This is a joint byline for the Ryerson Review of Journalism. All content is produced by students in their final year of the graduate or undergraduate program at the Ryerson School of Journalism. Mic Check
Our reporter tunes in to the bellicose world of talk radio and discovers that there's more than meets the ear
Bill Carroll arrives at the offices of CFRB 1010 in downtown Toronto inhaling a pastry and gulping from a bottle of Five Alive. He’s got half an hour to kill before his show begins. It’s the same morning show – one of Toronto’s top-rated – that he’s been hosting for seven years. As usual, Carroll’s […]
Narcissus in Chief
Why are the heads of so many publications so self-absorbed?
At a time when every newspaper editor in the country is “revisioning” his or her paper (i.e. making it palatable to a coming generation of Xbox-ed Netheads), you’d think that the redpen set wouldn’t have the time to pontificate the way they used to from the safety of their editorial board cubicles. And yet, the […]
Ethical Dilemma
"We felt this enormous weight of undeserved power"
In 1995, I went to Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, to produce a documentary on the Ebola outbreak. When I arrived, news teams from all over the world were clamouring to get inside the ward. But local and international medical staff refused to let any journalists in. Victims were dying a […]
Whyte Noise
With his new sexed-up, hyped-up, juiced-up, jazzed-up Maclean's, Ken Whyte is out to raise a ruckus. But if his cerebral-meets-trashy approach doesn't bring the weekly out of its financial death spiral then the next sound you'll hear is Rogers Media giving him the boot
Inside the main theatre of the Toronto Centre for the Arts, past and present Maclean’s staffers are about to gorge themselves on dinner, celebrating both the one hundredth anniversary of their magazine and its radical new design. They’ll dine under a row of chandeliers, joined by a mishmash of Canadian celebrities – Kim Cattrall, Gordon […]
There’s Something About Mary Lou
Mary Lou Finlay and CBC have broken up and made up more times than she can recount. Still, she "couldn't imagine leaving." Then again, you never know
It’s a crisp and sunny Sunday afternoon and I’m standing inside the sparse lobby at the University of Toronto’s Innis College. I’m looking for Mary Lou Finlay in a crowd of about 30 people. I don’t see the face I’ve memorized from a small, frosted picture on CBC’s website. But I do hear a familiar […]
At a Loss for Words
More visuals, fewer words: the new artistic renaissance in Canadian magazines and newspapers
On a late wintry afternoon, Dave Donald zigzags through the magazine aisles at the Indigo bookstore in downtown Toronto. Chatelaine‘s former senior associate art director points to New York magazine. “There’s a lot of buzz around this,” he says. Then he looks for Chatelaine and Canadian Living, commenting, “Must be in family mags.” Sure enough, he twirls around and finds both […]
Spring & Summer 2005
April 13, 2005 Re: Samantha Israel’s “Blogging the Spotlight: The Rise of Online Journalism” (Spring 2005) In another story about the no-holds-barred cage match between journalists and bloggers, Samantha Israel writes that she has been corrected only once by a reader. Let’s go for two. Ms. Israel writes: “More than arrogant, some old-time reporters think […]
Short Change
More and more papers charge for online content, but is that really where the money is?
There’s now a fee for what once was free. It wasn’t that long ago that you could sit down at your computer, type in the URL of your favourite Canadian daily, and get all your news for free. Try that nowadays and there’s a good chance you’ll be asked to enter your credit card number […]
Fear Factor
War is more dangerous for correspondents than ever before, says veteran CBC reporter Brian Stewart. But while fear can be a liability on the front lines, it can also keep you alive
I’ve known foreign correspondents who confess to becoming so addicted to war, they feel lost without a new one to cover. Although I spent a decade in and out of conflict zones, I never had that problem. The Fear Factor, as well as aging, saw to that. It never caused me to flee a war […]
His Country
In his daily column for the Globe, his Screech Owl books for kids, his monthly column for Cottage Life and his hardcover memoirs, Roy MacGregor captures the waves and ripples of Canadian Life
“I’ve been in journalism for 30 years and this past spring I had my first story rejected,” Roy MacGregor says in Kelsey’s restaurant in Kanata, the suburb just outside of Ottawa where he lives. The Western Alumni Gazette, the alumni magazine of the University of Western Ontario (where he attended journalism school) requested MacGregor write […]
