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. Tainted Triumphs: The Great Awards Debate
Is commercial sponsorship shattering the image of Canada's journalism awards?
Minutes after being voted onto the board of the National Magazine Awards Foundation last October, Margaret Wente, editor of Report on Business Magazine, spoke up to pass on a message from her boss, Globe and Mail publisher Roy Megarry. The meeting had moved on to the perennial subject of replacements for retiring sponsors when Wente […]
Limited Visions
By constantly catering to complaints, newspaper ombudsmen have lost sight of the real issues
In his columns as ombudsman for The Toronto Star, the late Borden Spears was a pioneer in the field, setting his own agenda for criticism and constantly advocating higher standards in journalism. During his tenure in the 1970s, Spears attacked the “Credibility Gap” he saw developing as readers lost trust in the media. When one […]
No News Is Good News in Nova Scotia
Why the Chronicle-Herald is one of the worst newspapers in the land
Last November, when The Halifax Chronicle-Herald breathlessly reported on its front page that “lawyers and legal experts involved in the $3.million. plus Donald Marshall Jr. royal commission were wined and dined at taxpayers’ expense at the posh Halifax Sheraton Hotel,” it was the first time in seven years of coverage of the controversial Marshall affair […]
The Battler
Bob Verdun, the redoubtable editor of the Elmira Independent, socks it to politicians in four townships
Bob Verdun proudly admits to being a muckraker. He publishes without fear or favor and systematically subscribes to the old newspaper adage of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Today such sayings are as dated as press cards in fedoras. But as editor and owner of the aptly named Independent in Elmira, Ontario, Verdun […]
The Long Arm of the Media: A Critical Cause and Effect
The clincher was the suicide of a St. Catharines, Ontario man who was arrested for gross indecency in January 1985. A 42-year-old sales manager, he was videotaped engaging in homosexual acts in a public washroom. When his victimless crime was publicly unmasked by the press, the man drove down a country road and doused himself […]
From Hero to Villain to National Shame
Hoisted on their own hype, the media ran amok with the Ben Johnson story
Last September 27, in the dark hours of the morning, a sleepy press village in Seoul, South Korea, awakened to the sniff of scandal. Lights flickered on across the compound as word of what was later called “the smelliest scandal in the history of the Olympics” spread to reporters from around the world. Ben Johnson, […]
Theatre of war
The shock-and-shell chronicles of Matthew Halton
It’s his voice that gets to you first. That clear, unhurried voice that manages to convey a sense of urgency with just enough of a clipped British accent to make it sound authoritative. It’s a convincing voice that still demands attention. Even now, more than 40 years later, coming over a speaker system in a […]
Way Out of Bounds
How an ugly incident prompted the Star's Mary Ormsby to tackle locker-room sexism
In 1985, Toronto Star sportswriter Mary Ormsby became one of the first women in the history of the Canadian Football League to report from players’ locker rooms. By then, Ormsby had been in dozens of male athletes’ locker rooms. In her four years on the job, Ormsby, then 25, had learned to accept the reality […]
Harvesting Hope
George Atkins's farm radio network sows seeds of knowledge for 100 million subsistence farmers in the Third World
The elevator door slides open to a ninth-floor corridor tiled in black-and-white marble in a downtown Toronto office building. A sign on the receptionist’s desk announces that this is Varity Corporation, until two years ago known as Massey Ferguson. Behind the woman, on a cabinet, a miniature fleet of Massey-Ferguson tractors looks ready to harvest […]
