Saturday Night
And someday mourning?
JOHN FRASER WALKS IN SHORT, staccato steps, shuffling his feet as he moves around the offices of Saturday Night magazine, Canada’s most venerable periodical. In many ways, Fraser’s small steps symbolize the change in the magazine since he took over as editor from Robert Fulford in 1987-slight 3 movements away from the liberal leaning magazine […]
No Sexism, Please, We’re Broadcasters
Slowly women are gaining equality in the newsroom
There is an impression on the street that the only places in which female journalists don’t get the same treatment as men in the business are in the locker rooms of some of the major sports franchises. But women in television news generally agree that the sexual equality officially on display for viewers of the […]
Aiming to Displease
Frank magazine serves up its victims with great relish. The results are sometimes off target and always off the wall
Frankly it seemed like a perfect story. It was a barbed, somewhat nasty tale, and it made all the right people look . Wrong. For Frank, the satirical magazine notorious for scoops on the press, a chance to take i poke at The Financial Post was too good a pass up. When whispers of injustice […]
CB-SEE RADIO
Sentimental journalism-when the facts sink into the mush
WHEN KING GEORGE VI and Queen Elizabeth toured Canada in 1939, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, then barely three years old, covered the visit with 91 broadcasts. Everything went smoothly until the last day when an announcer was heard describing the royal couple’s departure. “The Queen I think I told you, is wearing powder-blue,” he said. […]
How the West was Won
With only a fistful of dollars and a preacher's zeal, Ted Byfield has made his Alberta Report the voice of Western Canada
During the 1957 FEDERAL campaign, an irate western farmer asked C.D. Howe, Liberal minister of trade and commerce, how he was expected to survive with the price of oats as low as it was. When an arrogant Howe tapped the farmer on his belly and told him, “You look pretty well fed,” a young reporter […]
Storm Warnings
Under a torrent of editorial and financial problems, Toronto magazine is struggling to stay afloat in some very rough waters
Last fall, Edwin O’Dacre, director of magazine publishing at The Globe and Mail, cast a gaze across the most recent products of his empire, arranged on a black lacquered table in front of him. Behind him, bookshelves bulged with back issues of the Globe’s trove of magazine titles. Next to Report on Business Magazine, Toronto […]
New-kid-on-the-lake
The Guardian advances, but the Advance doesn't retreat
One weekend in October 1985, John and Tuula McPhee left behind the tacky delights of Niagara Falls and found themselves driving down the Niagara Parkway. Along the banks of a green Niagara River they followed two-lane concrete curves through autumning peach orchards. Farmland turned to forest as they neared the mouth of the river. A […]
Sticks and Stones
The Globe and Mail came under fire last December for an article deemed derogatory by some of its readers. The front-page story appeared on November 27, 1989, under the disturbing headline, “Shuffling cripples, retarded bring look of Dante’s Inferno to life in Chinese village.” The article by the Globe’s correspondent in China, Jan Wong, was […]
Tuned In, Turned Off and Burned Out
Journalists who want to change the world sometimes change their minds
It used to be fun. It used to be challenging. It used to be what you wanted to do with your life. But it isn’t anymore. Deadlines are getting harder to meet, fresh stories harder to find and the long hours harder to endure. The money you once thought didn’t matter now does. And the […]
Trial by Headline
Do newspapers trample on the principles of justice for the sake of a sensational story?
Late in the afternoon of Friday, March 4, 1988, in a non-descript Toronto courtroom, a 25-year-old Greek immigrant was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 30 days in prison, to be served on weekends. Given the rather commonplace nature of the crime, in a city of over two million, that should have been the […]
