Whose brand is it anyway?
Unions still needed to protect journalists' integrity in the face of creeping advertorial
Last summer, The Globe and Mail wanted to introduce a drastic change: editorial staff writing and editing advertorial copy as part of their regular duties. If this branded content proposal became a mandate, journalists would serve advertisers rather than their readers. It might have happened at the Globe if the unionized staff did not take […]
Jane Armstrong takes her passion for investigative journalism to The Tyee
The long-time print reporter faces the challenge of following founding editor David Beers at the independent online magazine
By Megan Matsuda Jane Armstrong got chills when she heard Rita Daly’s idea for a new investigative series. The two Toronto Star reporters were at a party, chatting in the backyard. Why, Daly asked, did so few domestic abuse cases result in a conviction? Together with Caroline Mallan, they began an intense, nearly year-long effort […]
Endangered species
In an era when the Toronto Sun misspells "Correction" in a correction column, is there any hope for a revival of good copyediting?
By Gin Sexsmith It’s 1972, and the scent of cigarette smoke and stewed coffee acts as a backdrop to the clack clack ching of manual typewriters inThe Globe and Mailnewsroom. Men’s voices fill the room—asking questions, bouncing ideas off one another, laughing at crude jokes. About 15 men in ties and white shirts are seated around a large, […]
Wheels of Fortune
Papers are publishing increasing numbers of advertorials. Is the credibility of the dailies taking a backseat to revved-up revenues?
Robert Reid has seen the advertorial battle from the front lines of his own newsroom. As a reporter and union chair for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Reid remembers when the advertising department tried to introduce advertorial production into the newsroom back in 1989, just as staff were about to ratify their first union contract. At other […]
The Creative Agonies of Ed Franklin
Despite 16 years of accomplishments, he feels too contained, too controlled by The Globe and Mail: "Sometimes, they edit the vitality right out of a cartoon"
He had built him out of spaghetti. The great opera singer, Luciano Pavarottiwas nothing but a mass of noodles, long and stringy, oozing out of a classic black tuxedo. The cartoonist looked at his creation and almost smiled. He leaned back for a moment and glanced out the window of his studio in Clarence Square. […]
