We already have the world at our fingertips, but now with the creeping ubiquity of wearable technology, news junkies can get the latest stories delivered directly to their wrists.

Since Apple announced an April 24 release date for its eponymous watch, the chatter about wearable devices has spread beyond just the tech community and has become a focus of many news corporations trying to reach readers. Recently, the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail explored how these devices are being integrated with high fashion and many news organizations are beginning to reveal how they’ll be adapting their coverage for wearables.

Last week, The New York Times debuted “One-Sentence Stories,” the outlet’s first foray into wearable technology. As the name so eloquently suggests, the Times will push headline-like tidbits directly to its readers’ wristwatches. According to a Times press release, these snippets—from sections including Business, Tech, The Art and Politics—will include bullet points and photographs. The Times isn’t the only news organization set to work in wearables, though so far, few Canadian outlets have showcased their plans. In an overview of Apple Watch news apps, the Globe threw in a vague, one-sentence plug about how it will release something. This something has yet to materialize. However, the latest version of the theScore app, which delivers stats and sports scores, will be compatible for the Apple Watch.

On March 5, Neiman Labs released an extensive study, conducted by The Huffington Post United Kingdom’s Jack Riley, that comprehensively outlined the various issues facing media outlets looking to venture into the world of wearables. Riley writes that analysts estimate Apple will sell 20-30 million of its watches this year and these buyers will comprise a specific demographic: young and rich—a valuable demographic for news organizations. (Apple Watches start at $450 Canadian, with 18-karat gold plated versions retailing for over $10,000. You also need iPhone five or higher to operate this exorbitant time piece.) At end of 2014, over 720,000 Android Wear devices had been shipped and by January 2015, Pebble had delivered over one million of its smartwatches.

As Riley speculates on how publishers can make money off of wearables, he warns that widespread adoption of these devices isn’t guaranteed. This becomes especially concerning considering many outlets have not yet learned how to profit from digital content. In Riley’s study, Times senior product manager for iOS Andrew Phelps says, “Given that we, the industry, practically haven’t figured out how to monetize mobile, I’m a little concerned about wearables.” Riley suggests that some news organizations may develop products for wearables not only to make money, but to appear “cutting edge.”

While American powerhouses are considering how they’ll scale to burgeoning technology, Canadian organizations are still experimenting with existing platforms. On April 1, for example, the Star abolished its paywall. The paper will also release a free tablet edition that will be supported by ads. Montreal’s La Presse already gets 40 percent of its revenue from its tablet edition. Though traditional news outlets are readily experimenting, few have mastered the digital game.

New communications technologies can revolutionize journalism. Yet, as Marshall McLuhan so wisely said in The Medium In the Massage, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” Since it’s nearly impossible to predict how audiences will use new communications technology, we speculate their value based on existing platforms.

As media organizations race to release Apple Watch compatible and wearable apps, we’ll just have to wait and see what sticks.

Image courtesy of Maurizio Pesce. 

Gordon Henderson thought he was getting a little too old to be embedded with soldiers in Afghanistan. It was 2006 and the documentary filmmaker was touring with the Royal Canadian Regiment Charles Company Eight Platoon as they guarded the construction of a new road. The men bossing him around were younger than his youngest daughter. But when fighting flared up as they were asleep in the trenches, Henderson was thrilled to be in the middle of the action. I’ve got my film now, he thought. The Taliban are shooting at us. This is fantastic! He returned home with hours of footage for The Crazy Eights, which would later premiere on CBC, and a black grenade case filled with chess pieces whittled from bullet casings—a gift from one of the members of the platoon.

Henderson, now north of 60, has lost count of how many docs he’s filmed abroad. But, most of all, he’s a Canadian storyteller best known for his work as a senior producer on CBC’s Canada: A People’s History. For years, he’s been hearing about the end of the documentary: national broadcasters, once a strong source of revenue for producers, are commissioning fewer docs. While many filmmakers are fleeing the industry or turning to other genres to survive, Henderson’s company, 90th Parallel Productions, continues to deliver award-winning documentaries. Canada’s unofficial national art form is in the lurch, but Henderson is pushing forward, exploring new ways to capture this country’s stories.

***

For decades, documentaries have been idealistically championed as a means of disseminating Canadian identity coast to coast. In 1939, John Grierson helped found the National Film Commission—the precursor to the National Film Board. In 76 years, NFB films have won 11 Oscars and have been nominated 73 times.

Canada’s national broadcaster also has a rich history with documentaries. Peter Herrndorf was head of CBC’s current affairs programming from 1974 to 1977 and helped establish the investigative program the fifth estate. In 1978, John Kastner won an Emmy for Four Women, his fifth estate doc on breast cancer. In his acceptance speech, he remembers calling Herrndorf “totally responsible for the revival of the documentary form at the CBC.” In 1983, Just Another Missing Kid, a fifth estate film by John Zaritsky, won an Oscar.

Herrndorf, now the CEO of Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, became vice-president and general manager of English programming at CBC in 1979 and helped create The Journal, a newsmagazine that aired right after The National from 1982 to 1992. Mark Starowicz was executive producer of the show, which attracted around 1.6 million viewers a night its first year on television. In the 1990s and early 2000s, CBC documentary shows included: Witness, Life and Times, Rough Cuts, The Passionate Eye and The Nature of Things, along with current affairs programs such as the fifth estate.

In 2012, Kevin McMahon, a partner of Toronto production company Primitive Entertainment, lobbied to have documentaries officially recognized as Canada’s national art form. “In the cultural realm, there is nothing so Canadian as drawing images from reality and hewing them into a meaningful shape,” he wrote in the National Post, later continuing the conversation with Marc Glassman in the pages of Point of View, a magazine dedicated to Canadian documentary culture. NFB founder Grierson coined the term “documentary” when reviewing Robert J. Flaherty’s 1926 film Moana, but the genre has more than just history in this country. McMahon and Glassman argued the practice of documenting reality is part of the Canadian cultural fabric.

 ***

According to a 2014 study commissioned by Toronto-based Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, domestic audiences watch 68 percent more of these films than they did three years ago. Sixty percent of respondents say access to Canadian documentaries is important, but only seven percent can easily find this content. Although the Hot Docs festival drew a record-breaking 192,000 people in 2014, Pepita Ferrari, chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), a non-profit
advocacy group for independent filmmakers, fears the demise of the feature-length doc.

At CBC, the only documentary shows-—besides the current affairs programs—that remain on air are The Nature of Things, Doc Zone and The Passionate Eye. The network will trim its staff by 25 percent before 2020, thanks to federal budget cuts. And last June, it announced a plan to end its
in-house documentary team. Starowicz, now the executive director of documentary programming, says CBC will rely solely on independent producers, who already create 75 percent of its documentaries. Doc Zone will end this year too, although Starowicz says it will return in a different iteration.

Meanwhile, CTV and Global are also commissioning fewer documentaries. Public broadcaster TVOntario shows feature-length docs, including work by young producers, but with a limited budget it commissions just eight to 12 per year. In order to unlock money from organizations such as the Canadian Media Fund, filmmakers must usually have a broadcaster on board for their project. In April 2013, The Globe and Mail’s Steven Ladurantaye and Simon Houpt questioned the future of documentaries in Canada in an article based on a DOC study outlining the steep decline of the industry, which had lost over 4,000 jobs since 2008.

Like Henderson, the NFB’s director general of English programming, Michelle van Beusekom, remembers when CBC commissioned a lot of work for its roster of programs. In that climate, she says it was more strategic for the NFB to co-produce films, but with fewer slots for docs on all networks these days, she and her team now produce more documentaries fully funded in-house. But in 2012, her organization also fell victim to federal budget cuts totalling $6.68 million over three years. The NFB currently completes 20 to 25 English documentaries each year.

When CBC shuttered its documentary department, about 40 prominent staffers, including David Suzuki, Anna Maria Tremonti and Linden MacIntyre, signed a petition against the decision. Brian Stewart, a former senior correspondent for The National, praised the past success of the department in a Globe article: “The CBC made series of enormous scale that clearly captured a country’s imagination. Canada: A People’s History won universal praise while exceeding the viewing levels of playoff hockey.”

As a senior producer on the Gemini Award-winning series, Henderson (who’s an avid baseball fan) helped history triumph over hockey. In his book Making History: The Remarkable Story Behind Canada: A People’s History, executive producer Starowicz wrote, “The series would have been totally impossible without Gordon Henderson, his respect for the human story and his sense of wonder at Canadian history.”

***

Henderson, with a mop of white hair and black-rimmed glasses, sits on a green couch in his downtown Toronto office. The exposed brick walls and floral love-seat make the room reminiscent of an Urban Outfitters store. Photographs of Henderson’s family crowd the side table next to his desk. Grateful Dead coasters are stacked beside a custom-made coffee-table book titled Shoots: 90th Parallel Afield.
A caricature of Henderson—drawn by the late cartoonist Jim Unger—sits next to his chess set from Afghanistan.

Henderson, who grew up in Ottawa, was working as a parliamentary correspondent when he read Dan Rather’s autobiography, The Camera Never Blinks Twice. When the CBS anchor travelled, he would pass time by dreaming up questions for the president of the United States. “If I sit there and doodle on an airplane, I’d think up ways to shoot a scene,” says Henderson. “And I realized I was a visual guy.” He quit his job as a political reporter and worked as a producer at CTV’s W5 and The Journal before founding 90th Parallel in 1987. It was a challenging time to venture out on his own, but he says with a shrug, “I wanted to be my own boss.”

His original partner in the venture, the late John Darroch, suggested the name after asking Henderson how far north he’d travelled. Though he’d been up to the 85th parallel, he liked how futuristic and grandiose 90th parallel sounded, along with its obvious connotation to the North Pole. By this point, Henderson had already done a lot of work up North. And the Arctic is entrenched in Canadian doc history—many people consider Flaherty’s 1922 film Nanook of the North the world’s first successful documentary.

Henderson thinks 1994’s The Choirmaster put 90th on the map. It tells the story of choir leader John Gallienne, who sexually assaulted young boys at St. George’s Anglican Church in Kingston, Ontario. “The Choirmaster is so far above most TV fare that I sat watching a preview tape in stunned silence,” Jim Bawden wrote in the Toronto Star. The next day, the Globe’s John Haslett Cuff said, “This is an intelligent, restrained and thoughtful film that poses a number of difficult questions about the case.” After The Choirmaster aired on Witness, international broadcasters picked it up in spite of its local focus.

In 2000, 90th produced Studio: The Life and Times of Alex Colville which premiered on CBC and earned a Gemini nomination. Andrew Gregg, the director, and Henderson, who was the executive producer, consider it one of their most memorable pieces and boast about how the composition of certain frames resemble Colville’s paintings. The Canadian Press said the documentary gave Canadians a more personal look at one of the country’s most prolific artists. Fourteen years later, the film was part of a massive Colville exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

Not everyone agrees that 90th’s films have artistic merit. The Regina Leader-Post disparaged 2007’s Crazy Eights for its lack of “style,” but acknowledged that it makes up for that in “interest value.” NOW Magazine’s Barrett Hooper gave the film a coveted four “N” rating and lauded Henderson for “allowing the soldiers to tell their own stories with little editorializing.” Henderson’s documentaries highlight what Gemini Award-winning fifth estate associate producer Lynette Fortune, a former 90th intern, calls his “passion for storytelling.”

For his latest project, The Tea Explorer, Henderson partnered with Bruce Cowley, head of the Documentary Channel and creative head of digital channels at CBC, to secure international interest. “You’ve got to go where people want to run documentaries,” Henderson says. “If the market for Canada is getting smaller, one does have to look outside.” He’s not alone. The NFB is also looking to international co-productions, or “co-pros,” as a way around funding challenges.

The Tea Explorer will follow a Canadian tea expert as he traces the ancient Tea Horse Road in Southwest China. In November 2014, the project was honoured as one of the non-Asian pitches with the most market potential at the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival in China. Henderson wasn’t there to receive the award, though. He was in Hong Kong with Michael Alder, former executive producer of The Nature of Things, trying to drum up interest for a splashy new doc on the geologic history of China—Henderson calls it China Rocks.

Though there was some interest amongst Chinese broadcasters, no Canadians went for the project. But the trip ended up being a good one—instrumental for another film that is close to Henderson’s heart. At Hong Kong’s World Congress of Science and Factual Producers, Henderson met with a team of broadcasters and producers from England and the United States. They’re working on a documentary about British explorer Sir John Franklin, whose ships went missing during an Arctic expedition that began in 1845. Henderson is still telling Canadian stories, and he’s selling them wherever he can.

 ***

Andrew Gregg eyed international co-productions with a different goal in mind. He submitted a proposal to the Canada-New Zealand Digital Media Fund—a partnership between the CMF and its New Zealand equivalent—for money that would go toward a multimedia project unlike anything 90th has done before. “Everyone is trying to figure out how to not only get a digital presence online, but how to make it pay for itself,” he says. Gregg, who recently learned his bid was unsuccessful, adds this is “a way for us to tap into a fund and give it a try.” He cites the NFB’s Emmy-winning Highrise, a documentary about vertical living, as one such innovative approach to filmmaking. Launched in 2009, it’s a multi-year project that tells a story across a variety of media.

Cowley and John Ferri, vice-president of current affairs and documentaries at TVO, both also know they need to beef up their digital offerings. “People don’t necessarily want to sit down at night at eight o’clock and watch a documentary,” says Cowley. “They want to watch a documentary when they want to watch a documentary. That’s the way entertainment is being seen.” Ferri wants to build up digital content around TVO’s documentaries so audiences can watch them on several platforms.

The NFB began offering free streaming of most of its films in 2009. In that first year, 3.7 million people from Canada and around the world visited its online Screening Room. Audiences are also turning to Netflix to watch documentaries, but the American company doesn’t fall under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulations, so it doesn’t have to support or produce Canadian content. Rogers and Shaw launched the Shomi streaming service in November 2014, but as of January 2015, it offered only nine documentaries. And just one—Jennifer Baichwal’s 2006 film Manufactured Landscapes—is Canadian. Bell Media’s CraveTV was a frontrunner at the time of publication, offering dozens of documentaries.

But wunderkind VICE Media, founded in Montreal, is a popular source for free documentaries made in Canada; its YouTube channel has over five million subscribers, nearly double the Documentary Channel’s cable subscribers. Despite VICE’s reputation for the sensational, documentaries like the films in the series Canada’s Toxic Chemical Valley, about the effects of air pollution in Sarnia, Ontario, and Canadian Cannabis, show Canadian stories to enormous audiences.

 ***

While most viewers watch online or at festivals, broadcasters are still central to obtaining cash from organizations such as the CMF. But some young doc makers are finding a way around it: B.C.-based Nimisha Mukerji is getting her third film, Tempest Storm, off the ground by crowdfunding more than $45,000 on Kickstarter. It enabled her to continue filming while waiting for a broadcaster. She also won $10,000 at Hot Doc’s 2014 Pitch Forum. Tempest Storm will now be shown by Canada’s Super Channel, France’s Arte, Germany’s SWR and Israel’s Yes Docu. But while DOC established a partnership with Indiegogo last year, Ferrari says, “We do not know yet if crowdfunding will be the panacea.” NFB’s van Beusekom agrees, saying it can help secure part of a film’s budget, but it’s usually not enough to sustain an entire project.

Henderson is doing his part to support the industry by mentoring young filmmakers such as former intern Lena Macdonald. She knew of Henderson’s historical and political films, but when A Mother’s Ordeal aired on Global in 2011, it drew her interest to 90th Parallel. The doc follows Brenda Waudby, who was wrongly accused of murdering her daughter, largely because of inaccurate findings by disgraced child pathologist Charles Smith. “There’s more going on out of that production house,” says Macdonald. “It’s a little bit more interesting and rigorous.” She directed her first documentary for broadcast, Mom and Me, at 90th. Completed in 2014, it chronicled her relationship with her mother, who was homeless and addicted to drugs. Henderson helped Macdonald tease out her story in the editing suite. “I know the story best,” she says. “But he really could inhabit—as best a 60-something-year-old white man can—my mind and my head and heart and my perspective and my voice.” For Henderson, this isn’t completely altruistic; he likes hearing from the next generation.

Macdonald is now navigating Canada’s funding labyrinth with Henderson’s help. Even though TVO is airing Mom and Me, she’s desperate for a feature-length, theatrical release. But it’s difficult to find a distributor when a film is already attached to a broadcaster. “One of the things I love about Gordon is he’s learning too,” she says. “He’s always trying to figure out: how does the system work now?”

***

After CBC announced the closure of its doc department, Linden MacIntyre told the Globe that independent filmmakers are more market-driven than the public broadcaster. “Increasingly, they have to produce stuff for an international audience, they have to produce stuff that’s not controversial, and they have to produce stuff that’s not going to get them sued to death.” In 2010, the CRTC tightened its definition of documentaries in order to differentiate them from factual or reality series—such as programs on the Food Network or HGTV—that are cheaper to produce and are more palatable for a larger audience.

Henderson doesn’t look down on filmmakers who’ve stopped making traditional documentaries; he just knows that factual series aren’t for him. “I’m just stubborn and old and crotchety and don’t want to do that.”

For now, he’s busy enough chasing international co-productions and making films for Canadian broadcasters so he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to. He’s lucky, partly because, as Starowicz wrote in Making History, he has a reputation for running one of the most successful production houses in Toronto.

As Henderson’s student, Mike Sheerin aspired to have a career just like his teacher and they eventually worked together on a CTV documentary celebrating anchor Lloyd Robertson’s 25th anniversary on air. After Sheerin left CTV, he directed 10 films for 90th before starting his own company, Architect Films, where he’s now a lifestyle producer creating series such as Deck Wars for HGTV. While he misses making hard-hitting documentaries—he’s responsible for The Secret Mulroney Tapes and two films on Afghanistan—he knows more people watch his work now.

***

Henderson describes 90th as an accordion, expanding and contracting based on the number of projects on the go. These days 90th is hitting a high note, especially with the Franklin film.

“It was a big, dramatic story and the most famous Arctic story in Canada,” says Henderson, a self-proclaimed Franklin geek. The international co-production between British production company Lion Films and 90th will air on The Nature of Things, Channel 4 in the U.K. and PBS’s Nova. Henderson is quick to note that the April airdate coincides with the anniversary of Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s assassination. Like Franklin, McGee never made it into Canada: A People’s History.

Now, Henderson gets to fill in the blanks. Though documentaries aren’t yet our official national art form, he knows we excel at them. We have to tell our own stories, he says. “What’s the point of having a country if we don’t tell Canadian stories?”

Photo courtesy Jason Van Bruggen

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

Nova Scotia’s The Chronicle Herald breaks the ban and publishes her name on November 24. Her father praises the Chronicle Herald for its decision and on Friday, he writes a passionate opinion piece on CBC.ca about his disdain for the lingering ban on his daughter’s name. For him, it’s about justice and opening up a conversation on sexual assault and cyber crimes by removing the gag that rendered his daughter silent, both in life and death.

The Chronicle Herald feels that it’s in the public interest to publish her name—it wants to accurately report the trial while enabling “free public debate over sexual consent and the other elements of her story.” In 2014, The Chronicle Herald, along with local CBC, CTV and Global affiliates, challenged the ban upheld by Judge Jamie S. Campbell which makes publication bans mandatory in all child pornography cases. “The issue isn’t whether I think the ban serves any purpose or makes any sense in the peculiar circumstances of this individual case,” writes Judge Campbell in his decision. He continues, “There is no discretion to be exercised. There is no provision that allows the judge to consider whether the imposition of the ban is in the public interest.”

Halifax police announce on November 25 that after receiving numerous complaints, they’re investigating a media organization for breaching the publication ban. To date, they’ve investigated seven cases where people have allegedly broken the ban; however, the Crown has yet to charge anyone. Chris Hansen, a spokeswoman for Nova Scotia’s Public Prosecution Service tells the Toronto Star that the Crown considers three factors when deciding whether to press charges: “the widespread publicity around the victim’s name, her parents’ wishes, and the judge’s own words on the purpose of the ban.”

Media lawyer Brian Rogers says that publications often inadvertently break bans. However, he’s worked on two cases where newspapers have intentionally breached them. For him, these are examples of publications deciding that there is a “greater public interest to be served.”

The Chronicle Herald refuses to remain silent. On November 25—a day after breaking the ban—it published an evocative editorial cartoon that shows the victim peering out from behind a mask. Huffington Post Canada led its homepage with an acrostic headline spelling out her name when a defendant in the case received a one-year conditional discharge after pleading guilty to charges of child pornography on November 13. People continue to share the hashtag #YouKnowHerName on Twitter and some frustrated Canadians are even tweeting out her name.

Her name may be [Redacted] in print and on air, but few journalists are remaining silent about sex crimes in Canada. A recent Toronto Star investigation led by Jayme Poisson and Emily Mathieu revealed that only nine out of 78 Canadian universities have a sexual assault policy and all 24 public colleges in Ontario lack one. Poisson and Mathieu share stories, photos and videos of real women who were violated and then neglected by academic institutions. Mere days after the investigation appeared, schools like Queen’s University and the University of Saskatchewan announced that they’re hastening the development of a comprehensive sexual assault policy for their students. The presidents of all 24 colleges also voted in favour of implementing similar policies.

Just as the ubiquity of a Nova Scotia teen is helping to shape Canada’s legislation around cyber-bullying, this exemplary piece of investigative journalism is positively changing public policy on university and college campuses. Yet, the coverage of this story pales in comparison to the one that’s resulted in charges laid against Jian Ghomeshi—arguably Canada’s biggest news story this year. In a National Post piece with the headline “I Knew About Jian Ghomeshi and never said anything. Am I complicit in his alleged abuse?” Slate’s Carl Wilson echoes many when he says that rumours of sleazy sexual behaviour circled Ghomeshi for years. While “everybody” knew, writes Wilson, no one did anything about it. Though the coverage is mostly reactive, it gains further legitimacy when alleged victims come forward and reveal their names to say that CBC’s wunderkind abused them.

People are becoming more aware of how prevalent sex crimes are in Canada. We know they’re largely ignored and underreported. Yet many of the stories written are reactive—only brought to light when a victim can be identified. Journalists can write story upon story on horrifying statistics, but for some reason it often takes a face and a name to make them feel real.

When discussing her case, she may be “a victim in a high-profile child pornography case.” Yet, people know her name, and now, some journalists aren’t afraid to use it. Canadians are talking about and engaging in discussions about consent, sexual assault and cyber crimes. “She used to say, ‘I love my name, but I can’t find it on anything!’” recounts her mother on Facebook. Now, in spite of a publication ban, her name—and legacy—is everywhere.

By Amy Grief

When the sports editor at the Queen’s Journal requested media passes from the school’s athletics department in August, he received one instead of the usual eight. Back in March, the previous sports editor, Nick Faris, reported on how Queen’s University Athletics selected its varsity team of the year after nullifying an original vote. In response to that article, the department threatened to re-evaluate its relationship with the paper.

Faris, now co-editor-in-chief at the Journal, tweeted an editorial he wrote about the incident. This caught the eye of Mick Sweetman, chair of the board of directors for Canadian University Press (CUP), who notified national executive Jane Lytvynenko. The two wrote letters to the Queen’s administration and within a day, the Journal received its eight passes. Even though the paper is no longer a CUP member, Lytvynenko knows that advocating for student press is an important part of the mandate of her organization, a co-operative and non-profit for Canadian student newspapers since 1938.

CUP is the world’s oldest student news service, but it hasn’t aged gracefully. In the early 2000s, it had more than 90 member papers. Now, there are just over 50. In January, it had to pay close to $9,000 to Canada Revenue Agency for non-compliance with tax laws. A few weeks later, former president Erin Hudson revealed that CUP was in deep financial trouble.

While even former members recognize the need for a united student press to share national stories and train young journalists, the organization no longer appeals to many of the country’s largest campus newspapers. Now, as CUP begins to reinvents itself, it must find a way to engage papers of all sizes.

As newspapers struggle financially, membership in CUP is one of the first things they cut if they can’t see value for their dollars. “We weren’t getting the things that we wanted with our membership,” says Alison Roach, the editor-in-chief of Simon Fraser University’s The Peak, which left the organizaton this year. “CUP is such a difficult beast because it needs to cater to so many different needs.” Large papers with big budgets can pay up to $3,000 in membership fees, while papers with much smaller budgets pay significantly less while enjoying more benefits. Many of CUP’s services—access to legal counsel, for example—benefit smaller newspapers. In addition, the annual John H. McDonald Awards for Excellence allows journalists at small- and medium-sized papers to compete against bigger ones.

After laying off its 12 part-time staff in February, the organization turned to social media with the #keepCUPstrong campaign. It aimed to raise $50,000 online through crowdsourcing website Indiegogo and other fundraising events in Toronto and Ottawa. CUP earned $9,206 from 105 funders on Indiegogo; events brought the total up to just over $12,000. According to Lytvynenko, who is now the only full-time staff member, that is enough to keep the organization going until members pay their yearly dues.

Despite leaving CUP, some former members sought to reform the organization by stripping it down to its essential service: providing a community for student newspapers in Canada. Geoff Lister, who was the coordinating editor of the University of British Columbia’s The Ubyssey last year, and Josh Oliver, the former editor-in-chief of the University of Toronto’s The Varsity, jointly introduced a restructuring proposal at the annual general meeting in January. Though it was a close vote, their proposal didn’t pass.

Instead, the two editors independently launched the National University Wire to bring together non-CUP papers including The McGill Daily, The Dalhousie Gazette and now, The Peak. NUW is an RSS feed that allows its nine member papers to easily share content online. Lister asks for a $100 donation to support its back-end developer, which maintains the web service. Since he and Oliver aren’t trying to make money with NUW, they will waive the fee for members who can’t afford it. He wants to distribute news and unite former CUP members, though all papers are also welcome to join.

When Lister and Oliver introduced their proposal, Bryn Ossington was chairing the meeting. Ossington is the executive director of Wilfrid Laurier University Student Press and spent two years on CUP’s board of directors. He says the organization was often in “panic mode” dealing with problems such as its advertising sales company Campus Plus, which eventually declared bankruptcy in 2013. This distracted the board from creating a strategic plan for the future. Ossington thinks CUP would be in a different place if it had firmly established its purpose as a newspaper collective. “It’s a group of individual organizations that are coming together to put something together,” he says. “If they can’t define what that one thing is, then it makes no sense.”

Before wooing back old members, Lytvynenko is concentrating on serving those that are still part of CUP, while advocating for all student papers, non-members like The Queen’s Journal included. She recently introduced an RSS feed, in addition to the stories that she writes, gathers and edits for the CUP’s newswire. In addition, as of this year, members can use editorial from iPolitics, a comprehensive political news site.

CUP announced the iPolitics partnership along with a 10 percent discount on fees for returning members. Meanwhile, to save the organization money, the University of Ottawa’s paper The Fulcrum is financing and hosting the annual NASH conference in January. It’s CUP’s marquee event filled with networking, high profile speakers, panel discussions and some partying for good measure.

Though Roach admits last year’s conference seemed smaller than usual, she still hopes to attend. Even former members see value in what CUP has to offer, but right now, they’re just not willing to pay for it.

“That Was Then, This Is Now” explores the beginnings of some of Canada’s favourite writers and journalists

John Macfarlane, seasoned journalist and editor, did not have any experience in news reporting or journalism until his first year of political science at the University of Alberta (now the University of Calgary). Macfarlane got involved with student reporting and started writing for The Gauntlet , the university’s student paper. By the second year of his program, Macfarlane was editor of the paper.

Tony Burman gestures to the projector screen to his left, and it floods with riot footage from the Egyptian revolt against former president Hosni Mubarak. Al Jazeera’s cameras captured scenes that make Toronto’s G20 look like a playground squabble: mobs trying to topple a police van into the Nile, civilians shot while carrying bodies out of the mob’s warpath, ecstatic crowds in Tahrir Square when Mubarak announced his resignation.

Burman, the former head of Al Jazeera English and, before that, CBC News, presented a lecture titled “News Over Noise in the Age of Al Jazeera” as a part of Ryerson’s International Issues discussion series on January 18. Speaking without a microphone, Burman captivated the hall full of students and faculty, recounting memories of working as a broadcast journalist in the Middle East. He contrasted highlights such as witnessing Nelson Mandela being freed from prison with low points, like the ramifications of the American government turning on Al Jazeera during the war on Iraq. Burman stands firmly opposed to the superficial coverage of Eastern affairs generated by most of the American media outlets, and says his goal is to help his audience understand the whole story, not just a slice.

Since its 2006 launch, the English branch of the news network has given a voice to the voiceless in a part of the world where the media are predominantly comprised of what Burman calls “state-run propaganda machines.” The Al Jazeera effect has confirmed Burman’s belief that fair and fearless media have the power to trigger global change.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is making news himself for once, after an email correspondence critical of his own network was posted online for all to see.

In a private email to Gawker editor Nick Denton sent on January 15 (the pair are apparently friends), Williams criticized the popular media and gossip blog for not featuring enough TV content on the site’s front page—and more importantly, for not “torching” Lana Del Ray’s Saturday Night Liveperformance. Denton—unsurprisingly, given Gawker’s history—published Williams’s email on the site.

Of course, it didn’t seem malicious. All Denton did was share Williams’s email online. But it included language not expected from a 52-year-old who started as an intern with President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

It was Williams’s comment about YouTube sensation and “Brooklyn hipster” Lana Del Ray’s January 15 SNL performance that had NBC PR emailing Gawker to ask that the posted email be removed. “Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night,” Williams wrote, “booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show’s history, for starters.” Gawker instead updated the post, sharing the follow-up email from NBC PR, which asked for the post’s immediate removal in the name of maintaining NBC’s “trust and respect” for Gawker.

This hasn’t been the most exemplary week for our craft. It’s a week in which popular Independent columnist Johann Hari officially left his job because of plagiarism; in which disgraced journalist (and storyteller) Stephen Glass may be licensed to practise law; in which Rush Limbaugh proposed an investigation into the personal life of the ABC News journalist who had the gall to interview Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife.

Actually, let’s just deal with that last one for now. Some of you might have seen last Thursday’s GOP debate, wherein moderator and CNN anchor John King opened with a question to Gingrich about Brian Ross’s interview with the former speaker’s ex-wife, Marianne Ginther, who said that Newt had asked for an open marriage. To which Gingrich responded: “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”

“That Was Then, This Is Now” explores the beginnings of some of Canada’s favourite writers and journalists

“In Grade 12, my English teacher came to me and said The Sault Star was putting together something called the Teen Page,” says the Toronto Star’s award-winning investigative reporter Dale Brazao, remembering his first experience in journalism. Every Friday, the paper would dedicate one page to the four high schools in Sault Ste. Marie. Brazao’s teacher told him he had “the gift of storytelling” and urged him to apply. “So I volunteered, and I became the teen writer for [my school] in The Sault Star every Friday,” he recalls.