The Deadly Sins of Seven Days
Maybe, just maybe, CBC management had a point when it cancelled the provocative current affairs show
On the May 8, 1966 episode of This Hour Has Seven Days, Robert Fulford interviewed Marshall McLuhan, who spoke about the recent North American penchant for all things safety. “They want safety air, safety cigarettes, safety cars and safety programming,” the media guru said. But no one could accuse the three million-plus Canadians (about one […]
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 […]
The Great Newspaper War of Barry’s Bay
Conflict and drama in a small town
Highway 60’s single lanes span 254 kilometres from Huntsville to Renfrew in Eastern Ontario, through Algonquin Park, past the blink-and-you-miss-them hamlets of Whitney and Madawaska and the Murray Brothers Lumber Company, one of the largest employers in the region. The highway cuts through evergreen forests and spruce bogs, continuing southeast past my parents’ inn, until […]
Too High a Price
Yes, magazines are facing increasing pressure to meet advertiser demands. So far there's no threat to their integrity, say some editors yet
Last September, after less than a year on the job, Kim Pittaway resigned as editor-in-chief of Chatelaine, citing editorial interference from publisher Kerry Mitchell. Although there was no particular dispute that prompted her resignation, Pittaway says she had growing concerns over advertising issues. “I inevitably ended up negotiating into programs and approaches that I was […]
Celebrity Shocker!
Yes, celebrity journalism has begun to take up more airtime and editorial space. But for today's audiences, rich and famous means real news. Thanks a lot, Brangelina
Just minutes after the latest issue arrives in cardboard boxes, a boisterous Weekly Scoop office falls to a dead silence. It’s just been delivered from its Quebecor-owned printer in Aurora, and the editors and staff writers eagerly devour the result of their week’s work. At the recently established downtown Toronto headquarters on Peter Street, this […]
Liar, Liar
Yes, the credibility of newspapers is under fire. But to restore reader trust, several dailies are trying some fresh ideas and returning to some old ones
Sharon Burnside tilts her head upward and squints, as if the story she is about to tell is written not in her own memory but on her office ceiling. It happened in February 2005, a few weeks before she was set to start her new job as public editor of The Toronto Star. At a […]
Going Down
Yes, daily circulation is in serious decline. But in the nation's capital and elsewhere, newspapers are taking big risks to lure back readers and reinvent themselves
“He’s taking me to see the beast,” I think, as Scott Anderson leads me through an ill-lit warren of cubicles, through a door and down a bright, narrow hallway. He stops and, twisting a knob, swings another door open. The ceiling jumps eighteen metres above my head. Silent hulking machines, beset with buttons and knobs, […]
They Make Us Look Like Dorks!
Why many Canadian Muslims believe the media have an anti-Islam bias—and what two journalistic heavyweights are doing about it
The downtown Crowne Plaza Hotel in Ottawa seems an unlikely place for a conference on religion and the media. It’s about as secular as a building can be, save perhaps for those Gideon Bibles in every room. But on this weekend in late October about eighty people, mostly journalists, have registered for a two-day event […]
The View From Here
Foreign correspondents in Canada have some kind words about us and some harsh ones
“Canada is essentially a stalker, stalking the United States, right?” ranted MSNBC host Tucker Carlson last December. “Canada has little pictures of us in its bedroom, right? Canada spends all of its time thinking about the United States, obsessing over the United States. It’s unrequited love between Canada and the United States. We, meanwhile, don’t […]
Being John Ibbitson
Two powerful ideologies are battling for the Globe writer's mind, making him one of the most provocative and respected political columnists in the country
John Ibbitson’s evening is spiralling out of control – and there’s nothing he can do but sit back and smile. It’s a cold November night at the University of Toronto’s Innis College, and Ibbitson, The Globe and Mail’s national political affairs columnist, is in the middle of a book-tour-turned-verbal-slug fest. Ibbitson grips his leather chair […]
