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. Tuned In, Turned Off and Burned Out
Journalists who want to change the world sometimes change their minds
It used to be fun. It used to be challenging. It used to be what you wanted to do with your life. But it isn’t anymore. Deadlines are getting harder to meet, fresh stories harder to find and the long hours harder to endure. The money you once thought didn’t matter now does. And the […]
Trial by Headline
Do newspapers trample on the principles of justice for the sake of a sensational story?
Late in the afternoon of Friday, March 4, 1988, in a non-descript Toronto courtroom, a 25-year-old Greek immigrant was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 30 days in prison, to be served on weekends. Given the rather commonplace nature of the crime, in a city of over two million, that should have been the […]
No Small Affair
There was no time for Doug Small to contemplate what sort of impact his budget leak story would have. As the broadcast journalist raced across Ottawa with the proof-a small pamphlet detailing the highlights of last April’s budget-he never dreamed it would spark a national controversy. Politically, the leak spelled yet another scandal for the […]
The Importance of Being Harry
Can the media justify the anguish of private lives thrust into the glare of public scrutiny?
Toronto lawyer Harry Kopyto offers his media storehouse like a host ushering a guest to the buffet table. “What do you need?” he asks. “Print? Video? Radio?” The chubby 42-year-old proudly claims that more than 1,000 articles about him have appeared in local papers during his 15 years as a lawyer. In Kopyto’s study, where […]
Tom, Joan, Norman & I
The confessions of a self-proclaimed Canadian Tom (saturation! ...liberated! ...dramatic!) Wolfe groupie
The only thing I can say with certainty about the New Journalism is that it changed my life. I was introduced to it in the late sixties, mostly through the works of Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer. They had very different-in some respects, totally opposed-approaches to the writing of journalism, but they made an equivalent […]
It Never Happened
In the Chinese media no one was killed in Tiananmen Square
I am not aware of the students at any time having been blamed, although they have been punished, for what culminated in the slaughter on June 4, which you out there call the Tiananmen massacre. But you’re wrong, you see. Nobody was killed on Tiananmen Square If you think you saw people being killed on […]
The Watson Report
Patrick Watson faces the public through the microphones of CBC’s “Radio Noon.” It is October 12, 1989, and he has just been appointed chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The station is inundated with callers who want to know how $140 million in government cuts to the network will be administered. Watson answers-quoting policy to […]
Licence to Quill
Wielding poison pencils, editorial cartoonists poke fun at public figures, though sometimes their thrusts cut both ways
Andy Donato’s fourth floor office at The Toronto Sun is a mess. The floor is littered with empty boxes and scraps of paper. His desk-assuming there is a desk-is covered with papers, notes and assorted office paraphernalia. In the corner of the room sits an easel and a potpourri of pens, felts and brushes. A […]
What’s up Doc?
Canadian filmmaker Paul Cowan personifies the financial struggle of Canada’s independent documentary community. When Cowan failed to find $400,000 to make a documentary about Donald Miarshall Jr., but secured $2 million to produce the idea as a movie, he lent credence to what Canadian documentary maker Magnus Isacsson called a “crisis in documentary.” This crisis […]
Point of View
Peter Raymont makes documentaries that call for change - but the CBC thinks he protests too much
Director Peter Raymont’s most recent documentary The World is Watching is much like Raymont himself: earnest and passionate, it argues that the American news media slant their coverage in response to political pressure and advertising revenues. At the heart of the film is a scene at a Nicaraguan farming cooperative devastated by Contra rebels in […]
