The Art of Book Balancing
Readers lose out in the fight between pulp and purpose in Canada's literary pages
During the fall of 1990 a memo was sent by Montreal Gazette entertainment editor Brian Kappler to associate managing editor Michael Cooke regarding the book section. It read, in summary: Feature novels closer to public taste (Danielle Steele, Stephen King, Robert Ludlum). Scrap the French best-seller list. Limit commissioned reviews to five a week. Shorten […]
Just another Saturday Plight
Saturday Night, the magazine that hasn't made a penny for more than 40 years, has always been a hard sell.
Saturday Night, the magazine that hasn’t made a penny for more than 40 years, has always been a hard sell. And now that the venerable but perennially money-losing magazine is operating on a controlled-circulation basis, few media forecasters are predicting an easier economic future. At the magazine’s glitzy launch party last October at Toronto’s Royal […]
Taking on Toronto
Notoriously unpredictable Star columnist Rosie DiManno pushes the city's limits
It is going to be a hard night for Jack Layton. Pre-election polls have forecast defeat of Toronto’s NDP mayoralty candidate at the hands of his Tory opponent, and at 7 p.m. on election day, time is ticking away. And here is Layton, sweating in his overcoat and red scarf, rushing from door to door […]
The Snooze at Six
...and seven, and eight and what sometimes seems forever on Newsworld
Right off, an ugly problem stood between me and my assignment to write a piece on CBC Newsworld, “the all-news channel for Canadians.” I would have to watch it. Try it sometime. While you yawn your way through another Capital Report or Ontario Update you get a small dose of what it must be like […]
A Few Choice Words on Critics
Sarcastic enlightened biased expert irritating fair fearsome —respected
Barbara-jo McIntosh couldn’t understand what had happened. A week earlier, when Eve Johnson of The Vancouver Sun had called her, they’d gotten along fine. Quite well, in fact. Johnson had asked her about the chef, the menu and the history of her central Vancouver restaurant, Barbara-jo’s Elegant Home Cooking. She hadn’t sounded unimpressed. Certainly not […]
Is Nothing Sacred?
A visitor to Canada questions the practice of judging politicians' private lives
The last time I was in church was when I was 14 in Singapore. On those Sunday mornings at St. Andrew’s Cathedral I always felt a sense of moral inadequacy as, from the pulpit, Father Thomas feverishly condemned the dishonesty and debauchery he was all around him. The same feeling came back to me after […]
Post Mortem
Something died when The Toronto Sun turned The Financial Post into a daily tabloid
Once upon a time, there was a great grey lady of the financial press. Prim, pedigreed, if a trifle sheltered and old-maidish, she was a respectable broadsheet, born of leisurely and writerly ways, contemplative and conservative in her nature. Every week (more or less at the same time, depending on the whims of Canada Post), […]
Looking Back on a Legend
Ralph Allen 1913-1966
Ralph Allen was angry. You could tell by the way his face changed color, and it was now a deep shade of red. The staffers of Maclean’s magazine, all sitting at tables in a private room of a Bay Street restaurant, shifted uneasily in their seats. The 1950s were drawing to a close, and Maclean’s […]
The Power and the Story
Journalists not only cover stories, they often shape them
Journalism is about power. From the stories we choose to cover, to the way we present them, to the conflicts between writers and editors-every aspect of the industry assumes some type of control over our audience, our subjects and ourselves. More and more, journalists are seen as sources of information, “experts” on whatever subject they […]
Dr. Jackman Wants you to Feel Good About Yourselves
You're not really ink-stained wretches. You're not really callous wordsmiths. You've just got, well, this attitude problem
The idea had been building in Dr. FL “Eric” Jackman’s mind for some time. Back in 1980, when he’d run for Parliament in the federal election and fumed over how reporters constantly misquoted him, a possible solution had first begun to take shape. But it wasn’t until 1985, when his friend John Aird had just […]
