Matthew Halliday was the Senior Editor for the Spring 2010 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism. On the Eve of Destruction
In the mind of John Stackhouse, the Globe of the future could involve tearing down much of what readers value most. Will it mean brighter days or trigger an unmitigated disaster?
Visitors to The Globe and Mail’s Toronto headquarters often comment on how sedate the place is—nothing like the frenzied, shouty bullpen newsrooms of pop culture. It’s more akin to a mid-sized corporate office; a grey and workmanlike place where serious people are engaged in serious work, putting together a very serious newspaper. So by Globe […]
Anatomy of a Tragedy
After an incident involving a former Ontario politician and a bike courier, newsrooms leapt into action. A blow-by-blow account of what journalists got right and wrong—and a PR firm’s mysterious role in revealing the real story
Only three people know what happened on that Toronto street on the night of August 31, 2009. One is dead, and the other two aren’t talking publicly until the trial is over, if they ever will. The best version of events the rest of us can put together is this: At about 9:45 p.m., the […]
Farm publications rock
Much has been made of the new Canada Periodical Fund, which Masthead calls the “biggest shake-up” to hit mag-funding in a long, long time. We all had a fun time parsing the politics behind the changes the feds were making to magazine funding: Artsy, small circulation mags were upset to learn that they may get […]
Webster’s Digest
Reader's Digest Canada has over six million readers and an ambitious new editor hired from one of the country's most daring small magazines. But, asks Matthew Halliday, can Derek Webster save the old standby from irrelevance?
Late this spring, the editorial team at Reader’s DigestCanada (circulation 936,000, founded 1948) gathered in the magazine’s offices on Montreal’s René Lévesque Boulevard Ouest and listened to a two-hour spiel about how to bring the staid old brand up to date. The insight came courtesy of Derek Webster, founding editor of the award-winning but reader-starved Maisonneuve (circulation 5,000, founded […]
