Nailing the Nobel prediction, for once
Alice Munro’s winning of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature has sparked the kind of nationalist chest-thumping that Canadian journalists usually reserve for gold medals or war anniversaries. The flag-waving didn’t start on Thursday though; it was preceded by a week of patriotic guesswork—maybe this would be our year, with a victory for Munro or […]
Is this thing on?
The NHL didn’t make it two weeks before the first ginned-up controversy of the 2013-14 season. Earlier this week, San Jose Sharks rookie, Tomas Hertl, scored four goals against the New York Rangers; one was a show-offy, between-the-legs move. Two days later, TSN’s Farhan Lalji asked Sharks alternate captain, Patrick Marleau, if Hertl’s performance fit […]
Don’t vote then tweet
There are a lot of things us journalists (or anyone else, for that matter) can’t do on election day in Canada. We can’t broadcast the returns from any district until polls have closed in all districts (CBC accidentally flouted that one in 2011, after several people said they would intentionally do so). We can’t release […]
When is a premium site not a premium site?
The Dallas Morning News – America’s 12th-biggest paper – woke up last week and realized, like Basil coming back to the hotel, that its wall was all wrong. After more than two years, The News announced that it was taking down its “hard” paywall, and replacing it with two versions of its site: a standard, free one, […]
Area man resurrects blog
Don’t throw us on the cart of dead people just yet—the RRJ blog is, in fact, alive and well. The 2013-14 masthead of the Review has found its sea legs, so starting next week, this space will get regular updates with posts about what’s going on in Canadian journalism. If there’s something you’d like to see us […]
Rogers M-School internship misses the mark
Emily Candy does not mince words. “The internships that we have now are all over the place,” says Rogers Publishing’s peppy HR manager with unexpected frankness. “We have people who are really getting some good mentorship from senior editors, and then we have people who are just in the Flare fashion closet helping out […]
Where is travel journalism heading?
As freelance budgets for print media publications shrink, the future of travel journalism in Canada may lie in custom publishing, digital media, and the tapping of the American market. “Those days when a magazine could pay their way, that’s generally not happening anymore,” says James Little, the former editor of explore magazine, the outdoor adventure […]
The fight for freelancer rights
On March 4, 2013, veteran freelancer Jay Teitel wrote an open letter to Transcontinental Media, the publishing giant whose titles include Elle Canada, Canadian Living, and Style at Home. He was firm, and maybe even frustrated. But he was honest. “Transcontinental is effectively proposing that I willingly agree to let you steal a portion of my […]
Glossing over writers’ rights
One month after Transcontinental Media released the appallingly unfair changes to its writers’ contract, it has announced the launch of Véro, a French magazine for women in Quebec–a move that is weighted with contradiction for its writers. Given its recent whining about the impact of social media and digital technology on the print industry, which it claims are […]
How to train your journalists
The Fellowship in Global Journalism at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto is a journalism program unlike any other. “What we decided to do was, instead of teaching a specialty in the course of a journalism degree, which is what a lot of places do, we would actually go and […]
