Report on Silver Linings

All the good news that's fit to print: facts and arguments against the Globe's special sections

By last spring many in the industry knew that Confederation Life was in dire financial trouble. Only four years earlier the company had posted earnings above $100 million. But by 1992 those profits had dropped to $1.9 million, and last year the company lost $29 million. Oddly, the Report on Insurance that ran in The […]

All Work, No Pay

The job listing posted in the student lounge at Ryerson’s journalism school sounded great: it invited “university graduates interested in working in the magazine industry” to apply of a position that would offer experience in “many aspects of magazine production including story conferences, post-mortem and production meetings, fact-checking, copy-editing.” To qualify, applicants had to come […]

An Ominous Sign

For eight weeks last fall, there bruised and angry faces glared menacingly down on passersby from 30 massive billboards around Toronto. The four police-lineup-style mug shots—of an Asian and black man, and two white men, one of whom could be taken as Latino— were stamped with the word “deported” in large red block letters. Underneath, […]

Crime-Time News

How Toronto's TV stations distort the picture of what's really happening on the streets

It was the kind of suppertime news story that suspended your fork somewhere between your plate and mouth. It wasn?t a “big” story about “big” names. No dove-releasing picnic of brotherly love hosted by Arafat and Rabin; no prime-ministerial tantrums on Parliament Hill. In fact, what pushed this story to the top of three Toronto […]

Too White

As Cecil Foster talks about his career, the pain in his voice is haunting. During his dozen years in journalism he has worked as The Globe and Mail , The Financial Post, The Toronto Star, and CBC TV and Radio, written dozens of magazine pieces and two nonfiction books due out later this year, and […]

Lights! Camera! No Action?

If the National Film Board can't stop the recurring charges of irrelevance, we may lose one of our most thoughtful forms of journalism

When the Sûreté du Québec crossed the barricades at Oka in July 1990, director Alanis Obomsawin knew the even had to be recorded. She was in the area working on a film, but upon hearing the news immediately called her executive producer at the National Film Board and asked to change her production and rush […]

Too Old

How can a newspaper reflect its community when most in the newsroom think hip refers to an operation, not a state of mind?

Late on September 23, 1994, 29-year-old Kingston Whig-Standard reporter Scott Colby was lining up with hundreds of others outside a local record store. He wasn’t reporting, only shopping. In a few minutes it would be September 24, the official release date of a local band’s new album. Colby and the rest of the crowd were […]

Street Fight

Jim Mackin started Toronto's first homeless paper. His son launched the second. Will their feud leave everybody out in the cold?

Over the last 18 months, except for a clutch of subzero nights spent in church basements or emergency shelters, Paul has lived in a postage stamp of a park tucked behind a group of highrises in downtown Toronto. During his first year on the streets he survived by panhandling. For the past six months he […]