Rob Ford is back in the news–this time, of his own choosing.

In a special to the National Post published on December 3, 2015, Ford wrote an op-ed to mark the one-year anniversary of John Tory’s mayoral term. “Congratulations, John, you’re sitting in the big chair and you’ve finally shaped up to be a typical politician,” wrote the former mayor and sitting Toronto city councillor.

Naturally, there’s a heated discussion happening on social media about the decision by the Post to run a piece penned by Ford, many sarcastically dubbing him as “Postmedia’s newest columnist.”

The underlying issue at the heart of such comments is the concern that arises when politics and journalism intersect. Giving a politician space to write his own thoughts on a medium that is supposed to be critical of him, a watchdog over how he serves the public, seems contradictory.

Ryerson Review of Journalism spoke to Matt Gurney, acting editor of the Post‘s Full Comment section, to learn about the editorial decision to run Ford’s op-ed. Rob Ford’s chief of staff contacted Gurney directly and expressed Ford’s interest in making a submission to the Post. Gurney directed him to the official email for op-ed pitches.

After reviewing the piece carefully, Gurney decided to run it. “Rob Ford remains an elected official in the City of Toronto, and in general, I do try to give our elected officials every opportunity to speak to the people through my pages,” said Gurney in an email to the RRJ. Gurney considered the fact that Ford was “a noteworthy figure, beyond the mere fact of his elected office” and that people would be interested in what he said.

Given that, and his stated intention to run against Mr. Tory in 2018 (health permitting), I thought it would be interesting to print the piece. I have also offered Mayor Tory the option of replying with an op-ed article of his own. I hope he does.

There is no rule in journalism that news can’t be critical of the former mayor and not run his voice at the same time. The concept of “opportunity to reply” exists to allow for fair, balanced and thorough coverage of an an issue or event. “So long as it’s not presented as news, which this piece wasn’t, there is, I think it’s fine,” said Gurney. Naheed Nenshi, mayor of Calgary, for instance, recently published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail to respond to the refugee debate in Canadian politics.

The issue arises when a conservative-leaning newspaper like the Post gives the space to a conservative politician like Ford to make an explicit comparison of his mayoral successes with the current mayor’s progress. Gurney stating that he factored in Ford’s “stated intention to run” implies this, as does the fact that Ford’s op-ed read more like a political speech than any substantive opinionated analysis of an issue or topic.

The fact that the persona of Rob Ford was going to get the Post traction is the problem, which Gurney too recognizes:

I grant that Rob Ford’s personal … characteristics … did appeal to me,” said Gurney, “he generates controversy. I like controversy. But setting that aside, I tend to think I would generally always side on publishing a piece of this nature. Indeed, if it was anyone but Rob Ford, I doubt you’d be interviewing me about the decision to publish.

He’s (mostly) right. Personalities like Rob Ford make the news no matter what they do, and the question is why we let them. Perhaps it is because we have a responsibility to allow these voices–all voices–to exist in the public sphere, unfiltered. The motives to do so, whether they be clicks, traction, politics or curiosity should, however, be kept in check.

Mayor Tory, the ball is in the public sphere for you to take should you want to.

I don’t know who’s telling the truth about the Liberal refugee plan.

On the one hand, there’s Paul McLeod, BuzzFeed‘s political editor, who published an article on November 25, 2015, titled “Someone Gave The Media A Bunch Of False Info About Canada’s Syrian Refugee Plan.” McLeod takes issue with a CBC report by Rosemary Barton that, days before the Liberals revealed their official refugee plan, stated “unaccompanied men seeking asylum will not be part of the (refugee) program.”

McLeod quotes an anonymous senior Liberal member who “said they don’t know where the information came from, but they suspect it was from someone who did not have their best interests at heart. In other words, someone trying to screw them.”

There’s one word being interpreted and responded to differently in the Liberal government’s Syrian refugee plan: “prioritize.”

Other reports also counter the CBC reports on the claim to exclude single male Syrian refugees. As a Vice article states:

Initial reports had suggested that the government would not be allowing in any unattached single men in under the program, unless they are a sexual minority.

Government officials confirmed Tuesday that wouldn’t be the case. While the government will “prioritize” families, women at risk, LGBTQ minorities, and those who are accompanying elderly parents, it will not be disqualifying any would-be refugee on the basis of gender.

The Toronto Star also made this clear: “Officials say [the plan] does not preclude men — including gay men and single men accompanying their parents — from admission.”

It’s been nearly a month since the federal election, and journalists are still feuding over editorial endorsements. To recap, Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey forced all of the chain’s papers to endorse the Conservative Party of Canada. Former National Post editorials and comment editor Andrew Coyne wrote a column endorsing another party and resigned from his position as an editor after he was barred from publishing the article.

On November 9, Torstar chair John Honderich wrote an article in the Toronto Star arguing that “Postmedia let down readers by dictating election endorsements.” Honderich responded to an earlier claim from Godfrey stating, “Since God made babies, I think [endorsement editorials] were always made that way” by arguing, “No one can dispute the tradition of an individual publisher or owner calling the election shots for their local paper. Godfrey did that regularly when he was publisher of the Toronto Sun. But to dictate the choice across an entire chain–and nation. That is an entirely different tale.”

Honderich writes:

“The firestorm of criticism on social media, the rumours of discontent in Postmedia newsrooms and even a damning story in Britain’s Guardian newspaper all reflect a pervasive discontent [regarding Godfrey’s decision]. Even more worrisome is the negative impact this affair is having on the newspaper industry in general. At a time when the relevance and impact of newspapers are under attack, this doesn’t help.”

The ongoing feud continued today with an article by Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran calling for the Star to “step off its high horse.” Corcoran starts his column by complaining that the Star doesn’t have the same bias as the Post. After accusing the Star of flirting with “Stalinist Russia” over the years, Corcoran gets to his main point, which is to accuse Honderich of hypocrisy.

Corcoran argues that Honderich’s argument against Godfrey’s forced endorsement is hypocritical because Honderich supports owners determining editorial endorsements for their local paper. Corcoran does have a point, as an owner determining the content of their paper limits autonomy of editors and other staff regardless of whether it is done at a local or national level.

At the same time, imposing your will on one newspaper does significantly less damage than imposing it on 16 newspapers scattered throughout the country. As such, while Honderich is wrong to say that Godfrey’s decision was “entirely different” from his own, he is right to point out the varying implications of each decision.

Although the columns from both Corcoran and Honderich are relatively self-serving, they are useful because they will spark discourse on the way newspapers in Canada are operated. The fact that these debates are being conducted in public, for readers to digest, is especially important and a trend that should continue.

Andrew Coyne resigned as the editor of the Editorials and Comment section of the National Post today, and journalists should be thankful he did.

The resignation comes after Postmedia executives prevented Coyne from writing a column dissenting from the National Post’s endorsement of the Conservative Party of Canada because it would “confuse readers and embarrass the paper.”

Coyne took to Twitter to explain his resignation, and said he did not view his desire to write a dissenting column as confusing because, “Readers, in my view, are adults & understand that adults can disagree.”

So anyway… I have resigned as editor of Editorials and Comment for the National Post, effective immediately. I will remain a columnist.

— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) October 19, 2015

Coyne said newspaper owners do have a right to dictate who the paper endorses, but that not speaking out would give the impression that he agreed with the Conservatives, and prevent him from doing his job as a columnist. Coyne also said he believes the intervention from Postmedia executives is unprecedented, and so he felt like he had to resign to help prevent it from becoming one.

Coyne is right to resign on principle. A dissenting Coyne column in the National Post would not have embarrassed the paper in the eyes of readers. The only embarrassment would have come from owners, upset that their star columnist didn’t go along with their plan to force the entire Postmedia chain to cheerlead for the Conservatives.

What Postmedia executives should find embarrassing is their insistence on all of the chain’s papers endorsing the Conservatives, and then sitting by as these papers sell their front pages to political advertisers also endorsing the Conservatives. This certainly provoked more outrage over the weekend from readers and journalists alike than a dissenting Coyne column likely ever could have.

On Saturday, media commentator Bruce Anderson tweeted about the Postmedia fiasco.

Spare a thought for the journalists who work diligently for papers that sold a front page today. Not their choice. pic.twitter.com/Dx2ZN7gGGa

— Bruce Anderson (@bruceanderson) October 17, 2015

Anderson is entirely correct as the overwhelming majority of journalists have little choice but to grit their teeth and accept that their employers are damaging their reputation as journalists. In an ultra competitive industry, where jobs are hard to come by and dissent is hardly tolerated, it’s no surprise most journalists didn’t take some sort of public action against Postmedia (or The Globe and Mail, for that matter).

This is exactly why it’s important that Coyne did. Coyne is one of Canada’s most high profile journalists, who is all but guaranteed employment, even at the National Post (as a columnist) after resigning, as Jesse Brown pointed out.

Must be nice to resign on principle but keep a six-figure salary!

— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) October 19, 2015

It’s tempting to shrug off Coyne’s resignation as an easy choice from a high profile journalist with little but his ego on the line. But this would be wrong, as Coyne is a good example of what privileged journalists should do: use their status to push back against the status quo when necessary.

In an ideal world Coyne would have also pushed back against the practice of newspaper owners dictating endorsements, but still, his resignation should be applauded.

Hopefully Postmedia executives learn a lesson from Coyne’s principled stance and refrain from intervening in future situations where columnists simply try to do their job.

Journalists have been enthralled with the niqab debate over the last few weeks. In order to get a better sense of what to make of the niqab coverage, I spoke to the communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims, Amira Elghawaby.

Elghawaby’s most pressing critique of niqab journalism is simply that there’s too much of it. Elghawaby noted that, “The media has a responsibility to report the news” but that journalists have had trouble distinguishing “between news, and the deliberate attempts of the Conservative party to keep the issue alive.”

The result of this failure, according to Elghawaby, is the amplification of the niqab “issue multiple-fold compared to other relevant issues raised during leaders’ debates.”

Elghawaby certainly has a point, and so I wanted to look a little deeper to get a sense of how much niqab coverage there has been. To do this, I went to the websites of the National Post, the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, and counted how many articles from October 7 to October 14 contained the term “niqab,” and then did the same for “trans-pacific partnership.”

The niqab debate, as many commentators have accurately pointed out, is focused on an insignificant issue, with only two of 680,000 potential citizens being affected by the ban since 2011. Meanwhile, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has geo-political significance for states around the world, including Canada.

The results I found don’t reflect this, with 133 mentions of “niqab” found, compared to only 102 for “trans-pacific partnership.”

Despite this, Elghawaby notes that the overwhelming emphasis in journalism on the niqab has led to some positives.

“The diversity of voices given space on this issue has been refreshing. Women who wear niqab slowly were given space to share their perspectives and experiences.”

There are several good examples of this from the Toronto Star and the CBC.

As such, Elghawaby says that “while the [niqab] issue was over amplified, given its relatively minor impact on the lives of the vast majority of Canadians, including Canadian Muslims, there seemed to be a sincere effort on the part of media to hear from those directly impacted, or who had a perspective that countered popular opinion, to share.”

In a journalism landscape where people constantly speak for Muslim women, the fact that Muslim women have been given more opportunity to speak for themselves is important.

There are exceptions, of course, like this CBC piece that tells the exciting saga of what it was like for a white woman to wear a hijab for a day, as if there aren’t enough Muslim women who could speak more authoritatively to the issue.

Overall though, while the coverage of the niqab debate did draw up some positives due to the range of voices speaking on the issue, Elghawaby says, “It would be nice if other equally or more important issues were given this kind of treatment and attention!”

Let’s hope her wish comes true in the last few days of the election.

Matt Demers knows one thing is true of freelance video game journalism in Canada: “It’s not glamorous.” The path the former freelancer chose wasn’t glam at all—from the low pay to the competitive nature of the industry. A few months ago, he was trying to get back on his feet after having one of his features killed. These days, he’s a supervising editor at TheScore eSports, and his outlook is positive. Still, he admits: “It’s not the job you think.”

Being a video game journalist sounds appealing—it’s a job somewhere in the fantasy realm between real-life dragon fighter, video game tester and wine critic. But it’s a difficult industry to break into. Even after the initial entrance, there’s no guarantee of success. Money is scarce, and editors—like audiences—are few and far between. Without any major blogs in the Canadian gaming industry that cover more than just reviews and the occasional interview, the small industry is its own cesspool—and freelancers are better off staying away.

In 2012, Canadian video game writer and IGN editor Mitch Dyer wrote a blog post about his experience in the industry. “Most of us—the vast majority of us, actually—got our starts working for websites without a paycheque,” he wrote. “This is the norm in my business and I find it revolting.” Working for free, especially for young journalists, is often expected and viewed as a stepping stone, something to overcome.

It’s easier not to get involved than it is to work your way into gaming journalism—at least according to Daniel Kaszor, editor of the National Post Arcade, the paper’s video game vertical. When Kaszor started working at the Post, there was little video game coverage. In 2010, Matt Hartley, the former tech editor, and Kaszor began writing some regular posts about gaming. At the time, anything that was written about video games was filed under arts until 2011, when video game stories finally moved in under Hartley’s wing at the Financial Post tech desk. It was just Kaszor, Hartley and freelancer Chad Sapieha.

The Post Arcade was officially created in 2012. According to Kaszor, their budget was, and still is, “basically nothing.” Today, while its existence suggests there’s some demand for gaming journalism, the Arcade still not strong enough to become its own entity; the site simply doesn’t have enough of an audience to hold its own. Unlike in the U.S., where blogs like Polygon draw online traffic, Canada’s industry is too small.

For freelancers, that means making little money. Matthew Braga, editor of Motherboard Canada and former Post Arcade contributor, echoes that sentiment. “I don’t think many writers get paid well for it,” he says. “There hasn’t been as much money going around.”

Demers calls gaming journalism “enthusiast press”: success is only there for the lucky ones—the Kazsors and Bragas of the newsroom who already have a platform to write about their favourite things. For everyone else, it’s near impossible. “You’re competing with a lot of other people,” says Demers, “who like whatever you like just as much as you like it.”

But not all those competing for a spot in the industry are as cynical. Austin Walker, a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario who studies and writes about gaming and labour, says Canadian video game journalism is something special. “I think it’s an interesting industry up here. There are many names in games development, and I think that the fact that Canadian journalists can have access to that is great,” he says.

All that access, however, goes to waste when there’s such a small market for the work that comes out of it. The result, Braga says, is “young white dudes writing about big, blockbuster video games” at mainstream publications like the Arcade. Readers don’t get a diverse look at games, and the lack of variety leaves much to be desired about the inclusivity of the industry.

Newspapers, such as the Toronto Star and the Post, are now affiliated with Metacritic, a product rating aggregation site that assigns games a numerical rating after averaging reviews. Some reviews are given more weight than others based on the reviewer’s fame or following, a model like the popular Rotten Tomatoes movie rating site. For major publications that are on it, giving a bad review of a game that was sent for free is not a problem. For smaller publications, with fewer bridges to burn, being on the receiving end of a free game can affect professional obligations and lead to biased reviews.

“It’s a very complicated industry,” Demers says. Braga agrees: “It’s tough.” In an industry so small, how to grow and better service audiences is a constant challenge. And many, like Braga, simply don’t have the solution.

Anne Marie Owens marks her arrival as editor-in-chief of the National Post with a laugh. It’s not a giggle, nor is it quiet. It is guttural and warm, a comforting capital-H Ha-Ha-Ha. It shakes her frame, all five feet, two inches of her. It comes out often. Post colleagues hear the laugh around the corner from their desks and from within glass-enclosed offices. Anyone who knows Owens knows her laugh. It seems to say: Yes, I am here now. I am laughing. Together, we can thrive.

The Post hasn’t had much to laugh about in recent years. Parent company Postmedia Network Inc., which owns 15 newspapers across the country, has endured tens of millions of dollars in quarterly losses, though it has pushed to cut costs over the past three years. That has led to layoffs and decreased circulation—but the turmoil was anticipated. The Post has teetered on the edge of death for years. In 2009, it almost succumbed when Postmedia went bankrupt, only to be revived by U.S. investment firm Silver Point Capital L.P. (the same company that saved Twinkie manufacturer Hostess). The newsroom of 110 journalists services nearly one million weekly print and digital readers. But the Post has turned a profit in only the last three of its 16 years.

In response to the company’s financial unrest, executives have committed to what president and CEO Paul Godfrey calls a “radical transformation.” It began in 2011 when Postmedia rolled out online paywalls for Montreal’s The Gazette and Victoria’s Times Colonist. Within two years, readers required a digital subscription to see more than 10 online articles a month for all Postmedia papers. “Newspapers around the world are realizing you can’t spend millions of dollars on content and give it away for free,” Godfrey said in 2013. By 2014, executives had created their latest attempt at salvation, a four-platform approach now known as “Postmedia Re-Imagined.” The plan will be released in its entirety by spring 2015, and incorporates new tablet and smartphone versions of the Post with the pre-existing web and print editions of the paper. Executives hope it will boost the Post’s weekly digital readership far past the current 240,000 per week mark and, in turn, increase ad sales.

In Owens, executives want an editorial ringleader who can find the balance between producing a profitable publication and maintaining the “Post spirit,” a loose term higher-ups use to reference the “good old days” of “fearless” print media. They have placed their faith in her energy and optimism to lead the Post through the final stages of its transformation into a digital-ready news organization. If it’s successful, Owens will have good reason to keep on laughing.

 ***

During her walk-through of the 11th floor of Postmedia’s office in Toronto, Owens comes off like a celebrity: in each room she enters, she receives a Cheers-like welcome. Everybody knows her—and her nickname, “AMO” (pronounced “ammo”). Colleagues stop their conversations to say hello; she always waves back. Even elevator rides are punctuated by chats with staff. “When I walk through like this,” she says, “it makes it seem like I’m everyone’s friend here.”

When I first meet her, Owens buzzes like a hamster on Red Bull. She is a fast talker and her sentences often begin with a convoluted “I think–but I–you know–.” When they aren’t in the air, her hands are drawing imaginary diagrams on the table in front of her. During our interview at the Post’s Collaboration Café—a cafeteria resembling an oversized Starbucks—she picks her hands up and slaps them back down so often that the table wobbles on its steel legs. She bobs her head, too, in time with her hands; the gold hoop earrings she wears dangle and tap her cheeks, moving like a metronome.

Owens’s predecessor Stephen Meurice was, as he says, “let go” from the Post last March, despite working for the paper since day one in 1998. After his departure, Post executives, including Gerry Nott, who assumed the role of interim editor, were desperate for a fast-moving leader. They sought someone who could take the reins and immediately begin forming the skeleton of a more organized and optimistic newsroom—someone who felt the same sense of urgency in kick-starting “Postmedia Re-Imagined.” Once hired, Owens moved quickly, taking four months to restructure her leadership team. After five managing editors left their positions, she appointed a single deputy editor: Julie Traves, who had been Focus section editor at The Globe and Mail. The managing editors were given more responsibilities for both digital and print, and became symbolically known as “executive producers.” The shift also included hiring Erin Valois from theScore. She brought experience in tracking how readers consume news to her new role as executive producer of digital. The former managing editor of features Benjamin Errett became director of strategy, a role that oversees the execution of the four-platform plan. The restructuring communicated a clear message: to survive, the Post can’t think of itself as a print product.

Much of the restructuring, it appears, is thanks to financial losses. Little more than a week before Owens’s first day on the job, Postmedia announced a quarterly loss of more than $20 million despite its three-year restructuring program that meant job cuts. In 2010, Postmedia slashed 500 full-time positions, followed by 25 additional cuts in 2012. Later on, job losses included some of the Post’s biggest names and most talented journalists: just two months before Meurice was let go, the paper laid off seven editors, including social media editor Jeremy Barker and sports editor Jim Bray. In March 2014, Postmedia terminated 48 jobs in the Calgary advertising sales office. Newspaper circulation also took a hit: the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal and Ottawa Citizen all lost their Sunday editions, while the Post hasn’t published on Mondays in the summer since 2009. Still, the losses kept coming. In January, eight months after Owens started, Postmedia reported a quarterly loss of $10 million.

To deal with the financial pressures, Owens has focused her attention on management. Five months into the job, she has yet to unpack all of her belongings in her office. “Nothing in there really says much about me,” she says. Instead, she has been training her leadership team to take on their new roles. When she isn’t in meetings, she’s usually whirling around the newsroom before deadline—not unlike the cartoon Tasmanian Devil.

Owens starts every day with a two-hour commute from Waterdown, Ontario, southwest of Toronto. She attends daily story meetings at 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. and usually leaves by 7 p.m. to head home to her husband, a teacher, and their four teenage sons. She spends her evenings refreshing her email to see proofs. All of her weekdays are the same: rinse, repeat.

When describing Owens, most of her colleagues paint a starry-eyed portrait of an energetic, happy-go-lucky editor. One goes as far as to call her efforts “superhuman.” Energy and dedication, however, aren’t enough to pull the Post out of its financial slump. During our interview, Owens puts a positive spin on her work, bouncing from idea to idea. When I probe about the survival of the Post, she acknowledges that Postmedia is financially unstable compared to her previous employer, Rogers Publishing, but then quickly changes the subject to reflect on how wonderful an opportunity it is to be editor-in-chief. After an hour, Owens ends our conservation to attend a meeting. I bank my follow-up questions on the stability of the paper.

Many of these questions, however, go unanswered—at least by Owens. While I spent the next four months analyzing the Post’s future under her leadership and asking dozens of her former and current colleagues what she’d bring to the paper, Owens never granted me another interview. Though she initially agreed to let me shadow her on the job, she later dodged my weekly requests to do so. In October, following another request to spend a day with her at the paper, I received my last response from her: “This is a bad week for me.” Perhaps she was just too busy—at the bottom of an Everest-sized to-do list as the paper undergoes its digital transformation. Or perhaps she just wasn’t interested in talking about the Post’s financial future under her reign.

***

The Ottawa Citizen first tested “Postmedia Re-Imagined” in May 2014. Five months into the trial, company vice-president Lou Clancy dubbed it a success: readers were now spending 18 percent more time with the paper, largely, he claimed, because of its mobile accessibility and new smartphone and tablet editions (Postmedia has yet to break down the increase by platform). According to an introductory post on the Citizen’s website, the move was backed, in part, by a Postmedia-funded 2013 Ipsos Canada survey that found the company could reach several demographics through different platforms. Younger readers were more likely to read the news on their smartphones, while middle-aged readers preferred tablets and older readers favoured the printed page.

For the company’s executives, the Citizen’s results were encouraging. But how the strategy will hold up on a national scale is unclear. In the U.S., The New York Times similarly fragmented its audience in April 2014 by releasing several digital niche editions of the paper targeted toward different demographics. In October 2014, the organization experienced a third-quarter loss of $9 million, compared to an $12.9-million operating profit during that same period in 2013. It also announced the elimination of 100 newsroom jobs by the end of 2014. The Times might be able to afford the experimentation; Postmedia cannot.

Perhaps that’s why these efforts have moved so slowly with the Post. The paper’s most notable moves toward digitization were in 2011. At that time, 30 percent of Canadians were relying primarily on the internet for news consumption, according to a Canadian Media Research Consortium study. “Providers that fail to focus on providing content for computers, tablets and smartphones will be left behind,” declared the study’s co-author, Darryl Korell. In response to readers’ shifting tastes, newsrooms began to consider online paywalls. Consequently, one of Meurice’s big tasks was to overhaul the Post’s website. The digital focus reeled in profits for the first time. But then Meurice was let go. Though executives never told him exactly why, Meurice speculates they wanted “a fresh set of eyes on the paper.” He adds, “I was too invested in the old ways of the Post.”

Meanwhile, Owens, the effervescent former Postie, was at Maclean’s, helping launch a tablet edition and redesign its website. She quickly discovered she had a knack for digital thinking. In March 2014, the national newsmagazine’s online pageviews increased about 35 percent, and the popularity of its app helped Rogers Publishing reach one million downloads for all of its publications’ apps.

Owens says she never had a plotted job trajectory. Her career in journalism began in January 1988, when just eight months into her graduate degree at Western University in London, Ontario, (where classmates described her as a “great drunk dancer”), she landed a job at the St. Catharines Standard. There, she commuted three days a week between St. Catharines and London until she graduated and became a full-time reporter. Owens held multiple titles at the Standard—from education reporter to columnist—but her coverage of the case of serial rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo in 1995 gave her byline recognition. Realizing there was little room for more career growth at the Standard after the trial, she joined the Post’s inaugural masthead in 1998, anticipating big-city opportunities.

She worked her way up to general assignment reporter, often writing features, where she stayed until 2006, when Meurice nudged her into editing. “She had the kind of vision we needed with features,” he says, “and with dealing with other reporters.” Eventually, Owens stopped writing altogether and became features editor. From there, she moved up the ranks. By the time she jumped ship to Maclean’s in 2011, she was the Post’s managing editor of news.

Following Meurice’s departure, Postmedia senior vice-presidents Nott and Clancy handpicked Owens to fill the vacant spot. Her hire suggests executives saw a more versatile leader in Owens, someone willing to take digital risks, though Nott says it wasn’t a “him-versus-her situation.” Yet when I ask about her motivations for accepting the role, Owens’s answer surprises me. Rather than talking about multimedia innovation, she immediately lands on another, far different subject. “The job itself is great,” she tells me. “But the opportunity to be the first female editor of a national paper is pretty huge, right?”

 ***

Owens has always been a proponent of feminism and equality in journalism—something John Ibbitson, now writer-at-large at the Globe, learned on his first day of journalism school in 1987. The class of 40 had a simple task: interview your deskmate and write a brief story about his or her life. Paired with the gregarious Owens, Ibbitson anticipated an easy assignment. “Anne Marie Owens is an energetic, perky 23-year-old,” he typed, satisfied with his description. Upon reading the story, Owens was enraged. “Perky? Perky?” she exclaimed. Her voice went louder: “What man would ever describe a woman in all of human history as perky?” Ibbitson recalls the day with shame, even some 20 years later, and now admits, “I never used the word ‘perky’ to describe anything again in the rest of my career.”

Being a female journalist has informed much of Owens’s work as a reporter and editor. While at the Standard in the early 1990s, she and Marlene Bergsma successfully fought for the use of gender-neutral language in the paper. Around the same time, she purchased a Non-Sexist Word Finder at a small bookstore in Port Dalhousie, Ontario. It was her parody of a writing bible until 2011, when she jokingly passed it on to Meurice before she headed to Maclean’s. (Inside the book’s front cover, her signature remains in black ink.)

Not everyone agrees Owens’s gender is a big deal. When asked for his thoughts on her appointment as the first woman to run a national paper in Canada, Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke said, “It doesn’t matter.” Cooke, along with many of Owens’s male colleagues, says Owens being a woman has little effect on her ability to move up the ranks. Even the Post’s homepage editor and assistant managing editor, John Racovali, says that she landed the position on her own merit, so calling attention to the fact that she is the first female editor at the paper is “a hollow accolade.”

Yet, to say so is to ignore the male domination of the news industry. Ann Rauhala, a professor at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, examines women’s roles in newsrooms. She points to a slew of reasons women aren’t often appointed to top-tier positions. For one, women who are juggling domestic responsibilities with their careers feel that their employers are not supportive. For another, executives want to hire journalists who are just like them, who reflect their values. “That translates to white guys hiring nice, young white guys,” she says. That Owens is heading a national paper is just not the norm—according to Newspapers Canada’s annual report for 2014, of 111 daily newspapers, only 18 have women in the top job.

But Owens’s feminist values won’t mean the end of the Post’s staunch, right-wing political commentary—or even define her reign as editor. Though the Post has come a long way from its origins as a “tits-and-analysis paper,” as the Star’s former executive managing editor James Travers once described it, right-wing columnists are part of the Post’s brand and are there to stay. “The Post,” stresses Owens, “is not sexist.” Well, not quite. Even with a self-proclaimed feminist at the helm, the Post still runs headlines such as “Feminist Video Turns to Child Abuse to Send Distorted Message.” And in December 2014, a Rex Murphy column denounced the efforts of mainstream feminists. “In an era when college students under the mighty sway of heteronormative patriarchy have conjured up the concept of ‘micro-aggression’ and stamped their books with ‘trigger warnings,’” he wrote, “there is surely nothing too silly, too intellectually vacuous, for educated feminists to embrace.”

At a time when anti-feminist columns like Murphy’s fare well with Post readers, it’s far easier to imagine Owens’s commitment to the digital overhaul shaping her legacy as editor, and her gender fading to an afterthought.

***

Rob Roberts knew he had a winning story on his hands when he assigned a piece about an avalanche to Post writer Joe O’Connor. It had all the right elements: a charismatic, hubristic main character, death, conflict and a Canadian backdrop. For Roberts, the executive news producer, a typical page three spread—several column inches dedicated to a longform feature—was in order. He slated it to go to print ASAP. But Owens said no. Go further, she instructed. The result was an interactive online feature, complete with high-resolution portraits of snow-covered mountains, on-camera interviews with O’Connor’s main character and infographics depicting the anatomy of an avalanche. The team published “The Day the Mountain Fell” in September 2014 and it soon garnered hundreds of thousands of pageviews. The Post has also published several popular multimedia stories that fall outside the realm of daily news, including Adrian Humphreys’s “Hacker, Creeper, Soldier, Spy,” a 15,000-word online interactive profile of a former U.S. military man seeking asylum in Canada (which began the model), and “Gangland Confidential,” his multimedia coverage of Canadian mafia ties in Italy.

Turning ordinary print features into interactive stories is a tactic Owens hopes to employ more frequently as the Post undergoes its digital makeover. As Roberts puts it, the focus is shifting from filling tomorrow’s paper to telling good stories in different ways—and, with the addition of smartphone and tablet editions, on different platforms. Owens isn’t the first to go forth with such a plan, and for most Canadian newspapers a move toward multimedia seems inevitable. By 2017, Canada’s newspaper industry could see revenues decline by up to 20 percent, according to a 2013 report by international financial firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Anticipating that number will prove true—and could be even worse—many traditional news organizations have turned to web and tech-forward platforms, reframing a scramble to stay financially afloat into a bold and innovative path.

“Users are going to mobile—they’re often consuming their news on various apps via their mobile devices as opposed to any other platform,” says David Silverberg, editor-in-chief of Digital Journal, who has been following trends in the industry since 2009 through his Future of Media events in Toronto. In 2014, close to 60 percent of 18- to 34-year-old and 40 percent of 35- to 49-year-old Canadians consumed news on mobile devices or computers, according to a Media Technology Monitor report. The company also found 45 percent of anglophones now own a tablet. But, Silverberg adds, publishers need a good plan in order to successfully market their multiple digital platforms: “They can’t just take content and slap it onto a tablet or smartphone app.” Reformatting this content and giving it added value can help papers improve their chances. Often, that’s through interactivity, additional visual content such as infographics or presenting it in a prettier package.

Publishers must also confront what David Skok, a 2012 Nieman Fellow and current digital adviser at The Boston Globe, calls “disruption theory,” a term coined by his Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. The theory refers to a dynamic whereby newer, more agile firms disrupt more established companies stuck in their old ways. During his fellowship, Skok and Christensen applied this theory to the journalism industry. While sites such as The Huffington Post (its parent company, AOL, is worth $3 billion) and BuzzFeed (worth $850 million) are successful, much of their revenue is generated through clicks on low-cost listicles and branded content. Still, news organizations can reinvest their clickbait revenue into features and harder-hitting news stories.

Yet under Owens, there is little room for for BuzzFeed-esque quizzes or viral videos. In fact, it contradicts her plan for “great storytelling and voices,” and it could be the core flaw in the digital strategy. Producing smart journalism across a series of platforms is great in theory, but it costs money and it’s unclear where the funding—especially at a publication that took 13 years to make a profit—would come from. Papers that have succeeded at rolling out multiple editions of their product over a series of digital platforms have invested millions in doing so. Montreal’s La Presse tablet app, for instance, cost $40 million and three years worth of research—money the notoriously poor Postmedia would be hard-pressed to match. La Presse has also announced it will eventually replace its print newspapers with an all-digital publication—something that seems unlikely at the Post, which has many older readers who still rely on paper and ink.

Owens did not tell me how she plans to balance the need for good content with the paper’s current financial state. Talking about her move to Postmedia from the financially stable Rogers, she said she appreciated the “experimental” nature of the Post. “All the tumult and all the uncertainty,” she says, “it does mean that you have a good environment for trying new things.” But company executives have never mentioned a back-up plan if the great “Re-Imagined” experiment fails. And if there is one, I never had the chance to ask Owens about it. During our brief interview, Owens said she would focus solely on the Post’s needs within the immediate future, planning for “whatever comes in the next six months and whatever comes in the year after that”—suggesting, perhaps, even she doesn’t know what will lead the Post into financial stability.

 ***

It’s a cold November night, and Owens is standing out in the “smoking patio” of Toronto’s Opera House, a shoddily taped-off barrier between the sidewalk on Queen Street East and the venue. Inside, hundreds of media professionals and news junkies are in attendance for Newzapalooza, an annual “battle of the bands” charity event during which journalists take on the role of rock stars for the night. Though she isn’t smoking, Owens is standing among a group of young women who crowd around her. Out here, she is the star.

This opportunity to mingle with Owens outside the newsroom after weeks of chasing her is rare and golden. And she is beaming with excitement: the crowd loved the Post’s band, Conrad Black Sabbath. But she ignores me for a while, turning her back toward me, until I say hello.

“Oh, gosh, are you still looking for colour for your story?” she asks me. She laughs. I ask again if I can shadow her, but the question hangs in the air as she re-enters the Opera House, disappearing into the thick of the crowd. It’s the last time I ever see her.

It reminds me of our interview. When I pressed her about where the paper is headed under her direction, Owens dodged the question in a different way: she pretended to be forthright. “If you ask, ‘What is the National Post going to look like five years down the road?’ I don’t think anyone can honestly say,” she said. Then she whisked on to the next subject. At the end of our only chat, she laughed that signature, booming laugh, as if to assure me: I have it all under control. This paper will thrive.

Illustration by Tony Healey

This story was updated to reflect changes to female editors at the helm of Canadian newspapers, including the departure of Janice Dockham at the Leader-Post and the appointment of Heather Persson at the StarPhoenix. The story also previously incorrectly stated that Adrian Humphreys’s “Hacker, Creeper, Soldier, Spy” was published after “The Day the Mountain Fell.” The Review regrets the errors.

Here is a sneak peek at one story from our Spring 2015 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism magazine.

Hundreds upon hundreds of documents: that’s part of the evidence Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell needed to break one of their biggest stories about Alison Redford, the Alberta premier who was, at that point, already besmirched. It was March 27, 2014, and both CBC Edmonton reporters were sitting on a major scoop that would further disgrace her.

For months, rumours had been circulating that Redford planned to construct a penthouse suite on the 11th floor of Edmonton’s Federal Building. Despite its name, the 1950s art deco property is provincially owned, and it was under renovation to create office space for Members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (MLAs) and their staff. But no one could confirm the construction on the top floor was for the premier’s personal use—until now.

Over the span of about two months, Rusnell, a veteran journalist leading the investigative unit, and his colleague Russell filed six freedom of information requests with different government departments. They wanted proof of Redford’s misuse of taxpayers’ money. “We sought a government source who had direct knowledge of the building,” says Rusnell. “We knew that other media outlets and one opposition party had tried and failed to get the floor plan.” A source suggested they put in a request for communications between the premier’s executive assistant, Ryan Barberio and the architect in charge of that floor. Then the documents came in: 800 pages detailing Redford’s plans for “sleeping and grooming quarters with clothing storage” for an adult and a teenager.

The CBC reporters had an exclusive story but they needed to act fast. In a boardroom on the south side of the newsroom, Rusnell and Russell huddled with senior television producer Neill Fitzpatrick, assignment editor Kelly Banks and senior radio producer Ann Sullivan. They packaged the piece in less than 12 hours, before the government made the documents public at 1 p.m. the next day—a tactic Alberta officials often use in an attempt to shorten the news cycle of a scandal. At 5:30 a.m., the story
journalists dubbed Skypalace broke first on the radio, then online and, finally, on television.

Though the story didn’t kill Redford’s career—she had announced her resignation as premier nine days earlier—it was another major blow to her credibility, and a triumph for reporters rooting out government corruption.

Carleton University political science professor Scott Bennett says provincial politics remains “an incredible area of public ignorance.” That ignorance can often be a struggle for reporters. “What’s depressing as a journalist is that you just become conscious of the fact that the public actually doesn’t give a shit about ethical or moral corruption,” says National Post reporter Jen Gerson, who also broke her own story about Redford’s spending.

Under the uninterrupted 45-year reign of the Progressive Conservative Party, Alberta has become the province with the longest-running single-party government in Canadian history. Investigating politics here can be particularly challenging. Reporters struggle to gain access to government documents and must rely on inventive research methods to get information in the public interest. Even when they succeed, their work doesn’t generate the attention it deserves. But last spring, as the Wildrose Party became Alberta’s first viable opposition in years, coverage of Redford captured the public’s imagination. Reporters on the story fought to improve government transparency, and by engaging a public often indifferent to scandal, they precipitated a political implosion the likes of which the province had rarely seen before.

 ***

Redford became the subject of scrutiny shortly after she became premier in October 2011. Her initial response was a “textbook case of how not to manage controversy,” Post contributor Dan Arnold wrote. An early investigation revealed 21 MLAs were paid $1,000 a month to sit on a committee that had not met in over three years—a committee on which Redford herself once sat. It was, as Arnold describes it, “money for nothing.”

Then, in January 2014, Gerson filed a story about the lavish expenses Redford racked up on a trip home from South Africa, where she had been attending Nelson Mandela’s funeral. It took eight days of pestering the premier’s press secretary over email—“I need the number, I need the number”—but Gerson finally confirmed the figure: that flight home cost the province $10,000. “I actually sat on that for a couple of days,” Gerson recalls. Given the magnitude of other stories that emerged from Redford’s office, this one seemed fairly tame—but it was the first to capture national attention.

In the aftermath of the Mandela flight scandal, journalists kept a close eye on Redford. Rusnell and Russell knew there was more to the South Africa story, but they were also in the process of obtaining the email exchanges detailing Redford’s penthouse construction at the Federal Building.

They pursued the Skypalace story because they thought it was in the public interest. It wasn’t until the documents came in that they knew it was a sensational story that would outrage the public. Shortly after CBC published their investigation, other news outlets followed. Russell says the stories “got a lot of traction because they all went national—not just because of our reporting, but because every media outlet in the country essentially followed.”

Reaching an Albertan audience can be difficult because of the province’s complacent political environment and its place in the country. Russell refers to the phenomenon as regionalism: because the province is west of the country’s political centre in Ontario, stories tend not to go national. Journalists say government interference is also often a problem. Filing freedom of information requests with the PCs about internal government issues, for one, is tricky because the party has been in power for so long. The process, Rusnell says, is “politicized” because “they can decide which documents to put up.” On occasion, he and Russell file freedom of information requests on their freedom of information requests. They hope to catch patterns of political interference and understand how their requests are being managed—or mismanaged. They find the government sometimes withholds information, which allows politicians the time to come up with talking points to spin the story.

The pair claims to be the only full-time investigative team in Alberta, but for television viewers this appears not to be a priority. In Edmonton and Calgary, CBC News still ranks third in TV ratings behind Global and CTV. Reporters are generally expected to find time to file freedom of information requests alongside their other duties. Most find it is easier to piggyback off the work of others—hence the widespread replication of Rusnell and Russell’s work. Though this didn’t necessarily advance the story, it did give it a national profile.

 ***

With a government as uncooperative as Alberta’s, reporters have to get creative. Rusnell and Russell were still looking into Redford’s travel expenses in late March 2014. Although Redford had stepped down from the premiership, she kept her seat in the legislature. Russell decided to sift through the province’s public flight manifests and came across more damning evidence: Redford’s daughter had flown on 50 separate government flights. The reason for the trips was described in the manifests as “meetings with government officials,” but the reporters couldn’t find evidence that such meetings occurred. They reached out to Craig Loewen, communications director for interim PC Premier Dave Hancock, seeking an explanation for Redford’s travel, but Loewen declined to comment.

Russell also noticed an unfamiliar name on the flight register: Angelita Escultero. She searched the name on Facebook and found photos of a woman with Redford’s daughter. Escultero was also a member of a Facebook group for McDonald’s employees. In April, the reporter tracked down the fast food restaurant’s location in Calgary and took a bus from Edmonton to confront her. Escultero confirmed their suspicions: as a nanny, she had travelled with Redford’s daughter on one of those government flights. This exclusive story triggered an RCMP investigation into Redford. Rusnell gives full credit to Russell’s sleuthing, noting that in Alberta, journalists need to find resourceful ways to work around the system. “You either have it or you don’t,” he says. “It is difficult to train someone to think in an enterprising way.”

By mid-summer, as journalists and the public anticipated Auditor General Merwan Saher’s report on Redford’s flight expenses, Rusnell and Russell received part of a draft copy of the report. It was leaked by a confidential source who feared that a watered-down version would be released under pressure from the government. The document was of substantial public interest; not only did it confirm CBC’s previous reports about Redford using government planes for personal benefit, it also highlighted the practice of booking false passengers on flights so that Redford and her entourage could travel alone.

To ensure the tip wasn’t politically motivated, Rusnell and Russell later met with the source at a Tim Hortons in Edmonton one Saturday in late July. “There was also a time crunch because we published the story on July 29 and we knew the auditor general was set to release his report sometime early the next month,” says Russell. “We knew we had to get it up early in order to not be preempted by the actual release of the report.” Eight days later, Redford finally announced her resignation as MLA for Calgary-Elbow, marking an official end to her time in office.

 ***

Despite the successful investigations into Redford’s abuse of government spending and excessive entitlement, some critics believe journalists were too hard on the former premier. Throughout her time as leader—and during her downfall—Redford was often referred to as “elitist” or “standoffish.” According to Gerson, she became known as an “unquotable” speaker with a vendetta against reporters. “If she didn’t like you,” says Gerson, “you weren’t getting an interview.”

Former PC campaign manager Susan Elliott, a blogger for the Calgary Herald, says the coverage was unfair. “I do believe there’s a gender factor here,” Elliott says of Redford’s oft-noted irritability. “It’s not unusual for politicians, who live in the kind of pressure-cooker world in which they live, to have a temper. But because she was a woman, that suddenly became unforgivable.”

Russell denies that, claiming critics are often misinformed about how journalists reported on these issues. Some detractors suggested they wouldn’t have reported on the “daughter flights” story had Redford not been a woman, but Russell says, “I think it’s sexist not to pursue this story.”

Rusnell also insists the investigations into Redford weren’t personal—the journalists were just doing their job. That means divorcing themselves from the outcome of their work, says Gerson, and focusing on what’s in the public’s interest. “If you’re doing this job with an outcome in mind, you’re an activist,” she says. “If I wanted the PCs to go down, I’d go work for the opposition.”

The auditor general’s findings validated the investigative reporting and confirmed that Redford was personally benefitting from government-funded flights. But journalists can’t always count on such reports to verify their work. That’s where David Studer, CBC’s director of journalistic standards and practices, came in. He worked alongside Rusnell and Russell as they rolled out scoop after scoop, always with due diligence. Journalists need to be aware that they are dealing with a high-profile person, he says. “You never want to get it wrong, but you particularly want to be careful about damaging someone’s reputation who has worked so hard to get here.”

 ***

In early February 2015, journalists visited the newly renovated Federal Building. The original budget was $356 million but the project cost $53 million more than that and took an additional two years to complete. The 11th floor had been converted into meeting rooms, but as Rusnell walked through the space, he saw traces of the previous penthouse layout. He was in awe: the remodelling would have been more luxurious than what was previously documented.

Even in the wake of the Skypalace scandal, not much is new politically. Last fall, Jim Prentice became the new premier and leader of the PCs. Since being in power, he’s revived the Conservative brand. “As everything changes, everything stays the same,” says Tom Vernon, provincial affairs journalist at Global Edmonton. “The PCs get rid of a leader who isn’t doing it for them and replace her with another one.”

Still, the cycles of political scandal make for good journalism, especially for Rusnell and Russell, who pride themselves on conducting investigative work in the public interest. Government sources keep sending them tips, and so they trudge on, seeking to uncover wrongdoings—no matter who’s listening.

Illustration by Martin Tognola

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Today’s blog is a guest post by fourth year Ryerson journalism student Daniel Rosen. 

When the layoffs happened, it didn’t really hit me until someone pointed out an orange.

I poked my head over the partitions and saw a half-peeled orange sitting on a desk. One of the editors must have been peeling it before he left for the meeting, and never got to come back for it. It was frozen there as if the desk was Pompeii.

Those who were laid off weren’t allowed back to their desks. Their things were packed up by someone who took one look at that uneaten orange and just tossed it in the trash.

It all happened quickly. Around 1:30 p.m., everyone went to a meeting without me. I had a pretty good idea about what was going on considering the hushed tones and the fact that the entire staff of Canada.com had disappeared at once, but I still had to rely on social media speculation to figure out if the site I was interning for still existed. It’s unbelievably weird to read about the death of your publication on Twitter before anyone tells you what’s actually happening.

During the last week of my internship at Canada.com, Postmedia laid off several editors and offered voluntary buyout programs at some of its newspapers. Everyone left from Canada.com was moved to the National Post—except for me. I remained as the stalwart intern/editor-by-default, sitting alone in the corner of the fifth floor reserved for us.

One day, I actually got to sit with everyone else on the National Post floor a few levels down. Someone wasn’t in the office that day, and I was offered that desk. Working around humans again was fantastic until I noticed pictures of children staring up at me from behind the monitor. After two hours I had to flip the photos over so I wouldn’t make eye contact with them whenever I looked away from the computer.

As the only writer at Canada.com for a week, most of my duties were to make it look like the site was still moving while the powers-that-be nailed down what they were doing with it. It turns out that going from intern to the only employee in the span of a day is mostly an aesthetic change in that an empty floor looks very different.

It’s not that no one saw it coming. Many of the editors had already told me they were in a holding pattern—they were already told that the site was going to be shuffled. I wanted to intern at Canada.com because it had an interesting variety of articles and coverage, but that meant it didn’t really have a niche, and I guess it became redundant.

After many moved to the Post, editors tried to find something for me to do, but everyone was still working to get the hang of whatever the hell they were supposed to be doing now that their jobs had been upended. I have nothing but great things to say about the whole experience to that point. My time until then had been so productive. I wrote news stories, a feature or two and even got to do a little editing. I felt like I was building momentum until someone cut me off and ran me off the road, and there was really no one to blame.

It wasn’t all bad though. I developed a gut reaction to both children staring at me and half-peeled oranges, which is the kind of conditioning that usually takes years to internalize. Plus, I got a good, cynical peek into the heart of the Canadian media industry and took a long, hard look at what a digital-first publication needs to survive these days. I’m not sure what that is, but if you have any ideas beyond “a strong niche,” you could probably make a killing. And it wouldn’t be too tough to staff a new site. There are a lot of great writers looking for a publication right about now.