Three Men and A Dirty Little Baby
How a gang of sarcastic assholes from Montreal turned a streetwise free magazine into an international empire based on attitude, irony and fart jokes
From downtown Manhattan, it’s a 10-minute ride on the L train to the warehouses and loading docks of recently gentrified Williamsburg, Brooklyn, once the heart of New York’s industrial park. Outside a former toy factory, among renovated lofts and studios filled with artists and young urban hipsters, the words “Vice Magazine Publishing” are scrawled across […]
Playing on the Same Page
Publicity, 1. Journalism, 0. Why sports writers shouldn't be another member of the home team
It’s mid-afternoon, about the only downtime in a sportswriter’s long working day. Damien Cox, The Toronto Star’s hockey columnist, is sitting in the paper’s cafeteria, talking about what’s wrong with the sports pages. At 39, Cox looks in good enough shape to skate with the athletes he covers, but his concern at the moment isn’t […]
The Fine Art of Being Loathsome
"To be a journalist, it's not enough to be merely hated. It is also important to be hated for the right reasons"
My very favourite news stories these days are those poignant tales of parents who have been investigated by the police or social service agencies because rolls of film they have submitted for processing turn out to contain nude photos of their children. These parents are often very badly treated. Their children may be temporarily taken […]
Radical Chic
Her book is No Logo. Her column's "Unlabelled." But in the pundit industry, Naomi Klein is rapidly rising to Brand Name status.
When Naomi Klein was in high school, she had a part-time job at Esprit, a popular retail clothing store for women. Esprit had a great manager, but sales were down, and so the head office brought in a supervisor to see to it that things turned around. It seemed image was part of the problem. […]
Who’s On Top?
In the battle of Canada's business magazines, all three have lost editors and reinvented themselves. Only one has emerged with readership and vision intact
With stage fog drifting through the air, acrobats swinging from the ceiling and bass-driven music throbbing through the building, the pace of the party at first seemed oddly out of sync with its purpose. The green, orange and purple overhead spots cast an outlandish light on a milling crowd of journalists, Globe and Mailstaffers and […]
Uphill Struggle
The founders of the eyetalian wanted to show their community in all its complexity. But commercial realities meant that they could never push their struggling magazine into the black
To a passerby on Yonge Street, the scene could have been an Italian wedding. The Sunday crowd included not only swanky 20-somethings sporting designer Italian jackets, but also their proud parents, who clutched envelopes stuffed with money. They piled into Grano restaurant in midtown Toronto-neutral ground for Woodbridge suburbanites and College Street urban dwellers alike-to […]
Lock, Stock and One Smoking Barrel
He came out of the west, a tabloid-trained conservative sharpshooter. Last year he was handed the reins of the Montreal Gazette . But it's been a rough ride—in the unfriendly territory of Quebec, Peter Stockland is a wanted man
They’ve got a fire burning outside. Our tongues taste the smoke that seeps in through different wall cracks every time the wind shifts… They’re going to hang us. The year is 1879. In a ramshackle cabin somewhere near Kamloops, Alex Hare endures a siege. He’s haunted by fragmented memories of a murderous rampage. Maybe those […]
A Passage from India
The Globe's first development reporter has gone from living with poor villagers in Biharipur to sleeping among Toronto's homeless. But has John Stackhouse traded in-depth reporting for gimmicky, slice-of-life journalism?
After a day of working the downtown streets, a 30-something panhandler dressed in a tattered bomber jacket and dark tuque makes his way home to Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. Even in the city that radiates prosperity, the face of homelessness is everywhere. The man crawls inside his sleeping bag and prepares to bed down for […]
Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room
In the '50s and '60s, Ruth Worth wanted no part of the sob sisterhood. Instead, her great passion for covering crime and politics led her from Canadian courtrooms to cocktails with Castro
In January 1962, a 28-year-old female reporter with uncontrollable, flaming red hair and a fiery spirit to match made an impression on a certain Cuban president. She was in Cuba for The Globe and Mail, covering the country’s third anniversary celebration of the revolution over dictator Fulgencio Batista. After the official proceedings were over, Fidel […]
CTRL+ALT+REPEAT
When it comes to reporting on technology, Canadian dailies are still spitting out the same digital drivel. Now it's time to upgrade
An image forms in my head as he describes the scene: a man hurrying down a crowded street puts his hand to his head. Speaking to himself with two fingers to his ear, he can be mistaken for one of two things: a nut or Inspector Gadget. The man is using a new computerized wristwatch […]
