Smooth Operators
The Toronto Star switchboard has built a legendary reputation. And when it comes to tracking down underground criminals or imprisoned reporters, these ladies always get the call
It was after noon on October 29, 1977, when the phone rang in The Toronto Star newsroom. Novice reporter Richard Brennan, working on the rewrite desk, picked up his line. “I want to speak to a reporter,” a woman said. “I was just taken hostage in Northtown Shopping Plaza.” Held captive for half an hour, […]
Selling Out?
Shopping magazines are flying off the shelves. But at what cost to editorial integrity?
It’s 9:30 A.M. on a blue-sky Wednesday in December, and while most of Toronto’s urbanites are settling into desks and cubicles across the city, a zealous crowd is gathering at the Garment Factory Lofts in an industrial strip in the east end. Here, showcasing racks heavy with furs, satins, and leathers in a blur of […]
Newman’s Own
Here's what the ambitious Global anchor gave up in 2001: a high-profile, high-paying job at ABC. Here's what he's got now: a cramped office, a shoestring budget and ratings that threaten the aging Lloyd and Peter
In the middle of a cattle feedlot, an hour south of Calgary, Kevin Newman is sitting in a rental car. It’s 3:05 in the afternoon on May 20, 2003, and his show, Global National News with Kevin Newman (GN), is 25 minutes to air. Newman is thinking about mad cows and what he will do […]
Death in the Community
Thirty-four-year-old Stephen Shaw excelled in capturing the heartbeat of local life. Then without warning, his heart stopped minutes after he won his second Reporter of the Year Award
When Stephen Shaw died on March 6, 2004, it wasn’t national news. It didn’t make The Globe and Mail, and was buried in the GTA section of The Toronto Star. But on March 10, the front-page headline of Oshawa This Week read, “We’ll miss you Stephen.” For weeks, Shaw’s newspaper was flooded with condolences and […]
The War on ‘Terrorist’
Why the semantic gymnastics in my article on the Beslan hostage-taking? Because the "T-word" has been hijacked
I was just one letter among many, but its contents stuck with me. “Mr. MacKinnon,” the reader wrote, “still cannot find within himself the intestinal fortitude to call those who took hundreds of women and children hostages in Beslan, and proceeded to shoot them in the backs, their proper name – terrorists and cowards.” Journalists […]
Fear Factor
War is more dangerous for correspondents than ever before, says veteran CBC reporter Brian Stewart. But while fear can be a liability on the front lines, it can also keep you alive
I’ve known foreign correspondents who confess to becoming so addicted to war, they feel lost without a new one to cover. Although I spent a decade in and out of conflict zones, I never had that problem. The Fear Factor, as well as aging, saw to that. It never caused me to flee a war […]
His Country
In his daily column for the Globe, his Screech Owl books for kids, his monthly column for Cottage Life and his hardcover memoirs, Roy MacGregor captures the waves and ripples of Canadian Life
“I’ve been in journalism for 30 years and this past spring I had my first story rejected,” Roy MacGregor says in Kelsey’s restaurant in Kanata, the suburb just outside of Ottawa where he lives. The Western Alumni Gazette, the alumni magazine of the University of Western Ontario (where he attended journalism school) requested MacGregor write […]
Banana Split
Jasmine, Bambooda and Rice Paper are all trying to do what Banana magazine couldn't: attract second generation Asian-Canadians
t’s a late November afternoon in 2002 and Banana magazine managing editor Kuan Foo is in Toronto to meet entertainment editor Christine Miguel and other contributors. It’s going to be a depressing meeting – the day before, Foo received a disturbing phone call from editor-in-chief Mark Simon in Vancouver. Simon delivered the bad news: Banana’s […]
Dumb and dumber
Why are so many journalists such bad interviewers? Listen up while Allan Gregg and others explain
Allan Gregg dumps a thick file folder on an oval-shaped coffee table and seats himself in a cushy blue chair. It’s an October Monday and Gregg has taken time away from his money-making market-research business to talk about his “very, very serious hobby” – interviewing authors for “Gregg and Company,” his segment of Studio 2, […]
Electric Current
Morning after morning, sparks fly on Anna Maria Tremonti's CBC radio show. And that's just the way she likes it (well, most of the time)
It’s 5:30 a.m. and Anna Maria Tremonti is singing at the top of her lungs. As she drives to work, she warms up her voice by belting out the words to “Romanza,” which blares from the stereo of her 1997 Honda Accord. Andrea Bocelli’s ballad is perfect for the job because it has lots of […]
