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. Ms. Taken
Why the media are missing the message of Canadian feminism
There hasn’t been another political movement like it. Of all the grass-roots revolutions born of the idealism and outrage of the sixties, the women’s movement is the only one that came and actually stayed. Who even remembers the youth movement, when students organized, demonstrated and hitchhiked across the country, so alarming their elders with their […]
Upwardly Immobile
In the newsrooms of the nation a woman's place is seldom at the top. Gillian Steward and a handful of others are the exceptions that prove who rules
It is becoming increasingly apparent that if employers want to avoid legislation requiring them to institute affirmative action programs, they are going to have to do much better on a voluntary basis at hiring and promoting women into higher-paying jobs and employers should stop assuming that women can’t do nontraditional jobs: if they have the […]
Lost in gloss
Searching for substance in Canada's magazines
If only this were printed on scratch’n’sniff stock, there would be so much less explanation required. A smell, slightly sickly, a bit cloying, an odor caused by clothes too warm and yesterday’s cut flowers and the suffocating sorrow of the viewing room, yes-for this is how one who once worshiped Canadian magazines feels when invited […]
Quasi-Quotes
With all the fixing, mixing and mis-interpreting, reading is no longer believing
Carsten Stroud likes the way people talk. He drops in and hangs out with bikers, cokeheads and street kids, hoping to capture the way they sound in his magazine pieces. To him, the inarticulate are eloquent. But in March, 1983, Stroud was confronted by the prototypical reporter’s nightmare: having someone deny ever having talked to […]
Time, Gentleman, Please
For 15 years, The Body Politic had led the fight for gay rights. Three men had been at its heart. They'd ridden the highs and somehow lived with the lows. But by late last year it was clear: for TBP the day was over
Gerald Hannon had a hand in every issue of The Body Politic but one. He bought the premier TBP at a gay dance in the winter of 1971, joined the paper’s collective soon after, and wrote an article for the second issue. That one he hawked on street corners in Toronto. “Gay liberation!” he hollered, […]
Reporter in a Strange Land
For a Latin American correspondent the idea was to trace the events and issues-not to shape them
It was one of those gorgeous Salvadoran mornings: sunshine like soda water, an earlfj mist burnt away, the rising heat sharp and dry. There was a slight breeze. Following a 36-hourmarch, much of it under sniper fire, the Lenca infantry battalion of the Salvadoran Army was bivouacked atop a hill called Ocotepeque in the northeastern […]
Nicaragua Through U.S. Eyes
Why the Star leaves it to AP
Last June 25, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill giving $100-million to the contras, the terrorist group fighting to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua. After four months of debate and intense lobbying, arm-twisting and promises by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government had taken another step to prevent what Reagan […]
Not the Full Story
Studio D, the women's unit of the National Film Board, has been stymied by sexist decisions. Or so the media reported.
Men at the film board, as they now sheepishly admit, sneered at the women’s unit when it began 12 years ago, but the jokes abruptly dried up after the stunning popular success of Studio D …And yet, preposterously, Studio D, which the film board should be celebrating and applauding, is imperiled. Even as its popularity […]
Faults of the Fourth Estate
This year’s Ryerson Review of Journalism reflects the interests and backgrounds of the small group of students who created it. After two intense years of reading every magazine and newspaper that came our way, painfully learning reporting and interviewing skills, struggling over leads, transitions and the sheer hard work of writing, we embarked on the […]
Tricks of a Trade
How the Star and the Sun Played their cards in the Wayne Parrish-John Robertson switch
It was around five in the afternoon last September 3 and The Toronto Sun’s flamboyant columnist, John Robertson, had come to the ballpark early. But the Blue Jays weren’t on his mind as he moved through the press box at Exhibition Stadium. He was thinking instead about a job that had come open at the […]
