On March 4, 2013, veteran freelancer Jay Teitel wrote an open letter to Transcontinental Media, the publishing giant whose titles include Elle Canada, Canadian Living, and Style at Home. He was firm, and maybe even frustrated. But he was honest. “Transcontinental is effectively proposing that I willingly agree to let you steal a portion of my work,” he wrote on The Story Board, an online space for freelance journalists and media workers in Canada. “You have become the guys who want something for nothing.” 

Under TC Media’s new contract, introduced in February, freelancers must relinquish all rights to their work, on all platforms and brands TC Media owns now and in the future, without additional compensation. Unlike in the 2009 version of Transcontinental’s agreement, contributors are also stripped of their moral rights, which means the publisher can alter the meaning of the work without a writer’s permission and remove bylines. 

Teitel, who has written for Elle Canada and TC Media’s now-defunct More.ca, learned about the new contract from an Elle Canada editor. He says he didn’t read the agreement until Derek Finkle, founder of Canadian Writers Group, approached him asking him to comment on the agreement. When he realized what Transcontinental was asking he thought: “This is a deal killer.” 

“Under no circumstances, if it stays the same, would I consider ever working under those conditions,” he says. And he hasn’t. He says the publishing company’s demand for all copyrights violates the “notion of what a freelancer does.” 

Transcontinental hasn’t been the only one stirring up controversy with its treatment of freelancers. In February, Toronto Star columnist Ann Douglas left the newspaper after she was presented with an agreement that would allow the paper to reuse commissioned work in its own brand and those of its affiliates and third parties without additional pay. 

Star publisher John Cruickshank suggests that such agreements are sparked by the need to protect publications from both legal and financial trouble. 

“It begins with multi-million dollar settlements to the class of freelancers,” he says, referring to the Robertson v. Thomson Corp. class action. In 1996, freelancer Heather Robertson filed a lawsuit after The Globe and Mail republished some of her articles that had appeared in the print edition of the paper in electronic databases—Info Globe Online, the Canadian Periodical Index (known as CPI.Q), and a CD-ROM—without her consent. Robertson eventually won an $11-million settlement when the suit was decided in 2006. A similar case happened south of the border, one that was considered a “landmark” suit for freelancer rights. In 1993, Jonathan Tasini and five other freelancers who wrote for newspapers and magazines published by the New York Times Company, Newsday Inc., and Time Inc., filed a suit alleging copyright infringement upon the reuse of their work in three databases without their consent. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the companies did not obtain permission from the writers to republish their work. 

Cruickshank says the additional rights are there to secure the ability to reuse or sell content in the future, so that the company can continue to monetize freelancer content in the digital world. 

“There’ve been so many changes in the industry and the way we provide content that it was absolutely necessary that we look at making these changes,” Susan Antonacci, TC Media executive director of brand development, told The Story Board about TC Media’s new contract. She says it’s a “safety net.” Antonacci could not be reached in time for deadline, and TC Media declined to comment further on its new agreement. 

Still, there are those who think such reasoning is flawed. Freelance writer and editor Suzanne Bowness, who stopped pitching to TC Media after it changed its freelancer agreement in 2009, and refused to sign the Star Content Studios contract, says it’s a safety net for the companies but not for their contributors. She understands that it’s an economically difficult time for newspapers and magazines, and there is a need to expand rights, especially with the new digital media. But she doesn’t think these companies need all rights, and believes they should ask the writer for permission before republishing. 

Michael OReilly, president of the Canadian Freelance Union, agrees. He remembers when writers would produce a piece for a certain publication and only license it to use the piece once; anything more would require the writer’s permission. He doesn’t understand why companies need moral rights, and says writers should be compensated if their work is reused. “The real problem is that publishers, in this case Transcontinental, want all the rights but they don’t want to pay for it,” he says.

CWG’s Finkle doesn’t think companies need to own copyright or have moral rights waived to republish a writer’s work on a different platform. “It’s an empty premise,” he says. He understands there may be some situations under which a writer might benefit from working for exposure, but he says TC Media’s contract is “so egregious, so outrageous, and so disrespectful” that writers should not be working under these conditions. “I don’t think a lot of people get into this business to get rich,” he says, “but when they create something they want to be able to have a certain amount of control.”

But companies are less likely to make changes if there are writers willing to write for free, or for exposure. And there are, says Canadian Media Guild staff representative Keith Maskell. Freelancers, he says, should try to negotiate as much as they can. “Don’t work for exposure because people die of exposure,” he says. 

The Story Board reported last week that TC Media may be making changes to the agreement, and releasing a new draft by early summer. For now, some freelancers have been told they can work under the previous contract. Nothing has been finalized, but “the door that appeared closed is now at least slightly open,” Maskell told The Story Board. 

Halfway through his open letter, Teitel compares Canadian print journalism to Hollywood, and refers to a joke often used in the movie biz: “Did you hear the one about the really dumb starlet? She fucked the writer.” Meaning, the writer is the last person the starlet should sleep with because he is the “most powerless person in the movie equation”—the director or producer would be better choices. But, he adds, “What the joke doesn’t mention is the truism that without the writer, and the story he or she creates, neither the director nor the producer would have any movie with which to entice the starlet. So maybe in servicing the writer, the starlet wasn’t so dumb after all.” The same seems true here. Publishers say to survive, they need to adapt to the changing media environment. Still, as CFU’s OReilly says, they need freelancers to survive, because without them “they’ll have nobody to produce for their magazines.”

 

“The internships that we have now are all over the place,” says Rogers Publishing’s peppy HR manager with unexpected frankness. “We have people who are really getting some good mentorship from senior editors, and then we have people who are just in the Flare fashion closet helping out with some merchandising or stuff like that.” 

Though Candy insists that all interns receive a good experience, the company is introducing  the M-School (the “M” stands for magazine), a full-time, paid, four-month internship program that it says is designed to provide rigorous, formalized training for those looking to break into the industry. Aside from working with Rogers Publishing staff in different sectors—including editorial, marketing, and design—the 10 carefully selected interns will attend mandatory seminars that count toward a certificate of completion.

But while the program may appear to be a step up from the usual intern experience, it still fails to fairly compensate interns for their labour, and leaves Rogers’ less educational, unpaid internships unexamined and unchanged.

The M-School, which launches in May, was largely inspired by an internship program at Chatelaine. The brainchild of the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jane Francisco, and assistant editor Lora Grady, the Career Institute at Chatelaine (which Rogers is shutting down after its current interns finish up) took on paid interns for six months, and provided them with a two-day magazine boot camp, workshops, seminars, and one-on-one mentorship.

“They were really good ideas and they were exactly what we wanted to do,” Candy explains. “But we didn’t want it to be focused just on editorial. We wanted to extend to other areas of the business.”

M-School interns will be placed in different departments at a variety of titles, from consumer magazines like Chatelaine to lesser-known trade publications like Benefits Canada. (The “legacy” internships at Maclean’s and Canadian Business will be excluded from the program.) Though they’ll focus on the area of their preference, the interns will be exposed to other parts of the industry through seminars, which will focus on things like choosing a good cover, pitching ideas, using multimedia, and getting to know magazine readers.

Though the final amount has yet to be decided, Candy says interns will probably be paid a monthly honorarium of about $1,000. While this may seem lucrative compared to the many Rogers internships that provide no compensation, this is still considerably less than minimum wage in Ontario.

“People can’t afford to live and work in Toronto if they’re only getting paid $1,000 a month,” says Toronto-based lawyer Andrew Langille, who also blogs about youth employment issues. “It’s less of a meritocracy and more choosing from a pool of applicants from privilege.”

Langille says, “A centrally managed program is better insofar as there’s a greater, better look at what’s happening.” But he questions whether M-School internships—$1,000 honorarium or not—would be considered legal under the Employment Standards Act, because, based on the duties listed on its website, the M-School would require that participants take on jobs that are usually performed by paid employees. (An editorial internship, for example, would include fact-checking, writing web content, and contributing ideas to the magazine line-up.) According to the Ontario Ministry of Labour, an employer can only deny an intern the usual employee rights, including minimum wage, if “[the] employer derives little, if any, benefit from the activity of the intern while he or she is being trained.”

It’s doubtful that paying interns would be a financial burden at Rogers. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Rogers Media, of which Rogers Publishing is an arm, made $75 million in adjusted operating profit (its parent company, Rogers Communications, netted $455 million). Hiring 10 interns at minimum wage for the summer (about $1,640 a month each, for four months) would require less than one percent of that. 

By choosing not to pay its interns in spite of its hefty profits, Langille believes Rogers is showing a lack of appreciation for the labour they provide, and a misunderstanding of what internships are really for.

“It’s foolish to view interns as a crew of disposable labour or cheap labour,” Langille says. “The best practice is to view interns as potential full-time employees and to use internships to test the waters and see if the intern is a good fit for the culture of the company.”

Candidates will have to work hard if they want that opportunity at the M-School. Along with submitting a résumé, applicants need to write a short essay detailing why they want to be a part of the program and what they have to offer. If they make the shortlist, they’ll have to go through multiple rounds of interviews and complete an assignment related to the department they hope to join. Then, maybe, they’ll get the position.. “It would really be like a pretty rigorous job screening process,” says Candy.

But for each of the 10 interns getting the holistic training experience, Rogers has a few other interns whose experiences are nowhere near as closely monitored. (Full disclosure: I interned at two Rogers magazines.) Candy admits that HR isn’t always aware of where or when these interns are working, and doesn’t receive feedback from anyone about their learning experience. (Chatelaine’s Career Institute was an exception, as the organizers did collect regular feedback from participants.) 

Robin Green (not his real name) , a former editorial intern at one of Rogers’ most popular consumer magazines, remembers wishing that his experience had been more focused on education and training. Though he worked two to three days a week, he always felt as though he was “clocking in and out instead of learning, networking, and becoming part of a team.” “I feel like I was taken for granted. The interns are a key part of the production cycle, but I felt like I was just a cog,” he says.

When he started, he was expecting to receive one-on-one mentoring from editors, and to learn about the editing and writing process at magazines. Instead, he spent most of his time fact-checking, organizing freelancer contracts, mailing packages, and emailing public relations associates. His editors acted as though they couldn’t be bothered to assign him work, let alone share their experiences as young journalists, and his supervisor wasn’t even at the office to debrief him on his last day.

“Because it was unpaid, I really wanted more. I wanted it to be a curriculum for me instead of me walking in, begging for something to do and feeling awkward,” says Green, who worked full-time hours to support himself during his internship. “If I’m working for free, I want to learn something.”

Candy is doubtful that Rogers will go out of its way to make sure that the rest of its interns, most of whom are unpaid, get the same comprehensive experience as their incoming M-School interns. At most, they’ll be able to attend the seminars. 

“Our business relies heavily on interns,” she says. “I think it’s a two-way street. Some of the schools and some of the programs rely on us to provide internships and, in turn, we’ve come to start relying a little bit on the amazing skills that we get from our interns to help us with our business.”

In spite of his own negative experience, Green is interested in applying for the M-School. He’s excited about the amount of structure and the prospect of a paycheque, even if it doesn’t cover his cost of living. One thousand dollars is a lot when you’re used to working for free.

“Working in a so-called rock star industry like media? I’ll take it,” he says. “I’d take that in a second.”

Photo by SimonP

One month after Transcontinental Media released the appallingly unfair changes to its writers' contract, it has announced the launch of Véro, a French magazine for women in Quebec–a move that is weighted with contradiction for its writers.

 

Pulfer is the executive director for Journalists for Human Rights, Canada’s largest non-profit media development organization. Seventy percent of her time as executive director is spent fundraising.

“In the first year, I had to manage and grow a million-plus budget in an environment where donor dollars are under enormous pressure,” says Pulfer. “Then there’s the pitch: Most private donors would rather support children, hospitals, chimps—but impoverished journalists?”

JHR is the only NGO in Canada specializing in rights media. Its mission is to make everyone worldwide aware of his or her rights. It does so by building the capacity of media by training journalists around the world to report on human rights and governance issues. Pulfer stresses that it fosters the exchange of professional skills between JHR staffers and journalists—creating a learning experience for both sides. But JHR’s major challenge is covering its core costs, salaries, and administration. 

“Project finance in the non-profit sector tends to work at cross purposes to fulfilling the mandate,” says Pulfer. She quotes a recent grant proposal to make her point: granting agencies, foundations, and major donors like to “fund projects, but not project implementers,” meaning they’ll fund project activities but minimally fund the salaries of the staff managing the projects or the administrative costs. “That fosters a situation where the charity is under enormous pressure to take on more projects than it can realistically handle, in order to cobble together sufficient funds to keep high-quality staff at competitive salaries,” says Pulfer. 

JHR relies on private foundations and government donor agencies to fund its large projects. (Historically, government grants have formed up to 80 percent of its annual budget.) But in November, Julian Fantino, Canada’s minister of international cooperation, fired a clear warning shot at aid agencies and those in the NGO community when he announced, “We don’t fund NGOs for life.” Then, last week, came the announcement that the Canadian International Development Agency is no more; it will merge with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to form the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.  

Pulfer says it’s difficult to see the larger implications of the CIDA-DFAIT merger at this point, but JHR is willing to work within the framework outlined by Fantino. She confirms that the merger will not affect CIDA’s current funding commitment to JHR’s youth internship program. 

CIDA has been a significant supporter of JHR in recent years. JHR’s international operations are largely funded by grants from large donor agencies and foundations. In February 2010 JHR received two grants from the agency, totaling over $700,000 in two years: one to send 40 Canadians to Ghana and Malawi to assist local journalists covering human rights issues and work with journalism students and faculty at universities to produce rights media; the other to educate Canadian university students through rights media workshops about the significance of international development.

JHR’s domestic initiatives, such as online magazine Speak that showcases quality youth journalism, are financed by a combination of private donors, sponsorship, and volunteers. As Claire Hastings, director of fundraising and community engagement for JHR, says, “All of our projects have an element of private fundraising to support them.”  

Donating funds is the most common way Canadians engage in social issues. Half of the population gives on a regular basis, and the Canadian Engagement on Global Poverty Issues poll found that, in 2012, human rights were among the top global issues concerning Canadians. Last year, JHR raised about 30 percent of its total budget of $1.4 million from private donations. This year, Pulfer is aiming for 40 percent, and hopes that number climbs to 50 percent in 2016. 

JHR’s support from individual donors has remained consistent despite the economic climate. “We’ve been able to hold the line—at least in 2013—but that’s against the trend that many Canadian charities have experienced,” says Pulfer.

But despite generous donations from the public, a lack of money still threatens JHR’s initiatives. For the past year and a half, it has been working on developing a program to mentor Aboriginal journalists to cover human rights issues in Canada. 

“Developments with Idle No More have shown an enormous need for more Aboriginal journalists to cover these stories from an Aboriginal perspective, as well as better bridges built between mainstream media and Aboriginal communities—both of which are needs our project aims to meet,” says Pulfer. Almost two weeks ago, JHR received the sought-after funding for the project. However, Pulfer says she is not at liberty to disclose the details until its official launch in late April. 

Since 2011, a key focus of JHR’s programming is mentorship for media managers, showing them how to build business plans and tap into potential local markets of advertisers and sponsors to ensure their work is financially sustainable.

“In most cases, there is no real market—at least not yet—for the kind of quality journalism JHR is working to foster in target countries and communities. Until there is a local market that will do the work of supporting quality human rights journalism so we don’t have to, there will be a need for us to foster, mentor, and support it,” says Pulfer.

“Producing good rights media is very difficult and costly,” says JHR co-founder Ben Peterson, “I think there’s a lot of interest in it, but there’s a reluctance to produce it because it’s harder to do—it requires more time, money, and resources than really easy pieces of news—in a similar way to investigative journalism. When it’s done well, it’s very successful.”

Pulfer knows firsthand the importance of rights media coverage: “I grew up in developing countries where the media is weak (Lesotho, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea),” says Pulfer via email, “I saw the impact firsthand on what governments thought they could get away with—and did get away with—in the absence of a watchdog holding them to account.”

“One of my fundraising mentors told me to stay focused on the cause, and run my natural discomfort at the idea of asking people for money through the filter of the potential at stake for what could be done with that money,” says Pulfer. “When you think about fundraising that way, it becomes much easier.”

 

“At that moment, I understood that I was leaving behind everything,” Nájera told the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that defends international press freedom. Nothing would ever be the same. Over four years later, he still looks back and wonders if he made the right decision. 

Nájera has spent about 23 years working as a journalist. For nearly two decades he worked for Grupo Reforma, one of the largest publishing houses in Mexico. He covered Ciudad Juárez, located along the United States border, which, at the time, was one of the deadliest cities in the world.

“Not one of them,” Nájera clarifies. “From 2008 to 2010, it was the most.” He was followed, harassed, intimidated, and received many death threats because of his investigative work. Always the passionate journalist, Nájera was willing to cross the line into danger for the sake of a story. 

But in 2008, a close source told Nájera that he was on a hit list of journalists who had been covering the area’s drug wars. In August of that year, he reported on a massacre at a drug rehabilitation centre that was being used to hide gang hitmen. He wrote in detail about the police’s role in concealing these criminals, along with other corrupt behaviour among state officials. By then, Nájera had published one too many articles exposing the government’s connection with drug cartels. With nowhere to turn and no one he could trust, he decided it wasn’t worth risking his family’s safety, even for the career he loved. He wrote a letter to Reporters Without Borders, outlining the situation of many journalists in Mexico, asking for guidance. The group referred him to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which in turn put him in touch with Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The CJFE was able to help him through the immigration process. 

“I could not simply let myself be killed under some lonely streetlight,” Nájera wrote in a 2010 special report for the CPJ. A month after he sent his first letter, he fled with his wife, their two sons, and daughter to Vancouver. With little English and his experience lost in translation, he found a job as a part-time janitor after 14 months of unemployment. He ended up doing things he never thought he would have to do: frequenting food banks, cleaning washrooms, and picking up house furnishings from the garbage. 

But, two years into exile, life changed once again for Nájera. In 2010, he received an International Press Freedom Award from the CJFE, which recognized him for his courageous reporting in Mexico. As a result of that, he was granted a scholarship to enroll in the journalism fellowship at Massey College, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto. Three or more fellowships are awarded to Canadian journalists each year. Nájera was the second Latin American to become a journalism fellow. His family picked up and moved to Toronto, where they still live today.

Today, the 42-year-old is a research fellow in The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, where he works on various Latin American research projects. He’s also working toward a master’s degree in global affairs at the Munk School. 

“My gratitude for Canada has no measure,” says Nájera. Although he would like to get involved in journalism here, Nájera tries not to be naive about the challenges he faces. He’s missing the English skills and the background needed to go deeper into stories. And the crisis in the newspaper industry would add even more uncertainty to his future. Besides, his family has had to deal with other challenges, like the changes in lifestyle, language, weather, and the loneliness of leaving loved ones behind. But even though he hasn’t been looking for journalistic opportunities, it seems journalism is seeking him. He’s been approached to comment on the political situation in Mexico and his experience living in exile, which has led to him writing op-ed pieces for The Globe and Mail, writing for the CJFE,and appearing on Al Jazeera television. He’s tried to use his time here to shed light on the dire situation for journalists in Mexico. 

Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters. The practice of self-censorship is common and often necessary for journalists in areas ruled by corrupt officials and drug cartels. 

“In Mexico...this conversation, we can’t have it in a public place,” Nájera tells me. 

The risk of being watched would be too great. “The criminals, or the government, want to control everything.” He has lost many of his colleagues who worked alongside him in Mexico. And he carries each of their tragic deaths with him everywhere he goes, reciting their names like a prayer. A fellow basketball team member stabbed to death in his car. A cubicle neighbour murdered just 10 minutes before his killer responded to one of Nájera’s texts. Another colleague shot to death while getting ready to take his daughter to school. In all of these murders, no one was charged. He strongly believes that journalism is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. As a result, he’s very honest with his advice to aspiring journalists. 

“If you want to be a journalist because you want to be famous, leave it,” he says. He believes anyone who wants to be a journalist to make a change in the world should be aware of the sacrifices they will have to make. “There are some prices that you have to pay. And for some of us, the price has been really, really high.” Those who are aware of the cost, and are willing to pay it, have his blessing. 

Despite everything he has been through, Nájera still loves journalism. He fondly recalls the buzzing newsroom, the writing and reporting that he once lived for. 

But, he says, “I have to move forward and take any opportunity that I can get from life now, because I’m not a teenager. I have to think in my family, and think in myself.” Still, he would love the opportunity to work for a newspaper again after he’s graduated. “If you ask me what I miss the most from my country, I’ll say my job,” says Nájera. “You have no idea how much I miss journalism.”

It’s early January and Canadian University Press’s president Sam Brooks and national bureau chief Arshy Mann sit in their new Yonge Street office in downtown Toronto, putting the finishing touches on the organization’s 75th national conference. 

      Since then, CUP has grown from an informal network to a support system for university papers across the country. In the days before the internet, the wire service was crucial for letting campus papers know what was going on at other universities throughout Canada. Its online newswire continues to allow student papers to share their content, and CUP opened it to the public in 2009 to help showcase student talent.

     Currently, the organization is in the early stages of a rebrand. This is especially important if CUP hopes to keep up its membership numbers; it currently comprises about 70 campus papers. “We’re in a significant period of change throughout the history of media in Canada, and in a lot of ways we need to rethink it,” Brooks says. “We need to rethink the position that campus press holds.”