Katherine Laidlaw

Inside the Ring of Fire

Inside the Ring of Fire

In the mind of Michael Cooke, the Star of the future looks a lot like the heyday of Fleet Street tabloids. But can past glories be reborn online?

Michael Cooke stomps around the newsroom, asking anyone who will listen, “Are we pictured up?” TheToronto Star’s editor-in-chief will hold a front-page story if it has no art. He’ll barge around spouting his catchphrase, his doggedness bordering on absurdity. In April 2008, police charged Christine Bedford with assault after she threw coffee in a man’s […]

 Blake Eligh

Wheels of Fortune

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 […]