week. Which, unfortunately, coincided with the week that my online article was up (shameless plug, I know). What's ironic is that during my research (the topic was celebrity journalism) a recurrent comment from various entertainment journalists was that this type of reporting (and indeed much news) was moving to the internet.

Soooo...what do we do when our site is down?

Well, we can't provide news. Technology trumped us. It was the Ontario blackout all over again. No TV, no internet, no newspapers the next day (what a lonely few days that was). We relied on the radio (as many radio reporters pointed out...again and again).

Looks like we really need all forms of media (in case one breaks).

Every media has its faults (the ever expensive magazine - I will always love you, Toro; the timeliness issues of newspapers, etc.). But since our generation is practically glued to computers, it's always interesting to see what happens when technology fails. Yes, I hate that the website was down, but it provided a few hours in the week where I was not stuck at the computer.

That said...go read my article when the website is fully working again.

Posted by Amanda Pereira at 06:11 PM | Permalink

I liked the way Robert Fulford concluded his Toronto Life article this month about the Fifth Estate: "Far from perfect, the fifth estate nevertheless endures because it come closer than any other program to projecting the poise and authority we hope for in public broadcasting."

Unfortunately, investigative journalism is not something we invest nearly enough time and money into. According to Toronto Star investigative journalist and Ryerson professor Robert Cribb, government documents are much harder for journalists to obtain here in Canada than in the States. Our systems do not favour accountability.

Here's a terrifying fact: the following public-private agencies are not covered under the Access to Information Act, which means they are not required to release any information to the public, making them virtually unaccountable.

[Nuclear] Waste Management Organization
The Canadian Foundation for Innovation
The Canadian Millennium Scholarship
Foundation Genome Canada
Canadian Blood Services
Nav Canada
The Greater Toronto Airport Authority and other major airport authorities
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
Canada Health Infoway Inc.

There are not many stories on this, probably because they require meticulous research over an extended period of time. It's a dangerous area to neglect.

Posted by Vanessa Rodriguez at 02:45 PM | Permalink

"And if the snow buries my,
my neighborhood.
And if my parents are crying
then I'll dig a tunnel
from my window to yours,
yeah a tunnel from my window to yours.
You climb out the chimney
and meet me in the middle,
the middle of the town.
And since there's no one else around,
we let our hair grow long
and forget all we used to know,
then our skin gets thicker
from living out in the snow."
- Arcade Fire

Attention family, friends and fellow members of the blogosphere. This may be the last blog you ever get from me. This may even be the last thing I, Julia, ever write. Choke, sniff, sob. I do not doubt that right now, piles and piles of snow are creeping up the sides of my house. Soon my lodgings will be entirely covered, and I will be trapped inside of this accidental igloo. Even if I ration my rice krispies, left-over clam chowder, and cinnammon hearts, I'm sure my food will run out before my oxygen does.

Last night, as the first flurries could be seen outside of by double-paned windows, Michael Kuss and Anthony Farnell feigned bravery as they reported on "THE STORM OF 2007", but I could see the fear in their eyes. This morning I woke up to even more troubling headlines. "Heavy snow buries parts of Ontario", "Lake effect feeds first squall" and "Ontario snowed under; weather warnings in effect", reporterd the Globe, Star and Post respectively. The Toronto Sun almost seemed to delight in their terrifying headline: "Finally, a blizzard! Hamilton hammered, T.O. slapped by first major storm of the season."

How dare you gods of weather? How dare you give us snow in February? Who could have known this was the befall our fair city. It must be, as environmentalists feared, the end of the world.

I shall remain strong in the hopes that search and rescue should find me. But please, I beg you Canadian fire-fighters and special forces - save the children first! I urge you staunch survivors, please cut down on your greenhouse gases. To all of my friends on the World Wide Web - do not despair! If Stephen Harper learned anything from Bush's response to Katrina, some of us may be spared.

And finally, should anyone be alive out there to read this - please send my undying Valentine's Day love to -

Posted by Julia LeConte at 07:10 AM | Permalink

Ian Buruma has singlehandedly turned me off of the "returning journalist" phenomenon.

I say this because I'm mad at him. His latest book, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, came so close to being great. But Buruma, a native of the Netherlands, relies way too much on his old memories of it, and is continually surprised by how much the country changed since he left it - in 1975. He returned to report on van Gogh's death for the New Yorker. A controversial Dutch filmmaker, van Gogh was murdered by an extremist in 2004 for his short film Submission, which heavily criticized Islamic culture.

Buruma left the Netherlands aged 25, eventually settling in the US. He was always an outsider when he returned to the country, and relies on his dim memories as a narrative throughout the book. Murder in Amsterdam is full of references to "my city" and statements like this one: "Chafina talked about her old neighbourhood in The Hague, an area I remember from my childhood as dank and grey, a place that combined the cramped quarters of the inner city with the lifelessness of a suburb. The streets are now, in Chafina's phrase, 'dominated by headscarves.'"

I understand what Buruma is trying to do, but there's a better way of juxtaposing the past with the present than to drudge up 30-year-old childhood memories. Think of how annoying The Golden Spruce would have been if John Vaillant, writing as a native of the Queen Charlotte Islands, rambled on about how the coast was lined with trees back in his day. He proves his point instead by doing research, and the result is a book with a more solid factual background.

I'm originally from a small town in Manitoba. If I were to return there for a magazine assignment one day to find that it suddenly became a metropolis, my "insider insights" would amount to little more than "Gee, this mall used to be a canola field, and a Hutterite colony used to live where that theatre is." Kind of like Buruma, then, when he breaks out this one: "I knew Amersfoort, near Utrecht, only as the place where my grandparents moved into a retirement home," before launching into an explanation of how the town now has over 100,000 citizens.

Just because you're from a certain place doesn't make you qualified to write about it. If you chose to leave it, it isn't "your city" anymore, and it's pointless to be surprised at how different a country is after 30 years. Sending in a journalist from outside the area in question would result in a more balanced report, I think, because the writer doesn't have any preconceived ideas on what to expect.

Foreign editors: call me.

Posted by Angela Kozak at 09:00 AM | Permalink

Toro magazine has suspend publication. According to a Toro employee, the magazine has lost funding from its primary backer. The source was relieved of employment this morning.

Toro has verified that it has suspended publication. The broader details have yet to be confirmed.


Update: 3:11 p.m.: A CBC.ca article quotes publisher Dinah Quattrin:

"Despite steady annual growth, it's become clear that the advertising revenue available in Canada for a general-interest men's magazine is such that even a very high-quality book like Toro can, at best, manage to sustain itself."

(Thanks to Canadian Journalist for pointing me to the CBC story)

Posted by Joe Rayment at 02:39 PM | Permalink

Last Friday, The Associated Press announced they'd be teaming up with Vancouver-based NowPublic, a participatory (i.e. citizen journalism) online news outlet. According to an AP article about the announcement, the New York-based wire service plans on using pictures, video and copy from NowPublic's average-Joe reporters.

Yes, this is great news for citizen journalism...signals growing credibility...blah blah blah. But looming over all these positive points is a dark storm cloud, with heavy winds approaching.

Take, for example, the recent turmoil caused by a citizen-shot video of a ferry heaving through rough waters off the coast of New Zealand. After showing up on YouTube, the video somehow became mislabeled as showing a Marine Atlantic ship traveling between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. It didn't take long before the clip popped up on Newfoundland's NTV after a viewer e-mailed it in. It was then picked up by Global's station in Halifax, Canada AM and CTV News -- all of which passed along the false description to viewers.

According to a Canadian Press article on the matter, NTV did attempt to verify the video's authenticity with Marine Atlantic. But Jim Furlong, NTV's news director, said neither of the two reporters assigned to the story called. They each thought the other was taking care of it.

While someone watching the clip on YouTube would hopefully be skeptical of any associated facts, the same cannot (or, at least, should not) be said of what appears on our evening news. It's incidents like these that create distrust of the media among the public.

I'm not saying that AP will be lazy about verifying the authenticity of material from NowPublic. In fact, that AP article quotes their vice president, Jim Kennedy, as saying, "We’re not just going to take content directly from the contributors and put it on the wire. We’re going to edit and verify it just like we would any other contribution."

But it's not as though NTV and Global and CTV were trying to make an error with the ferry video; it was simply an accident related to the use of citizen journalism. It does, however, lead me to believe that letting more of this material into mainstream news -- in the third-party way AP has proposed -- could whip up some very nasty waves.

Posted by Graham Silnicki at 04:15 AM | Permalink

So here's the thing, the other day when I was with a group of friends someone happened on a news website that said Anna Nicole Smith was dead. My first thought was, "I don't think so". And when I expressed this to my friends they said, "well what the hell do you mean, it says it on the news." After this I began to think about media accuracy. People are constantly saying that the public has very little faith in the media and they don't trust them. I know I may be one of the only people who thinks that that isn't true. In fact, I think it's bullocks. I think that the public, most of them, feel that their media is giving them accurate news, albeit skewed. Now I know my thoughts are very North American and I'll be the first to admit it but I think that there is more faith than people are willing to admit. Everyone likes a little drama so why not bring the battle of the public vs the evil, sadistic, self obsessed media?

Now the reason I bring up Anna Nicole is because it was such a random death and everyone believed it without a second thought. Now I was wrong, she was actually dead but I'll highlight that for a while there, poor Bob Hope was being pronounced dead left, right and centre..and the sad thing is that he wasn't dead. So the media were reporting the news like this: "Welcome to the evening news, tragically Bob Hope, famous actor, entertainer of troops and such has died...wait a second, this just in...he's alive!"

If you ask Craig Silverman of Regret the Error, he'll tell you all about this. His website it devoted to gross errors that the media has made. He's writing a book about this and he has a WHOLE CHAPTER devoted to people being killed off by the news before their time. What I'm saying now is that maybe we should be more fearful of the media and question deaths like Tupac, Princess Di, the Pope and Anna Nicole. I have this funny feeling that they are partying on some island and laughing it up with CNN.

So what the hell am I trying to say in this blog, everyone trusts the media and they shouldn't or no one trusts the media and rightly so sometimes? Well what I'm actually trying to say is forget about that stuff...go to your local newsstand and buy a copy of Vogue or Fashion Magazine and stop reading the news...

Just kidding, but only HALF kidding!

Posted by Diana Cina at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In 1956 Ryszard Kapuscinski travelled outside of Poland for the first time. He went to India. He was 23, a young reporter working for a Polish paper, and he barely spoke English. The chaos and extremes of riches and poverty in India defeated him. But he never forgot India, and the experience opened his eyes to the world.

I was 22 the first time I travelled solo. I also went to India. But that's where the comparison ends. In 1957 Kapuscinski went to Africa and covered the whole continent at a crucial point in history--over a period of 40 years. Colonial powers were being booted out and new nations were taking shape.

Kapuscinski covered revolutions and coups in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, primarily for the Polish Press Agency. He was a journalist of a different era. He travelled with the shirt on his back, a camera, and two notepads--one to do his job and the other to record the experiences that later became his books. No SAT phone. No RBGAN satellite dish.

"He always spoke about the importance of reportage, and delivered stinging attacks on news as a commodity, and on the flying 'special correspondents' who report on instant drama without context or follow up. He hated what he called the 'metamorphosis of the media.' The value of news in his day, he said, had nothing to do with profits, but was the stuff of political struggle, and the search for truth."--The Guardian, Januaray 25, 2007.

In Another Day of Life, he wrote about the Angolan civil war. In 1975 Angola had disintegrated, the Portugese were fleeing, and soldiers from South Africa, Zaire and Cuba were moving in to fight for control against the Angolan army. Kapuscinski was the only foreign correspondent in Angola in the summer of 1975. He starts by writing, "This is a very personal book, about being alone and lost." It is beautifully written, literary reportage with emotion.

"For me, nine o'clock was the high point of the day--a big event repeated each morning. I wrote daily. I wrote out of the most egocentric motives: I overcame my inertia and depression in order to produce even the briefest dispatch and so maintain contact with Warsaw, because it rescued me from loneliness and the feeling of abandonment. If there was time, I settled down at the telex long before nine. When the light came on I felt like a wanderer in the desert who catches sight of a spring. I tried every trick I could think of to drag out the length of those seances. I described the details of every battle. I asked what the weather was like at home and complained that I had nothing to eat. But in the end came the moment when Warsaw signed off: GOOD RECEPTION CONTACT TOMORROW 20 HRS GMT TKS BY BY
and the light went out and I was left alone again."

I treasure Kapuscinski's writing because he describes a world that no longer exists, and he risked everything to tell his stories.

Ryszard Kapuscinski died on January 23, 2007, at the age of 74.

Posted by Meena Nallainathan at 03:00 PM | Permalink

Thank God I'm in Canada.

For the next few weeks, PBS is airing a series on American journalism called News Wars . It focuses on the growing trend of Americans looking to Jon Stewart and Regis and Kelly for their news rather than the good ol' 11 o'clock newscasts or national newspapers.

Why?

Because of trust, primarily.

Canada may not have a perfect situation - conglomerates like Bell Globemedia and CanWest are devouring the news media and ratings boosters often eclipse important news coverage. But one look at News Wars and you'll probably feel a little better about the way things are here. The four-hour series airing on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. begins with Secrets, Sources & Spin, which looks at the Iraq war coverage in the US. The second, What's Happening to the News, explores the way internet and technology are affecting how stories are told.

In the end, the news about news seems gloomy. Politicians and spin doctors are altering the way we find out about events. Money and truth compete for higher values. While this seems to be an issue affecting journalism in all countries, like many things, America is a super-sized version of it. We should see this as a future we don't want to head towards in Canada. And neither Stephen Harper's disdain for journalists, corporations' love of spin, nor newsrooms' need for 'the big story' should be able to force us in the direction News Wars seems to say we're going.

Posted by Chris Richardson at 10:05 AM | Permalink

Vice is at it again, spreading their view of the world far and wide. They debuted VBS.TV this week, an internet site that provides video of news, documentaries and opinion pieces.

The web site's slogan, "rescuing you from television's deathlike grip," proudly declares a very Vice-istic perspective on the evils of TV. The words "saving your eyes from the blinding pain of television," seem to say it all.

A magazine with its roots in Montreal, and a current locale being New York city, Vice is constantly pushing material that has been labeled bohemian, hipster, and counter-cultural. Perhaps it's the common knowledge that our various sources of mainstream media all branch out of the same few giant media conglomerates and companies. Or it could be that newspapers, radio programs and television broadcasters are all pulling the same stories from the same wires: CP, AP, Reuters, etc. In fact, the possibilities are endless. We've all heard the quip: I have more channels than ever before, and even less to actually watch. Whatever the root reason, Vice is stepping up to save its readers from the apparent personification of Satan: Television.

Vice is stepping up and giving its readers, and now viewers, an alternative to TV. The new site is not only streaming informative documentaries like "Heavy Metal in Baghdad," but also continue to push the weird and counter-cultural with pieces such as "Americana: Amy the Taxidermist."

Of course, there are forums for VBS.TV watchers to discuss how awesome or crappy the website is. But, in the words of whoever writes the site's news section: "We think that VBS Day One went pretty great. Pretty fucking great, actually. We're 'chuffed' with it, as our British brothers and sisters would say."

Posted by Rachel Hahn at 06:28 AM | Permalink

It's an art. Some people just have a knack for it. It finds the heart of the story. These are all things I've heard about headlines. And now technology might be changing the art of writing heds a little.

CNETNews.com reported this story about search engines altering the way some news outlets are tackling headlines. Newspapers such as the Boston Globe and the U.K.'sThe Times Online are adding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to their journalistic toolkit. This is tech speak for making sure your web site gets found by Google.

Editorial staff are being trained in aspects of SEO -- using keywords, anchor text and putting keywords at the beginning of the headline -- in order to make sure readers searching the web will be directed to their articles. It is a bit of a balancing act between writing headlines that are journalistically strong, while also able to attract search engines with basic keywords.

I don't regularly search for particular stories by headline. If I've heard about a story I will search for it using keywords or if I am working on a story or researching a specific topic I will search, but in general I am a daily news reader and RSS subscriber. But the news outlets who are teaching SEO to their editors must feel that there is enough keyword searching going on to re-think hed writing.

As the Calgary Herald reported yesterday, online advertising spending is growing fast. The article cites a market research report forecasting that Internet search advertising (in the United States) will grow 39 per cent, while spending in print media will grow only 2.7 per cent and ad spending on TV and radio will decline. The news outlets that are thinking ahead are looking at online ad revenues. And changing the art of headline writing seems to be one way to try to bring more traffic to their sites

Posted by Regan Ray at 09:38 AM | Permalink

In the winter issue of Maisonneuve magazine, "Kate Jackson" (her name was changed to protect her identity) wrote an article titled, "Confessions of a Teenage Fabulist." It was about the way she faked her way through two years of journalism school, did really well on completely fabricated stories, and got away with it until she dropped out because of how exhausting it was to lie all the time and, she claims, because of principle.

Toward the end of the article, she writes: "I am just relieved to have escaped from an environment that put such a high premium on success, that deception and deceit felt like viable options. Does this say more about me or about journalism?"

I think it says more about "Kate." There is pressure to succeed in every field, no excuse for passing fiction off as truth. Sorry, "Kate", but no matter how much pressure there is, it comes down to the person and their principles. Besides, the best stories are authentic and subtle, the ones you had to look a little harder for.

At the end of the piece, she quotes Lewis Lapham: "People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true." Of course Lapham would say this. He too was found to have fabricated one of his famous editorials.

Posted by Julia Belluz at 11:31 AM | Permalink

Somewhere between humping Jill, the Austrailian Businesswoman, as her legs hung out the door of her BMW, or maybe coning Barbara and Nadia into a threesome with his double induction massage technique, I wonder if Neil Strauss (Rolling Stone, New York Times) realized he was creating a new journalistic form. I'm sure we've all heard of participatory journalism and even full immersion journalism where journalists like Ted Conover and Adrian Nicole Leblanc are put in a revolutionary category because they become the hobos they're covering, or have so much time on their hands they can dedicate ten years consumed with covering one poor family without having their heads explode. Well, all of that is for pussies with boundaries. Strauss took this thing called journalism, forcefully removed its panties, raped it and left it in a dark alley.

It started out innocently enough. An editor called Strauss and asked if he could synthesize the terms used by an underground, largely internet-based community of pick-up artists into a helpful glossary regular men could wrap their head around. These were words like" Neg": the seemingly accidental not quite insult, not quite compliment used to temporarily lower the self-esteem of the women your interested in. It's designed to destabilize her expectations and con her into thinking you're not interested. But as Strauss got further and further into his research, he realized that these PUA's held the key to something he desperately wanted, but could never attain since high school--a real way with women. So like a good little New, New Journalist philospher, he waxed off about how the only way to truly understand the subculture was to immerse himself in it and become one of them. The Goal: to beat these guys at there own game and become the greatest pick-up artist of all time.

So he went to every seminar as a student and learned from the best, even "Sarging" or picking up women with these self-styled gurus in the field. There was Mystery, aka Eric Von Markovik, a part-time illusionist based right here in TORONTO--that's right ladies, if you see this guy, stock up on the pill and tell'em " Brove" sent ya!--Ross Jeffries, creator of speed seduction and said to be the inspiration for Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia and The Juggler aka Wayne Elise, specializing in free form seduction with no rehearsed lines. Soon he went from this, to this aka Style. The king of all seducers.

For two years, this guy did nothing but hone his PUA skills. He literally dropped off the planet--foregoing writing assignments, friends and family, all for the PUA community. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? But the difference between Strauss and all our pals practising the long drawn out art of New, (and another "New" because Boynton is so F$%&! original!) Journalism is that no matter how long their immersion lasts the purpose from the beginning was always to come out with a kick ass article. They went in with notepads, and tape recorders, and journalism ethics outlining the boundaries they wouldn't cross and the things they wouldn't do for their sources. They always had the idea that some day this would end and some day they would publish it. Strauss never had such plans in the begining. The assignment he was originally given was waaay past it's requirements and soon the community and picking up women became a nightly obsession. He got so good that he out fleeced Hiedi Fliess at the pick-up game during a competition between the two of them. He picked up pornstars like Devon and Faith. His protege, Papa, number closed Paris Hilton using Strauss's exact words and Strauss himself picked up Britney Spears. In some cases he was too good, inadvertently picking up screechy bisexual comedian Andy Dick.

He only went back to writing when he realized that all his time as a PUA was causing him to be in the hole. Since this was only for his personal benefit, there were no rules or unwritten codes of ethics that mattered to him. He was and is still Style the seduction guru. He's not trying this on for a set length of time like his new, new Journalism counterparts. He will always be known as a master PUA and was still seducing as of July. 2006. The guy never interviewed his sources, he lived with them and went into business with them, through a plan called "Project Hollywood" he himself created. He expanded the community past the internet and into a way of life--profiting right along with them (which, last time I checked, was a big journalism no, no!). Oh, and did I mention he slept with sources and documented all of it later on. No wonder he intially had some reservations when he wrote his first piece for the New York Times about his brothers in charms. But, nobody from the community seemed to care that they'd been outted. Even the women he slept with didn't give two shits that they were played by a pick-up artist. If anything, the only time it came back to bite him in the ass was when girls in his harem broke up with him. Plus, he didn't want to leave! Not because of some big Talesian journalistic golden rule like, "There's still more story to tell, I'm staying for the good of the story!" No, this guy formed a brotherhood with these people and even took on students in pick-up artistry. All these new, new journalists are playing a role, but Neil Strauss has blurred the line: Strauss is Style, Style is Strauss.
So, the rules of New Nude Journalism as demonstrated by Strauss in The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick Up Artists. Here for posterity should they become the basis for a new, new, new, journalistic movement are:
1. Don't come in as a journalist.
2. Be committed to the subcultures and sources for life in practice and/or in legacy.
3. There is no " journalist's alter ego" and if there is nobody can tell the difference anyway.
4. Break every ethical standard, written or otherwise, ever devised for journalism.
5. Off the record is a figment of the source's imagination.

Personally, I'm beginning to like The New Nude Journalism method. Who wants to smell like a Hobo and hang out in the ghetto for ten years, when you can sleep with hundreds of beautiful women?

[The Reader will Note:] I do not need any of the techniques outlined in the above and titled book by Neil Strauss and I am wholly confident in my ability to pick up any woman of my choosing. I am what the glossary terms: "A Natural" ie. Saturday Night I met a few Nova Scotian girls and their significant others at a bar. Let's just say, that by the end of the night, the girls were begging me to stay {number-close to boot!} and their men were paying for my meal. 'Nuff Said!

Posted by Aaron Broverman at 12:02 AM | Permalink

In the January/February issue of UTNE Reader magazine, the 18th Annual Utne Independent Press Awards highlighted the best in independent news from across the world - From the US, to Britain, to even Canada.

"These titles aren't just presenting the voices and viewpoints missing from the mainstream, but are doing it well: carving out niches of coverage, making information accessible and elegant, challenging and inspiring their readers," wrote the UTNE's editors in their intro, after listing the problems facing journalism today. "In short, these are the publications that give us hope."

The most exciting part for us, is that from the 15 categories UTNE covers - from general excellence, to spiritual coverage, to environmental coverage - Canada was nominated for 11 of them. Not only were Canadian publications nominated 11 times, Seed Magazine , launched in Montreal in 2001, won the science/tech coverage category! (Check out the Leigh Doyle's RRJ story from 2005 for more on Seed)

If independent press is our hope, then Canada is a part of that. And I think we should all be proud of it.

Posted by Paige Magarrey at 11:08 AM | Permalink

I learned about a documentary aired on "Wide Angle", the PBS version of "The Fifth Estate", this week. Redlines and Deadlines records three weeks in the life of Iranian newspaper, Shargh, during the summer of 2004. The PBS reporter returns the following year to document the 2005 elections in Iran.
The Shargh reporters skirt elusive and continuously changing laws and unwritten rules, struggling to maintain a legal level of obsequiousness while reporting truthfully and critically on the political -and when that gets them shut down in the fall of 2004, the social and cultural- goings on in the country.
Shargh, which means peace, is staffed -with one exception- by people under 30.

Also this week, Reporters Without Borders/Reporters Sans Frontieres released their 2007 Annual Report, a summary of the state of journalism worldwide. A quick read through the introduction will disabuse any journalists who believe we're skipping through an idyllic age of truth-telling and openness -not that I know anyone who believes this- of their illusions. Here's an excerpt:

"A disturbingly record number of journalists and media workers were killed or thrown in prison in 2006, but even more deplorable was the lack of interest,and sometimes even the failure, by democratic countries in defending everywhere the values they are supposed to incarnate.

1994 was the last year when as many media workers were killed (mostly in the Rwandan genocide, the
Algerian civil war and fighting in former Yugoslavia). At least 110 were killed in 2006, but governments frequently gave up, displayed cowardice or made compromises instead of firmly defending freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

Almost everyone believes in human rights but amid the silences and behaviour on all sides, we wonder who these days has the necessary moral authority to make a principled stand in favour of these freedoms. "
Read the entire report here.

In his famous 2004 speech to the Society of Professional Journalists, Bill Moyers concluded with this:
"The late Martha Gellhorn, who spent half a century reporting on war and politicians--and observing journalists, too--eventually lost her faith that journalism could, by itself, change the world. But the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in itself, she said. 'Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honorable behavior, involving the reporter and the reader.' I second that. I believe democracy requires "a sacred contract" between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works."

All of which is to say, this week I looked up from my fact-checking, job-searching, infinitely fascinating navel and remembered a few of the realities that put this fire in my belly to begin with. Flames fanned.

Posted by Amy Packwood at 06:39 PM | Permalink

What does it take for a relative unknown to go from waiting tables in Yorkville to being interviewed for the Globe, the Star and a seemingly endless string of American chat shows? In the case of Toronto actress Jodi Behan, what it took was YouTube and a memorable performance as a screechy, self-destructive bridezilla. (If you've missed the recent fuss over Behan's YouTube clip, you can watch it here).

The clip made its first appearance on mainstream media this past Wednesday, when it was aired on NBC's The Today Show. Since then, the news coverage has been constant. At first is was a spate of stories questioning the clip's authenticity. Now that Behan's been outed, the stories ponder how a little luck and the cultural savvy to navigate the latest internet fads will make you a low-grade star.

I have a slight problem with all this.

I'm none too bothered by the idea of a puff piece like this capturing so many imaginations. Heck, I'm blogging about it, aren't I? And kudos to Behan for finding herself in a situation where she can take full advantage of the media's (apparent) love affair with her story. There's something awfully feel-good about an overnight success tale.

But all the attention isn't for the benefit of a small-time, upstart actress. The video, it's been reported, was the brainchild of a Toronto marketing firm, to be used as part of an ad campaign for hair products.

All those scads and scads of stories are drumming up free publicity for shampoo, and for days the media wasn't even aware of it. The world needs to get used to more than just YouTube insta-stars. There's a whole world of tricky, viral video marketing campaigns out there now, too, and falling for one could be just as sketchy as printing a press release in an A-section.

Posted by Leah Collins at 09:12 AM | Permalink

Canada's Access to Information Act states its purpose as extending the present laws of Canada to provide "a right of access" to information under the control of government institutions. This purpose is in accordance with the "principles that government information should be available to the public" and that exceptions be "limited." All of which sounds great on paper. But, as then Information Commissioner John Reid notes in his 2003/04 Annual Report "Too often , departments have been content to address only the question: 'May the requested documents be kept secret?'" Things have not changed since then. The 2006 report notes that when the act was put in place over 20 years ago, "Parliament wanted members of the public to have the positive legal rights to get the facts, not the 'spin,'" and that citizens--and journalists alike--should be able to get "whatever records they wanted, not just what public officials felt they should know." But, all too often, Reid reports, "the name of the game" is not how can we better inform the public, but "how to resist transparency and engage in damage control by ignoring response to deadlines, blacking out the embarrassing bits, conducting business orally [and] excluding records and institutions from the coverage of the Access to Information Act." Many government institutions are now private-public agencies and are exempt from the information laws: Canadian Blood Services, [Nuclear] Waste Management Organization, The Greater Toronto Airport Authority, and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board--the list goes on. This situation is compounded by high fees, delays and "amber lighting"--the (less than legal) process of vetting journalists' ATI requests. It seems like we're operating in reverse, sliding down the slope into a culture of secrecy. And I wonder, really, how long it will be until all we're getting is spin?

Posted by Lauren McKeon at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)