TODAY: writer Trevor Cole

Trevor Cole specializes in long-form magazine stories, having been a magazine editor at the Globe & Mail, a senior staff writer at Report on Business magazine, and writer for Toronto Life magazine. He has written three novels: Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life (2004), The Fearsome Particles (2006), and Practical Jean (2010).

Janet Malcolm: “The Journalist and the Murderer” (The New Yorker, 1989)

“This magnum opus had to be split into two parts in order to fit into the magazine (and was later published as a book). It details the personalities and circumstances around the lawsuit of convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald against journalist Joe McGinniss, whose non-fiction account of MacDonald's life and murder trial, Fatal Vision, depicted MacDonald as a sociopathic killer. For anyone interested in long-form journalism, Malcolm's piece — beginning with the line, "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible" — offers a complete immersion into the issue of journalistic ethics and a fascinating analysis of the problematic relationship between journalist and subject. When it was first published, it was inhaled by every serious journalist, and for young writers, it's a goldmine of insight.”

Jonathan Harr: “The Burial”(The New Yorker, 1999)

“This piece profiled Mississippi lawyer Willie Gary and the lawsuit he fought and won against the huge Canadian funeral home company, The Loewen Group. To me, this story is the whole package: a terrific profile of the main protagonist in this drama, Willie Gary, a great narrative, and an in-depth case study. It takes its time, like all the best New Yorker pieces, and it delivers a big, satisfying payoff (if you cheer for the underdog). The fact that the villain in the story is a Canadian company means that it was a story available to any Canadian journalist and any magazine willing to devote the money and space.”

Gene Weingarten: “The Peekaboo Paradox” (Washington Post Magazine, 2006)

“Some profiles, like Esquire's undoubtedly great piece “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” take on greater significance because of the size and fame of the subject. But this Weingarten story is a fine example of what can happen with a relative unknown when a writer follows his instincts and digs past the obvious surface. It's a profile of a children's entertainer, The Great Zucchini. What starts as an amusing story about a guy who makes big money hitting himself with balloons and wearing soiled diapers on his head becomes something much larger and darker as the writer looks harder. Why is The Great Zucchini always unshaven? Why is he so short of cash? But most important, to me, is that the writer never leaps to judgment. He approaches his subject with a clear, unbiased eye, and that allows him to get to the heart of a story that is, in the end, quite tragic.”

(Editor’s Note: Both of the New Yorker stories are only accessible by subscription)

An exclusive, ongoing RRJ series featuring leading Canadian journalists and their top picks for pieces every journalist “must read,” “must watch” and “must listen” to before they die.

TODAY: Online Editor Marissa Nelson

Marissa Nelson is the managing editor of CBCNews.ca, and former senior editor of digital news at TheStar.ca. She has also written for the Hamilton Spectator and the London Free Press.

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (1965)
“I remember reading it at journalism school and just being so riveted. It’s one of those books that you start reading and you can’t put down. You have to read it in one sitting. Truman Capote, through interviews and covering the trial, recreates the horrendous murder that happened to the Clutter family. It’s narrative non-fiction and it helped define narrative non-fiction as a genre. It was very unusual at the time, that kind of long-form journalism. It’s so much like fiction because you learn about the characters, and there’s a story structure like you might have in a fiction novel, but it’s not fiction.

I think In Cold Blood really spoke to me because I already had quite a bit of experience in crime reporting. Crime stories can be so easy to throw off with no narrative, no characters, no development. In Cold Blood was a massive work; not massive in its pages, but Truman Capote [had] to spend a massive amount of time recreating it. It really drove home the point that there’s never a story you should just flip off and say, ‘Who cares?’ It really influenced me because it’s so powerful and it speaks to how good writing and reporting can bring something back to life.”

Ian Brown: Multimedia package - "The Boy in the Moon" (2007)

“I remember the weekend when the first piece came out. I remember just sitting for a long, long time, reading and watching and ingesting each and every little bit of the story because it was so captivating. It’s one of the only stories I’ve read in the last five years that actually made me cry.

His son has a rare disability, and Ian Brown tells the story of what it’s like in his home: the dynamics that it creates in his family as a whole, the difficulties of it. It’s a harrowing tale, and I think it is a true lesson for everybody in first-person storytelling. That’s why I love it. Ian tells a very tender story about him and his son, but I never find the first-person intrusive in the story. I often find first-person stories quickly devolve into details you don’t need… not arrogance, but a self-absorption that takes away from the storytelling. I don’t think Ian did that [in this piece]. I mean, he’s lived and breathed it for a number of years. He’s obviously written it with such care and thoughtfulness that he just hits the right notes. There’s one quote where he talks about how some parents would say, ‘Oh, no, I would never wish my son away,’ and he talks about how he would wish for a normal son. There’s huge honesty in the storytelling.

It’s also such a powerful mixture of multimedia and text. It was three years ago, and people were just starting to really get into having a landing page, with Flash and video and text, and integrating all of those things together. When you combine fantastic storytelling by Ian Brown with the multimedia component, it’s just a compelling story. The relationship between a son and a father…you know, there’s nothing more universal than that.”

 CBCNews.ca: Canadians in Haiti: Stories of Loss and Remembrance (2010)


“It’s a series of snippets of stories of Canadians who died in the Haitian earthquake in January. In the early days of the earthquake, the team at CBC News was getting photos and stories from families of people who were missing. They quickly recognized that a public broadcaster had a role to play in terms of paying tribute to individual stories. It’s quite easy when there’s a cataclysmic event, such as the Haitian earthquake, to get swept up in the enormity of it. You think of the hundreds of thousands of people who died, you may think of the millions [of dollars] of aid that are being sent – all these huge numbers.

This is an example of how, in the online world, you can bring compelling narratives to something that is so huge, and actually make it seem much more comprehensible in doing so. You can relate to a face and a name and kids and a dog and a dream.

In this case, you have all of the faces of the Canadians whose stories we were able to tell, and you click on their face and you either get a video and a story, or you get a photo and a story. Instead of comments, we ask for people to give their personal tributes. It’s a really simple concept, but I think that the way this is presented, and the way that it requires users to interact with the information, that’s what makes it so compelling. Even though each section is really small, when you weave it together it’s such a strong and powerful tribute to the people who died. If you took the individual stories maybe you’d think, ‘Oh, well, that’s not an award-winning piece unto itself,’ but when you take it as a collection, it’s really moving.

For the package as a whole, it’s the story of the Canadians who died in Haiti; but it’s experienced through the individual. I think it was important to give voice to those people who died, so that they’re not just a statistic, not just a number quickly forgotten.”

Overwhelmed by information? Buried by media? The RRJ is here to help with a new daily section designed to keep you up with the latest and greatest journalism, across all mediums.

The CRTC has been busy backstepping lately - on the heels of the much publicized usage-based billing fiasco, the organization recently put on hold another ruling - allowing radio station CKLN 88.1 FM to stay on the air for now. CKLN is unaffiliated with Ryerson University, but broadcasts from the campus and is funded by the Ryerson Student Union. Even so, unless the radio station can stop shooting itself in the foot repeatedly, look for CKLN to disappear from the air soon.

One station that won't be disappearing anytime soon is CBC's Radio-Canada. Still, that didn't stop Immigration Minister Jason Kenney from calling them liars in defense of Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda this week. Kenney later replied that he was being sarcastic.

In other news, Toronto's sports radio scene is about to double in size. TSN finally announced that its long-rumoured sports radio channel will debut on April 13, joining the FAN 590 as the only two players in Canada's largest market. This is CTVGlobemedia's second attempt at sports radio in Toronto: the ill-fated The TEAM 1050 launched in 2001 and left the next year. This time, the network is hoping that TSN's strong name recognition, along with a healthy dose of support from minority owner ESPN, will help it avoid the same fate. If TSN Radio is successful, look for the format to spread nationally.

Finally, on a lighter note, NPR's This American Life claims that they have found the most guarded secret in soft drink history - the recipe for Coke. Still, Coca-Cola doesn't need to worry too much - as the podcast explains, the recipe requires coca leaves, and Coke has a special deal with the DEA for importing them.

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Since the advent of the internet, documentary has really found a new home. Our very own CBC.ca is one such place. Nearing its 75^th anniversary, CBC has filled our heads with news and ideas for decades. CBC’s first television stations appeared in 1952 and as of 2009, CBC is focusing on being an integrated content provider. Visit CBC on the web and you can listen to radio, watch TV and, best of all, watch top-notch docs at you leisure. Here are a few of their best:

The Nature of Things, since making its debut in1960, is now the longest running doc series in Canada. Catch the latest show, “Return of the Prairie Bandit,” about the reintroduction of the most endangered species into the wild.

The Fifth Estate has been around for the past 30 years and boasts itself as “Canada's premier investigative documentary program.” Its most recent documentary is definitely worth a peek. In “WikiRebels” the team follows a Swedish TV as they investigate the secretive organization behind Wikileaks.

This past week, I had a chance to watch The Passionate Eye’s “Monica & David: A Love Story” in celebration of Valentines Day. The Passionate Eye never fails to find some of the best human-interest stories. This last documentary shows the story of a lovely young couple with Down Syndrome who get married and their subsequent struggle for independence.

I usually go to Doc Zone to watch the more out-of-the-box stuff like their recent episodes “Cat Crazed” and “Apocalypse 2012,” but this week’s episode looks intriguing.

“Abandon Ship: The Sinking of the SV Concordia” chronicles the story of the ship and its 64 victims hoping for rescue.

Also be sure to visit CBC’s documentary page to see more current docs.

 
An exclusive, ongoing RRJ series featuring leading Canadian journalists and their top picks for pieces every journalist “must read,” “must watch” and “must listen” to before they die. 

TODAY: journalist David Hayes

A freelance journalist based in Toronto, Hayes’s work has garnered him seven National Magazine Awards. He’s written for various publications, including The Walrus, The New York Times Magazine
and Toronto Life. He also teaches Advanced Feature Writing at Ryerson University’s Chang School of Continuing Education.

Gay Talese: “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Esquire, April 1966)
“Gay Talese’s ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’ is so obvious, probably several others would suggest it, but I guess that’s OK, a bit like all those ‘Greatest Albums Ever’ lists that almost all have Sgt. Pepper as
number one, then Rubber Soul, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61, and the Stones’ Exile on Main Street as the next four, in slightly different orders depending on the list. It’s justifiably called the greatest magazine profile ever written—solidly researched and reported, against all odds, since Sinatra wouldn’t cooperate with him, and beautifully written. Although there are many that are arguably as good, including a couple by Talese himself, like his profile of former boxer Joe Louis.”

Michael Paterniti: “The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy” (Esquire, July 2000)
“In non-fiction narrative writing, one common model is the reconstruction. Writers, through masterful researching and reporting, craft a feature about events that happened years, decades or even centuries earlier, including in it scenes that read as though the writers were there, watching events unfold. Paterniti’s ‘The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy’ is probably the most powerfully atmospheric of any feature reconstruction I’ve read. A feat of impressive reporting, it uses the techniques of fiction—voice, symbolism, a sophisticated structure, interior monologues, the use of characters rather than journalistic sources. Show the text to someone in a form other than the way it appeared in Esquire and I would think most would assume they were reading short fiction.”

“Being a Black Man” (The Washington Post, 2006)
“Sometimes ambitious multimedia projects fail because the text elements, or the broadcast clips, or the still images seem to be most effective. Individual parts work better than the whole. This massive 2006 project by The Washington Post was the first multimedia story I’d seen that I thought accomplished everything it was meant to. It’s an in-depth look at what it means to be a black man in contemporary America. There are tough issues addressed and incredibly tender moments, and it doesn’t focus only on crime, rappers and sports figures. In fact, although the theme is obviously racial identities, the series often goes beyond that to explore simple humanity.”

Gary Smith: “The Deadly Dive” (Sports Illustrated, 2003)
“I’d say Gary Smith’s ‘The Deadly Dive,’ although you could pick pretty much any of Smith’s pieces. I’ve never read any writer who more consistently gets deep beneath the surface of his subjects than Gary Smith. Because his work mainly appears in Sports Illustrated, he’s known by many as a ‘sportswriter,’ but that’s like saying Graham Greene was a ‘spy novelist’—it misses entirely the complexity and sophistication of the writer. This one is distinctive because of the subject matter. It’s about Cuban Pipin Ferreras, the world’s greatest free-diver, and his girlfriend, Audrey Mestre, who shares his passion for the sport and died in 2002
while attempting to break the record for the deepest dive by a woman. Smith describes free-diving as ‘a man atop a 56-storey building who’s heading all the way down to the cellar, then back to the
roof, only the building is water, all water, and he has no scuba tank.’ It’s pretty clear only the most insanely obsessed would pursue an activity like this, and Smith is the perfect writer to explore the contradictions and paradoxes of this couple. His style—an omniscient narrator who floats in and out of his characters’ heads and often speaks directly to readers—is unique and takes the ‘literary’ in literary journalism as deep as the divers.”

Blog emperor fiddles while Gawker burns

After managing editor Nick Denton declared he wasn’t content with being “king of the playground” (i.e. the blogosphere) anymore, Gawker Media launched their redesign last week to near-universal loathing. Endeavouring to “move beyond the blog,” Gawker.com and its child sites (Gizmodo, Kotaku, etc.) have shifted from the traditional reverse-chronological list to a large central story with an accompanying sidebar of older pieces.

Web redesigns are usually unpopular in the short term, and Gawker has managed to provoke horror and outrage amongst critics complaining of an ugly, unintuitive interface and longer load times. The creators of web comic Penny Arcade – who ranked last year in Time’s Top 100 list of the world’s most influential people – devoted a comic to it, calling it “a violation of the Geneva Conventions” and demanding the perpetrators be “tried in the Hague.
 
In an interesting twist, people have been flocking to the Canadian versions of the Gawker sites, which haven’t shifted to the new format yet. The old layout probably won’t last – but in the meantime, which will you be using?

How to Storify, because Tweeting is so passe

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This week was full of news and reviews on the merge between magazines and iPads. US writer and editor, Andrew Losowsky wrote that despite all of the money publishers are pouring into these tablets, the public’s reaction to them has been “under-whelmed at best.” He lays out six points on why magazines aren’t working on the iPad.

However, days later Adam Hogkin bit back with a piece on paidcontent.org, titled, “Why the Glass is Half-Full for Tablet Magazines” directly linking back to Losowsky’s piece, and arguing the positive found in each of his points.

It seems Apple is still seeing the “glass half-full” about venturing into the world of magazines. It’s recently been announced that they will be launching a subscription service for publisher’s who were previously limited to selling individual copies of their magazine or newspaper on the iPad. According to news reports though, Apple will be entitled to 30 per cent of the profits if the subscription’s sold through the App Store.

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At 12:25 p.m. on February 11, the biggest breaking news worldwide was of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. In that moment, not only was the news consistent within the national and local newspapers’ websites, but also the accompanying photograph.

Photographer Suhaib Salem’s Reuters picture of a crowd of enthralled men in Egypt was canvassed—to give specific examples—on the websites of the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Star, the National Post, and even local newsie the Toronto Sun.

It’s a good photo. The facial expression—most notably the eyes—of the man featured in the centre is impossible to ignore. It’s not Mr. Suhaib’s photo that needs review here: it’s the undeniable ubiquity of wire services in our news coverage.

Hopefully one day our national newspapers (the local ones are off the hook here) will be able to prioritize and afford to send their own photographers/reporters to the breaking news scenes around the world without giving into the short-term fix of wire services. Then it will be easier to see which paper is presenting the news, and not which wire service.

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Greg Brady replaces Andrew Krystal as host on Hockey Central at Noon

After only five months on air, FAN 590 radio host Andrew Krystal has been replaced by Greg Brady, who hosts the station’s Hockey Central at Noon. Krystal will remain with the FAN, but will no longer be hosting his show, Andrew Krystal in the Morning.

The Toronto Star reports that the move is due to a drop off in ratings, and a “widespread speculation that Keith Pelley and Scott Moore, new bosses at Rogers, which owns FAN 590, want a more sports-focused personality at the helm of the show weekdays from 5:30 to 9 a.m.”

Al Jazeera podcast reviews world news coverage

Listening Post is a media watchdog, and a weekly insight into how the news is covered by the world's media. The show is presented by Richard Gizbert, and covers news from the West Bank to Washington, looking into what is being reported - and what is not.

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An exclusive, ongoing RRJ series featuring leading Canadian journalists and their top picks for pieces every journalist “must read,” “must watch” and “must listen” to before they die. 

 
TODAY: journalist and author Craig Silverman
 
Craig Silverman is the digital journalism director at OpenFile.ca, as well as managing editor of PBS MediaShift. He also writes a weekly column for the Columbia Journalism Review. He has written two books: Regret the Error published in 2007, and Mafiaboy, a memoir which he co-wrote with the book’s subject Micahel Calcep published in 2009.

Gay Talese: The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World (1969) 

“This is the story of The New York Times, as written by one of the greatest non-fiction writers of all time, who also happened to have been—at one point—a reporter at The NY Times. I picked it because it’s a wonderful mish-mash of things. You have fantastic storytelling. You have the story of one of the greatest journalism institutions of all time. It’s all rolled up into one package and told by a legendary narrative, non-fiction journalist. It’s fascinating, but it tells a lot about the ways of how the media used to be.”

Jay Rosen and Dave Winer: Rebooting the News 

“It’s a podcast run by two people, Jay Rosen and Dave Winer. Rosen is a professor of journalism at New York University and one of the leading thinkers in journalism — as far as I’m concerned —when it comes to citizen journalism, future models of journalism, and really what journalists should be doing and how we should be serving the profession and the public. Winer is a programmer but he’s also the guy who invented RSS. He was a very early blogger. Between the two of them, the combination is some really unique, original thinking about the world of news, journalism, journalists, computer programming, the internet and the network world. It’s something that puts a lot of important elements together in one place.”

Shattered Glass (2003) 

“Obviously, I’m going to pick something that has to do with accuracy or fact-checking. Number one, it’s a film that doesn’t feel like you’re watching homework. It’s actually a film that is enjoyable and well done, but tells a lot about fact-checking, the failures of fact-checking and how these failures and weaknesses are easily exploited. It also communicates that fact-checking is not a foolproof process, no matter what you do. Ultimately, the responsibility comes on us, the journalists. We can’t outsource it to fact-checkers or to copy editors or to other people, and I think that’s a good message for journalists to come away with.”

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Yahoo enters mobile publishing realm

Ya-who? It’s no secret Yahoo has had some struggles, having reduced their workforce by four per cent just recently, with competitors Google and Facebook taking some of their major market share in display advertising.

There is hope, however. The New York Times recently reported Yahoo, no stranger to personalized content on its online properties, will announce its plans to release a personal mobile publishing platform. The project was initially named “Deadeye.” This platform will allow smartphone and tablet users to get personalized content on cell phones and other mobile devices by taking into account a user’s preferred search items, social media, etc.Yahoo’s chief executive, Carol A. Bartz will reveal more details during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

As journalists continue to report and opine on the Usage-Based Billing debacle, it’s important to remember that news organizations have just as big a stake as everyone else. David Beers, editor-in-chief of The Tyee, has written columns for the Globe’s site as well as his own against measures that would see bandwidth-heavy sites become even more expensive to users.

Online journalism doesn’t consist of recycled text and photos from the print edition anymore. Journalists deal in information, and information online is increasingly video-based or interactive. As Beers points out, it’s not easy for cash-strapped publications to keep up with the multimedia shift, and UBB would make it even more costly to produce quality stories. Not to mention, plenty of publications are aiming to operate purely over the Internet or mobile devices.

To get a sense of how the UBB decision might affect quality journalism, check out some online innovations like OpenFile’s Remembrance Day project from last year, or multimedia madness platform Popcorn.js (recently used on PBS here).

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The latest circulation numbers show that Canadian magazines have experienced both growth and decline. View the list of magazines and their percentages here. In the United States, on the other hand, sales are steadily dropping and declining faster in the second half of 2010 than they did in the first, read more here.

Despite what may seem like rocky waters for print publications, there are niche magazines launching this week both in Canada and in the U.S. In Edmonton, Be Fabulous!, a magazine geared towards women 40 and over, hit the stands this week. Down south, a U.S. a magazine called Tea Party Review —which advertises itself as “The first national magazine for, by and about the Tea Party Movement”—is set to launch this Friday, Feb. 11 at the CPAC conference in Washington, D.C.

While these specific-focused publications hope to beat the print circulation blues, Transcontinental has announced it’s closing Madame magazine, which launched in 1965, to focus its efforts on its growing brands in Quebec.

Is Transcontinental being more realistic in its decision to close Madame, or should publications take more risks like Be Fabulous! and Tea Party Review.

Local magazine event:
 
The Canadian Society of Magazine Editors is hosting a “Pimp Your Blog” mixer on Feb. 15. Speakers like Spacing publisher and creative director Matthew Blackett, amongst others, hope to help attendees learn how to stimulate more blog traffic.
Where: Bar Italia, 582 College St. 

When: Tuesday, February 15th

How much: $30 at the door or free with your 2011 membership (Entrance includes a drink and hors d'oeuvres).

Take a break from your late-night researching, writing, transcribing and editing marathons and join the Ryerson Review of Journalism Summer 2011 masthead at Tequila Bookworm.

The neighbourhood book nook lives up to its namesake and will provide a bevy of alcohol….errrr, I mean, journalistic enhancers.  It’ll be a night of beer drinking, snack munching, dog-eared book perusing, carefree dancing, worn-in sofa chattering and good-tune listening!

Time: Wednesday, February 9 at 9:00pm – 2:00am
Location: Tequila Bookworm, 512 Queen Street W. (Wheelchair accessible)
$5 in advance, $7 at the door.  All proceeds go towards production costs for the Summer 2011 RRJ issue.
 
And good news! You can still buy tickets from anyone on the Summer masthead Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon in the RCC lobby.  Please stop by our table, eat some tasty treats, and pick up a ticket. If you’d like to buy a ticket but are unable to make it to campus, email: raylene.knutson@ryerson.ca and we’ll set something up.

Hope to see you there!

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This week, impressions and reviews for the world’s first daily tablet newspaper are all over the internet. Whether you love it or not, The Daily is here.

 

The Daily was officially launched by media magnate Rupert Murdoch last Wednesday – February 2, 2011 – and works like a newspaper, arriving every morning, but with the benefits of an online publication: updates throughout the day and access to a variety of multimedia.

The Daily’s official site contains information about pricing as well as a link to the Apple app store where it can be downloaded. Currently it is only compatible with the iPad.

Kevin Donovan, an investigative reporter for the Toronto Star, shares his tips on how to get the most out of your sources.

Step 1 – Initial approach: “Go to their home, their office, call them ... and then send an e-mail.”

“Writing an e-mail is the last thing I would do. The personal touch is always better, although there are different approaches for different people. If your source is a government official, then you’ll have to send an email because of the way the government operates. It’s so easy to shoot off an email, but the problem is, it’s also easy for the source to look at it and spend a week strategizing a response with their handlers. It’s always best to get your source away from their handlers.”

Step 2 – Conducting an interview: “Information is power.”

“Bring evidence with you that the source has done the thing they’re being accused of and show it to them. For one of my stories we were looking into a charity for abused women. The charity had made all these claims for the work they do. One of my female colleagues called the charity posing as an abused woman asking for help. The receptionist said to her, ‘Do you want me to go to the Yellow Pages with you?’ and stated that they couldn’t help her. We recorded this and when I confronted this guy and played him the recording, he completely crumbled and confessed that they didn’t have all the services they promote, but that they hope to accomplish it all within five years. It’s not always going to happen that way, but sometimes it does. There are different approaches for different people but you should control an interview subject by doing it properly. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions.”

Step 3 – Loosening tight lips: “The choice of zero information or a lot of helpful information.”

“I did one colourful story about a bunch of guys who stole $4 million in small business claims and used it for escorts, cars, etc. Thirteen people were charged, but most of those charges will be dropped. Some of those guys are talking to us, but we had to make an agreement not to name them. Sometimes you have to do that so you can get important information. If I have to make an agreement not to name someone, I’ll tell them two things: I really only want you for information, and you lie to me, and the deal is off. Then you take what they tell you and go check if it’s true.”

Step 4 – When to give up: “Everybody talks – if you have the right way to unlock their fear of speaking.”

“You shouldn’t give up. You can’t force someone to speak, but I can’t think of a lot of people that didn’t talk to me. For the story I wrote, ‘Sex and charity,’ the target subject didn’t want to talk to us but it turned out that his aunt and mother wanted to rat him out. They didn’t say he was despicable – they had their own reasons for why he did what he did – but what they said confirmed the story. Try anything. Don’t say to yourself, ‘A family member won’t talk to me.’ Really smart people won’t fall for these tricks, but some people will.”

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CBC: The World This Weekend

CBC’s The World This Weekend recaps events around the world every Saturday and Sunday, perfect for getting up to-date on Monday morning. On tap this week: protests in Egypt and Superbowl XLV.

CBC: Metro Morning “Beyond Diversity” series

This week, CBC’s Metro Morning talked to prominent members of the Toronto community in their series “Beyond Diversity.” Matt Galloway and his crew take an interesting look at multiculturalism and inclusiveness. (The RRJ recently ran a feature story on Galloway’s new role at the CBC. It can be found here)

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Today: writer Chris Jones

Chris Jones is a writer-at-large for Esquire. He’s won two American National Magazine Awards and has also written for ESPN: The Magazine and the National Post. His musings about his current project, renovating a 140-year-old house, and other topics can be found here. He was profiled in the RRJ in the Winter 2010 issue.

W. C. Heinz: “Death of a Racehorse” (New York Sun, 1949)

“When I started out being a sportswriter at the National Post, someone gave it to me and said, ‘This story contains everything you need to know about good sports writing.’ It’s a deadline story on a horse getting shot after breaking its leg. It’s just perfect. The language is simple, the quotes are perfect—the ending is fantastic. I’m always amazed that he wrote it on deadline at some racetrack when it was pouring rain. Heinz’s art is how simple the story is—everything is just perfectly distilled.”

Charles P. Pierce: “The Man. Amen.” (GQ, April 1997)

“This is basically the first and last time we got to see the real Tiger Woods. He’s telling dick jokes and being who he really is, and Charlie wrote about it. The story is a revelation, not only about Tiger Woods, but what you can do with a profile. The other thing about Charlie is that you can pick perfect sentences out of his stories. Time and again, he’s just a beautiful writer.”

Tom Junod: “The Falling Man” (Esquire, September 2003)

“I’m going to sound like a dink, but I’m going to choose an Esquire piece. There’s a famous photograph of a jumper [during the Sept. 11 attacks] and it almost looks like he’s flying. He’s just caught in the moment. It’s a chilling photograph. The story is basically about Tom trying to find out who that man is. I was saying that if Tom didn’t win the National Magazine Award, I would’ve been like Kanye West [who interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to say Beyoncé should’ve won]. I remember reading that story and thinking that sometimes you read stuff you’re not capable of writing. Tom is just in a class of his own. He didn’t win the National Magazine Award for it, but it’s become a seminal magazine story. It’s just a great combination of dogged, really hard reporting and beautiful writing.”