“The NDP has the best track record in Canada for balanced budgets,” said Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the NDP, during the Munk Debate on Foreign Policy. A few people chuckle. “Oh, you’re right,” he paused. “I forgot I was in Toronto. There was one exception but it turned out Bob Rae was a Liberal.” Roy Thomson Hall echoes with the loudest laughter I’ve heard all night, but I don’t know why.

I make a mental note to Google “Bob Rae Liberal NDP” when all the bankers and businessmen can’t see me use my phone. By the end of the night, I’ve made lots of mental notes. I start to feel like I don’t deserve to be here, like my seat should have gone to someone who can laugh with the crowd for real—and not for the first or last time.

I came to Canada in 2008 to study at the University of Toronto. I was 18 and held an Egyptian passport, though I’d spent the previous 12 years living in the United Arab Emirates. Ever since, I’ve faced a barrage of unknowns from the social (why do people talk about the weather so much) to the practical (navigating the health care system).

I like to think I understand most of these areas now, but when I started journalism school in 2014, I realized there was a lot more I had to learn about Canada. On the first day of class, I was assigned a Toronto ward to cover throughout the municipal elections. I listened intently, then panicked all the way home. What’s a ward? Is it an electoral district? Why do they have different borders from a riding? I flipped through Discover Canada—a 68-page booklet of photos and facts that permanent residents receive to study for their citizenship tests. The word “ward” didn’t appear once.

I’m not the only one to go through this experience. Kate Sheridan is a freelance journalist who moved to Montreal from the U.S. in 2010. “You want to learn as much as you can but you don’t have the benefit of having these civics courses or the basic history courses that Canadians get in school,” she says. Another journalist, Mahnoor Yawar, moved to Toronto in 2014 from the United Arab Emirates to study journalism at Humber College. She’d already spent some time covering pop culture and technology in Pakistan, but wanted to cover crime, politics and other beats. There was a lot she didn’t know. “Honestly speaking,” she says, “I landed here knowing not much more than that Harper was prime minister.”

One of the first stories Yawar covered was Toronto’s 2014 municipal election. She spent many more hours reading and researching than her peers did. By the end of it, she was confident, but there was still unspoken context that no amount of reading would give her. “There’s always going to be that gap of what do things mean in context,” she says.

Even when I’m socializing with other journalists, I find myself lost amid the name-dropping. I just nod. Things became less funny when I started working on a story that required understanding Canadian television journalism. I didn’t grow up watching CBC or Global News; I grew up watching the five o’clock news in Cairo, and later, BBC.

I had no idea where to start, paralyzed by how much I didn’t know. I asked a journalism instructor if she could recommend books about the history of Canadian broadcasting? Instead, she put me in touch with a former television producer. Over an hour-long coffee, he gave me a rundown of everything I needed to know including the significance of news personalities and how television had changed over the years. I left with my head buzzing. I was lucky to get help, but I was still behind on my story. And asking for help from editors can be risky. Wouldn’t they just prefer to assign the story to someone who knows more?

I became a Canadian citizen just over a year ago, but the imposter syndrome lingers. I’m uneasy about my future in the industry. There are enough barriers without also worrying about asking stupid questions. (“What’s a classroom portable?” or “Why is this Canada versus Russia hockey game such a big deal?”).

The good news is there are some advantages. Sheridan, for example, has been able to avoid certain traps like regional and provincial biases. And, eventually, you end up learning more about current affairs than some non-journalist Canadians.

My friends tell me that Heritage Minutes are much more informative than Discover Canada, so I won’t be reaching for that book any time soon. As difficult, perplexing and embarrassing as it might be, I became a journalist because I like learning about experiences outside of my own—and the best way to learn about my new home is to keep being a journalist.

Steve Paikin strides out of his fourth-floor office just before 9 a.m. His billowing T-shirt and messy hair make him look different from the trim man in a suit familiar to TVOntario viewers. He cradles a stack of books and a newspaper under his arm. The host of The Agenda walks through the giant, red doors on the first floor of TVO’s midtown Toronto building. He hurries through a dark hallway and into a little room to wait for the makeup artist. Flicking on the fluorescent lights, he drops into a leather chair and unfurls The New York Times—the last of the four newspapers he reads each day. After makeup, he’ll head upstairs to write a blog post. Then, down to the set to shoot a two-on-one interview. Later, he’ll grab lunch with some sources, return to the set for three one-on-ones, attend an event hosted by the lieutenant governor and—finally—celebrate his son’s 22nd birthday at a hockey game. At home, he’ll read over questions, scripts and books for tomorrow’s tapings.

For Paikin, it’s just an ordinary day, except that opposite the makeup room is The Agenda’s brand new set. No more dark blue walls, dim lighting and harsh fonts. Instead, a giant screen lights up behind a glass desk and a red, lower case “a.”—the new logo. The set’s not the only change. The show’s 10th anniversary also means a new website and a focus on digital audiences, including the production of shorter segments that are easier to share online. But the producers of The Agenda—a show known for lengthy interviews and discussions—say they haven’t caved to broadcast trends used to woo younger audiences with more flash and less substance. Instead, they intend to do what the show has always done, just more effectively. A large part of that continuity is The Agenda’s host, Steve Paikin.

Everyone says he’s the same person onscreen and off a well-informed, enthusiastic political nerd who can’t stop watching (and tweeting) what’s going on around him. His colleagues wonder when he sleeps. Paikin and his show are earnest; executive producer Stacey Dunseath says, “He’s just a guy.” That’s what makes him a great interviewer. Without the drive for advertising dollars, the public television show has been a good outlet for Paikin’s slow, deeply inquisitive journalism. As he says, “We really are sort of daring to bore you.”

“9:17! Great!” Paikin jumps out of the chair and thanks the make-up artist. In the elevator, he scrolls through blog post ideas he has saved in his BlackBerry. He has just 45 minutes to write one before his first taping. In his office, he drops into a chair behind a desk cluttered with books and stacks of paper. The walls are just as crowded: two framed newspaper clippings lean against the wall, including a full-page National Post article Paikin wrote about a man’s return to Auschwitz 70 years after being freed from the concentration camp. “I am a victor. I have survived,” reads the headline. Paikin helped the man, Mordechai Ronen, tell the story of his life and liberation in a 2015 book, I Am A Victor.

The office is also a shrine to Paikin’s sports obsession. A Boston Red Sox letterman jacket and a Toronto Maple Leafs scarf are draped on the back of a chair. A giant picture of Ted Williams swinging a bat hangs above a grid of smaller photos of a young Paikin at various Super Bowl games.

Colourful campaign buttons and photos of Paikin posing with politicians cover another wall. Behind the desk, even more photos: him with his wife, daughter and sons. A wooden bookshelf is overstuffed with works by authors he’s interviewed. There’s no coffee mug anywhere—he never drinks coffee—just a bag of rice cakes and a jar of peanut butter for when things get busy.

Paikin types as news plays on his computer and a TV across from him runs hockey highlights. The consistent ding of emails arriving in his inbox adds to the noise. Suddenly, Paikin stops typing. “Oh! Premier photo op!” he says. He expands a video of Kathleen Wynne announcing the start of beer sales in Ontario grocery stores. Paikin whips out his phone, takes a picture of the screen and sends a tweet.

He splits his computer screen: one half streams Wynne’s announcement, the other holds his Word file. He turns down the volume on the hockey highlights and gets back to writing.

Growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, Paikin gave little indication he would end up the host of a serious current affairs show. In the fall of 1977, the 18-year-old first year walked into Hart House, the University of Toronto’s Gothic-revival student centre. Student clubs had booths inside the building, and Paikin spotted a table for the campus radio station. “And, literally, a light went on. Not literally, I guess. Figuratively, a light went on.”

He asked if anyone was doing play-by-play for Varsity Blues hockey and football games. When he found out there was an opening, he thought, “So I could be the Foster Hewitt of the U of T?” He wasn’t interested in much outside of sports. “I don’t think I read the front section of the newspaper until I was 19 years old.”

After becoming sports editor at The Newspaper, an independent campus publication, he landed a summer job at The Hamilton Spectator. But there was a catch. “When I got to the Spec, they said, ‘Okay, we’ll give you a summer job, but you can’t cover sports.’” Instead, he covered city council and school boards, and chased ambulances. “I really got turned onto news that summer, and I still loved sports but didn’t feel an obligation to make that my professional life. And ever since, it’s been news and current affairs.”

He did a master’s degree in broadcast journalism at Boston University (mostly so he could go to Red Sox games at Fenway Park); covered Toronto City Hall for CHFI, the sister radio station of what is now known as 680 News; and then applied for an opening at CBC. “I was really unsure, because he had never done TV,” says Howard Bernstein, the producer who gave him the job. “I sent him out to do a fake report with a crew and, to be honest, the report wasn’t great. But his personality was. I could tell that, with a bit of TV training, he could be good.”

A few years later, after a stint as news director for Global, Bernstein left for TVO and hired Paikin for a political series called Between the Lines. That led to a 12-year job as co-host of Studio 2, a daily current affairs show featuring interviews, debate panels and documentaries. But by 2006, it was getting dated and too expensive to produce, at least by public broadcasting standards. TVO executives asked producer Dan Dunsky to come up with something new.

“Take two!” Paikin says as three producers march into his office with a pile of papers. They’re here to do a second read-through of a segment to be taped later today. “Healthy eating, regular exercise, positive thinking.” His voice booms through the office. “They’re all keys to a better life, right? Wrong, according to our next guest…”

The producers nod and file out. But before Paikin can get back to proofreading his blog post, Dunseath marches in.

“Are you putting on the blue suit?” she asks. A new set means new colours and new clothes.

Paikin and Dunseath walk to the elevator, talking suits, segments and cancelled meetings. The next segment, about unpaid farm interns, is one of the first they’ll shoot on the new set. The issue is under-covered, but interesting. A perfect fit for The Agenda—and Paikin’s talents. “There’s nobody in the country who can do what Steve does,” says Dunsky, who wanted to showcase those talents when creating TVO’s new current affairs program. “To be able to assimilate enormous amounts of information on complex topics and then manage a polite, serious, civil, engaging conversation was really an idea that was ideally suited to his skills.”

The Agenda was born at just the right time. Just five years after 9/11 and three years into the Iraq War, “ammunition journalism,” as Dunsky calls it, dominated. “Every issue was being amped up into black-and-white, yes-or-no, it’s-this-or-it’s-that-way coverage,” he explains. “And what was being lost was any kind of nuance, context, sense of complexity of issues.” Paikin and Dunsky didn’t want people to walk away from their show with more ammunition to defend an argument they already believed. Instead, they wanted viewers to step away with more questions or an understanding that issues may be more complicated than they thought. TVO was the right place to give discussions the time they deserved.

Downstairs, the studio is buzzing. Producers pass around scripts and greet guests. On the set, the camera zooms in and out on a white shirt, green tie and navy jacket on the host chair. The crew is trying out new colours with the new background.

The set is bright. The dark blue background has been replaced by a huge, white, rectangular screen that shows simple graphics for context or creates ambience for an interview. A V-shaped desk that seats seven people rests on a red platform in the centre of the set. A smaller desk, for one-on-one interviews, is on a platform off to the side. The platforms have wheels that allow them to be moved in and out when needed.

Two bookcases have been moulded into the wall, with the books arranged more strategically than in Paikin’s office. Around the set, and on the bookshelf, are framed photos of politicians and Ontario scenes. In the centre of one shelf is a black-and-white portrait of Donald Pounder, a loyal fan who bequeathed a fortune to TVO. He marked a sum just for The Agenda—a reminder of how attached some viewers remain to public broadcasting.

The books, the photos—they’re all meant to represent Paikin’s interests and heroes. Early in the redesign, he said the only thing that mattered was the distance between him and his guests—he wanted them close by. Some people have never been on television and are often nervous on camera. Paikin knows that the best guests are relaxed, and the best interviews seem like casual conversations.

Discussions about the redesign began in mid-2015, but a larger digital movement was already underway at TVO. The network started by separating current affairs from TVO Kids and hiring John Ferri, former digital editor at the Toronto Star. His first task was to relaunch TVO’s website. Instead of driving readers to watch the shows on television, the new website focuses on keeping them reading and watching online. Next, the new department set its sights on The Agenda.

Over the last five or so years, the program moved from going live at 8 p.m. to taping in advance. One producer handled each episode, either an hour-long interview or a few related segments. Now, producers are responsible for individual segments, which are not necessarily related to the others in an episode. In fact, some will be available only online. The goal is to create content that’s easier to watch and share. Even the set was designed to make sure the viewing experience works on phones, tablets and desktops as well as on televisions.

All this might seem like The Agenda is abandoning its loyal, typically older viewers. On average, about 630,000 Ontarians tune in to at least part of an episode. Most are over 55. But Ferri isn’t looking for the 18-to-34 BuzzFeed demographic, focusing instead on people in their thirties, forties and fifties. He also believes the original viewers will stick around because the quality of the journalism hasn’t changed.

Behind the scenes, the show proceeds as it always has. On occasion, producers ask Paikin to leave a little breathing room at the end of a segment or in between scripted breaks so they can cut shorter pieces for a teaser. Viewers might watch a teaser or shorter segment on Twitter or Facebook, then go to TVO’s website to watch the full segment—that’s the goal, anyway. Ferri hopes to give people what they want on the platform of their choice.

But the show remains committed to in-depth journalism and still spends a full hour on topics when it makes sense. The tone, approach and topics won’t change. “Yes, it’s a little updated, but it’s still Steve in the foreground, still Steve asking a series of in-depth questions to people who aren’t the usual suspects on TV,” Ferri says. “That’s tricky, but that’s our commitment to the journalism.”

“Your suit is nearly as stylish as your guests’ suits,” someone says as Paikin walks into the control room. The host seems relaxed, even jovial. After a quick read-through and a small change—“Can somebody fact check: is it Sir Wilfrid Laurier University or Wilfrid Laurier University?”—Paikin gathers his papers and sits down with his two guests.

“Okay, here we go,” the director says. “In seven…six, recording, four, three, two, one…”

“Many small Ontario farms rely heavily on volunteers and unpaid interns for their labour force. Joining us now to consider how that squares with food movements focused on justice and sustainability…” he starts the intro. Paikin is in his element. He’s happy to let the rest of the team run the show in the nitpicky aspects of the redesign and the imagery. For him, all that matters is the journalism.

Paikin lives for good interviews and is proud of his best ones. In November 2011, former U.S. President Bill Clinton was scheduled to deliver a keynote address on globalization at Toronto’s Massey Hall. Usually, the speech is followed by an on-stage interview, though the interviewer is rarely a journalist. Two days before the speech, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce called Paikin. It took him less than half a second to say yes.

Clinton’s office insisted on seeing the questions ahead of time; Paikin grudgingly agreed. He hoped to ask about Hillary Clinton’s files, the Republican presidential nomination race, the Keystone Pipeline. Clinton’s staff turned them all down. Eventually, they settled on eight questions that weren’t as edgy as Paikin wanted.

Backstage, he introduced himself to Clinton. “Can we talk about the interview for a moment?”

Clinton put his hands in his pockets and, in his Arkansas accent, said, “Ask me anything.”

Paikin abandoned the agreed-upon questions. He would do what he does best: take cues from his interview subject.

When the two finally settled on stage, he opened with a little history of some of the famous moments in Canadian politics that had happened on the same stage. He then turned to Clinton and said, “From north of the border, your political system looks utterly dysfunctional. Is it?”

The audience laughed.

After a pause, Clinton said, “Not completely.”

More laughter. Applause.

They went on to discuss many of the subjects the staff had told Paikin not to, including Newt Gingrich, the U.S. budget and the Occupy movement. Afterward, Paikin shook Clinton’s hand and later wrote, “That was one of the best bloody nights of my life.”

It’s not hard to see that he gets most excited when talking about politics—especially Ontario politics. He has written one book on hockey and one on the Holocaust, but five about politicians. In the introduction of his first book, 2001’s The Life: The Seductive Call of Politics, he wrote that he has a dirty secret, one he says no self-respecting journalist is ever supposed to admit. “I like politicians,” he wrote. “At least, the vast majority of the ones I’ve met.”

While stories about fumbles sell more newspapers, Paikin focuses on what makes political life alluring. And while he admits that a few are “corrupt, evil, vain, ignorant, incompetent and a whole bunch of other terrible things,” he finds many others are in it for the right reasons. He talks at length about Ontario’s 18th premier, Bill Davis, in many of his books and insisted on putting up a photo of Lincoln Alexander, the first Black MP, on set. “I like the fact that Lincoln’s here keeping an eye on me every time I do a program.”

Paikin’s knowledge of politicians and their motives comes through when he interacts with them on and off The Agenda. His interviews are less combative and more curious and conversational. He asked former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty about his relationship with his father before talking about the gas plant scandal.

It has also made him a popular choice as moderator for several federal and provincial leaders’ debates. In 2006, CBC’s senior reporter Keith Boag called to tell Paikin he’d be moderating his first federal debate. “I think I swore at him,” Paikin says. The networks had already considered several prominent names but couldn’t decide on a suitable choice. It couldn’t be someone with little knowledge of politics. It couldn’t be someone who was a big television personality. It couldn’t be someone who was strongly associated with CBC or CTV. And it couldn’t be anyone the parties vetoed.

Early on, Paikin and debate producer Mark Bulgutch agreed that the less the audience heard from the moderator, the better. Bulgutch, who praises Paikin’s ability to stay out of the way and still maintain control, says he’s not a typical TV personality. There are a few of those, especially at the local level: they come in an hour before the show and just read what’s in front of them. “This,” he says of Paikin, “is a journalist who’s on television.”

“That went well!” a producer says in the control room.

The crew members drop their headphones and step away from the monitors. Onscreen, Paikin bids a friendly goodbye to the guest he’s been interviewing via Skype, a soft-spoken university professor with knowledge of soil quality and treatment. It’s a nuanced discussion about a topic that has the potential to influence how we grow crops and how the rest of the food chain works, but it’s by no means exciting. The professor speaks slowly and quietly. This is not typical television. Some journalists might even call it boring.

Current affairs shows are always at risk of being boring, says Bernstein. It’s incumbent on producers to frame discussions so audiences understand why they’re important. The bigger problem is that shows like The Agenda have lost their ability to tell stories through interviews, says Bernstein. “They’ve become a way to get facts on the air,” he says, “and I don’t think facts are what television is good at.”

John Doyle, television critic at The Globe and Mail, thinks there’s a different reason current affairs programs are boring. “It is difficult to find experts or pundits who are actually good on television,” he says. “And this applies to print journalists. They don’t take it very seriously. They show up and say predictable things, and they say it in a very predictable manner.” Doyle sees a severe lack of energy on Canadian news shows. “For all the craziness you can get on Fox, on CNN, on MSNBC, there is an admirable vigour and liveliness to the discussions that you don’t get on Canadian television.”

Doyle and Bernstein agree a lack of diversity is part of the problem. “I think some of that is sheer laziness on the part of Canadian broadcasters,” Doyle says. He thinks The Agenda is often predictable because none of the guests have anything contrarian to say—part of the trap of working for a public broadcaster: opinions can’t be too far off the mainstream political spectrum.

Bernstein says it’s not just about soft spoken voices, but who the guests are. In an early 2014 blog post titled “Where, Oh Where, Are All The Female Guests?” Paikin wrote about the difficulty he and his producers face booking female guests. When asked to go on the show, women often said they weren’t the best experts on a topic, that they had to stay home with their kids that night or even that their roots were showing.

On Twitter, many people responded angrily, using the hashtag #womenonlyexcusesforpaikin, with lines like, “All of my bras are in the dryer.” Some felt Paikin meant well but criticized him for the language he used and his dismissal of systemic issues that made women respond in those ways.

Others, including Bernstein, feel the post highlighted a larger issue with the show: the producers aren’t trying hard enough to find new female guests, relying instead on a small number of regulars. “If I see Janice Stein one more time, I’m going to throw up. I know what she’s going to say,” Bernstein says of the political scientist and founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. “Look for someone else. She’s not the only woman in the country who deals with current affairs.”

“I don’t know if the camera’s caught this…what just happened?”

In one of his first interviews on the new set, Paikin speaks to three guests about their efforts to include the history of residential schools in education curricula. One of the guests, Theodore Fontaine, talks about Broken Circle, his memoir of 12 years in a residential school. In a moment the camera didn’t catch, Fontaine clutches something in his hand, and another guest pats his back. Paikin looks away from his list of questions to ask about the gesture.

Fontaine pulls out a green, square pin with a red heart on it. A 12-year-old girl gave it to him when she heard his story. To him, the heart is a symbol of his great-great-great-grandfather, whose name translates to “Two Heart.” He clutches the pin and closes his eyes. “I go to my grandparents and my great-great-grandparents for strength and reassurance that what I’m doing is right.” It’s a slow and quiet moment—likely one that won’t be used in any flashy ads. But it illustrates how The Agenda lets guests talk about difficult subjects, and viewers learn something new with storytelling instead of a list of facts and statistics.

Paikin keeps a list of basic interviewing rules just above his computer, part of his endless quest to get better: no hyperbole; no overloading; you paddle, I steer.

“Every single day of my life, I violate these principles,” he admits. He calls his position at the public broadcaster a “perch” where he can do the in-depth work he loves. TVO has a wholly different mission than other networks—and that’s why he’s been there for 23 years.

The Review would like to thank the following organizations for donating items towards the Review’s 2015 fundraiser event.

Five writers gather in a dimly lit room on a Sunday evening. Black shutters and posters line the deep purple walls of the second floor of The Central, a Toronto bar. Classic rock bounces up from the deserted first floor and a faint smell of urine wafts from the nearby bathroom. Three writers sit around a chipped wooden table, the other two lounge on a grey couch. They all pitch headlines.

Editorial meetings for The Beaverton, a Canadian satirical news site, are about headlines, not story ideas. Editor-in-chief Luke Gordon Field reads from his laptop: “Conservatives unveil last minute attack ad accusing Justin of supporting Kansas City.” The old radiator by the window gurgles to life as the writers snicker.

“Like he was seen wearing a blue hat.”

“And Kansas City has blue uniforms…”

“But it was really a Blue Jays hat.”

Laughter means everyone likes the idea. Field will write the story later that night. The others read headlines they’ve prepared, but the Kansas City story is one of the few that gets the go-ahead. The joke doesn’t really need explaining.

To Field, the perfect headline is equal parts funny and attention-grabbing, sometimes provocative and reveals something true about Canada or society. He echoes what many other satirists believe: fake news can offer something traditional news or commentary can’t, won’t or shouldn’t. While journalists are confined to facts, satirists point out absurdities.

The Beaverton’s founding editor Laurent Noonan loved The Onion, but he couldn’t see a Canadian counterpart. So, in 2010, he decided to create one. He recruited writers, built a website and later created a print edition that he handed out to strangers on the street—while dressed in a beaver costume.

Field, a stand-up comedian, joined the writing team soon after and, in 2012, took over the editorial side when Noonan traveled to teach English in France. In December 2014, Noonan died and Field became the official editor-in-chief and the one in charge.

The Beaverton has gained a steady following over the past five years. In May 2013, a story about astronaut Chris Hadfield’s return from space, “Hadfield comes home to $1.37-million Rogers phone bill,” caught people’s attention and caused a spike in readership. A Hong Kong newspaper even reported the story as real news. By August 2015, the website averaged about 400,000 readers per month. In October, election coverage pushed those numbers up to 750,000.

While in the U.S. The Onion is the authoritative satirical outlet, Canadian outlets run on shoestring budgets and have trouble staying afloat long enough to establish themselves as the publication of record. Halifax’s Frank magazine launched in 1987 and became popular. Another version of the magazine, based in Ottawa, began publishing two years later. It shut down in 2004, reappeared and closed down yet again in 2008 in the face of online competitors. It resurfaced in 2013 using an online subscription model and print editions.

The Lapine and The Syrup Trap are two other fake news publications that began within a few years of The Beaverton. The Trap’s founder and editor-in-chief Nick Zarzycki finds it troubling that Canada doesn’t have a widely-read national humour publication because he believes satire is a vital part of any functioning democracy. Both publications cover politics in their own style, but not as frequently as The Beaverton.

During the federal election, Field’s site created fake platforms for each party and ran articles from the silly (“Justin Trudeau removed by mall security for walking up wrong escalator”) to the skewering (“Globe and Mail heroically defend country’s most vulnerable rich by endorsing Conservatives”). After the election, The Beaverton ran an article titled “50% female cabinet appointments lead to 5000% increase in guys who suddenly care about merit in cabinet.” Many journalists at traditional news outlets made the same point, but The Beaverton captured the argument in a single headline.

Canadian satire and parody researcher James Onusko sees an edge in much of the political coverage. While he acknowledges that some the site’s stories are silly, he appreciates its more hard-hitting material, such as questioning the integrity of political parties. “There were some mainstream sites that didn’t even go there,” he says. To Onusko, fake news websites can be better at commentary because their biases are usually more obvious. “Both are trying to report what’s going on, one is just doing it tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time doing it honestly in many ways.”

Still, some issues may not be suitable for satirical commentary. In August 2015, Ashley Burnham (previously Callingbull) became the first First Nations woman to be named Mrs. Universe. A Beaverton article with the headline “Ashley Burnham crowned Mrs. First Cree Woman to Gain National Coverage if She Disappears” said Burnham “is showing all those aboriginal girls out there, that as long as you look like a supermodel and get on TV, you too can get the same news coverage as a white girl should you ever be abducted.”

The piece caused a backlash on Twitter and The Beaverton apologized and took the piece down. “The point of the article was to call out the Media for their failure to properly cover missing and murdered Aboriginal women,” Field wrote in an apology on The Beaverton’s Facebook page. “We will happily give a quote to any news outlet wishing to write a story on the backlash to this article, provided they agree to also do a week of coverage on missing and murdered Aboriginal women.”

Field wants to make people laugh, and he knows good comedy can cut to the bone, but he admits some ideas might be more difficult to get right than others.

“If you talk about what used to be, we’re going to be what used to be.”

That’s what Martin Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, tells his staff.

Last week, the Canadian Journalism Foundation held its last talk of the year at Ryerson University, where the National Post’s Anne Marie Owens interviewed Baron about the Washington Post’s digital transformation. So far, Baron’s plans seemed to have worked. More people accessed the Washington Post’s website in October than The New York Times—and that’s saying something.

Baron’s arrival isn’t the only thing that sparked a move towards digital, though. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, giving the paper time and money to experiment with digital products, sparking a series of changes in the Washington Post’s daily operations.

1. Change in the newsroom:

Baron says the Washington Post took a lot of steps to create a digital culture in the newsroom. Some of those were physical, like trying out new seating arrangements in the newsroom; others had a lot more to do with mindset. “Everyone is our competition,” Baron said. That means anything on the web, not just news organizations. Baron says he only spends 10 minutes talking about the newspaper in his daily afternoon meetings; the rest is spent on online content.

But where does all this online content come from?

2. What happens at night:

A group of young journalists spend their nights at the Post every day. From 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., they’re looking for stories in the nooks and crannies of the internet. By the time morning comes, these stories have already been posted, and they often become the basis for a bigger story.

Often, the staff will have found someone who wants to tell their story, but instead of sending a reporter out to cover that story, they’ll work with the writer to edit and vet the story until it’s ready for publication. Then, they’ll slap on a headline like “This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps.” Sometimes, those stories lead to deeper investigations. A story from a Bill Cosby accuser, for example, led a team at the Post into a 10-day investigation.

3. Wheels on luggage:

To Baron, none of this is salvation. “I remember when the tablet was supposed to save the industry,” he said. “We need to get past the idea that this one thing is going to save the industry.”

Instead, Baron wants to focus on the “wheels on luggage”. Yes, we’ve put a man on the moon, he says, but we put wheels on luggage—and only one of those things affected people’s experiences. That’s what he wants to do: he wants to focus on the smaller details like the video or graphic that adds a little more to the story. But there’s always resistance and mourning in the newsroom. Resistance to the new stuff and mourning for what’s gone or what could soon be lost.

What’s missing? “Customer or readers?” Owens asks. Baron says he’s gotten flak for using “customers,” but to him, they’re the same.

Throughout the talk, Baron seemed more like a businessman than anything. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just something to think about.

The little ghosts of Snapchat have been taking over my Twitter feed this last month.

We’ve talked about how Snapchat is being used for a kind of citizen journalism. But not much has been said about how professional journalists and news outlets are using the app—at least not in Canada.

These little white ghosts on my Twitter feed have replaced the logos of news outlets like Huffington Post Canada and CBC Toronto, promoting their Snapchat coverage on Twitter.

Despite the publicity these organizations have given to their Snapchat accounts, they seem to still be experimenting with the tool, and each one of them seems to be using it a little differently.

The Toronto Star, for example, seems to be doing more basic coverage, like snaps of their front cover or notes about the weather.

Screenshots from the Toronto Star’s Snapchat on October 28.

On the other hand, Global News has taken to posting their headlines in a lighthearted style. Instead of images, they use more emojis. They also ask direct followers to go to their website for more on a specific story.

Screenshots from Global News’ Snapchat on October 28.

Still, more dramatically different are the posts Canadian Press reporter David Friend used to cover the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The coverage was much more personal and more in the style of something you would see on a video blog. Most of the snaps involve Friend talking to the camera about his day at TIFF, creating a relationship between Friend and the viewers that is not the stiff one of reporter to audience. For example, throughout the coverage, Friend mentions that he’s not interested in certain parties or that he was hardly able to keep his eyes open on the last day.

CBC Toronto is another outlet that’s been experimenting with Snapchat. Associate producer Nicole Brockbank says that one way they’ve used Snapchat is to cover Blue Jays games. A reporter went to the game and took videos and pictures of big moments. The reporter also used Snapchat to take casual streeters of people at the game. In that way, Snapchat seems to be useful for providing the experience of a specific moment or mood that the audience isn’t there to see. In fact, Huffington Post Canada covered a Raptors game the very same way.

Brockbank says that the CBC Toronto digital team is trying out the medium in different ways, but that ultimately, whatever reporters do with Snapchat, they would likely use it to stitch a narrative together.

It’s clear that Canadian media is toying with Snapchat, but it’s still unclear how big of a role it will play in future coverage. Brockbank says that she sees potential in using Snapchat to cover news in the field at some point in the future. The reporter would be on scene, take a couple of shots and provide an update on camera. But as always, time would be a factor. Would a reporter have time to cover a scene with all the existing methods as well as Snapchat?

So far, Snapchat doesn’t seem to be a place to cover every type of story, but the stories that do get covered there are being presented in a different context that’s often more lighthearted, personal and about the moment.