Tainted Triumphs: The Great Awards Debate
Is commercial sponsorship shattering the image of Canada's journalism awards?
Minutes after being voted onto the board of the National Magazine Awards Foundation last October, Margaret Wente, editor of Report on Business Magazine, spoke up to pass on a message from her boss, Globe and Mail publisher Roy Megarry. The meeting had moved on to the perennial subject of replacements for retiring sponsors when Wente […]
Limited Visions
By constantly catering to complaints, newspaper ombudsmen have lost sight of the real issues
In his columns as ombudsman for The Toronto Star, the late Borden Spears was a pioneer in the field, setting his own agenda for criticism and constantly advocating higher standards in journalism. During his tenure in the 1970s, Spears attacked the “Credibility Gap” he saw developing as readers lost trust in the media. When one […]
On the House
What's new in homes? At The Toronto Sun and the rival Star, it's the same story: editorial content that reads like free advertising
Homes sections used to be one of the prime gravy trains of journalism-free lunches for the writers and cases of booze for the editors. But that was a long time ago. Newspapers now have strict policies against accepting gifts in order to prevent editors and reporters from even subconsciously feeling obligated to advertisers or anyone […]
Strictly by the Book
A self-serving obsession with objectivity is cutting the power of CBC current affairs: at Mother Corp, a policy is policy
It was not a vintage year at Sunday Morning. The CBC current affairs program, famous for its in-depth coverage of controversial issues lost seven of its staff in 1998 – and six more in the first weeks of the new year. Among those who left were ACTRA award winning correspondent Chris Brookes and producer Nick […]
Telling Tales on John Fraser
Tweaking noses and trading in gossip, Fraser has set the industry abuzz. But talk alone won't save Saturday Night
John Fraser sits behind his modern desk on the eleventh floor of a medium rise tower in downtown Toronto. By magazine standards, the office of Saturday Night’s much-talked-about editor is both spacious and elegant-there are four matching occasional chairs, a brass floor lamp, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf running along one wall. Seven editorial staff members form […]
No News Is Good News in Nova Scotia
Why the Chronicle-Herald is one of the worst newspapers in the land
Last November, when The Halifax Chronicle-Herald breathlessly reported on its front page that “lawyers and legal experts involved in the $3.million. plus Donald Marshall Jr. royal commission were wined and dined at taxpayers’ expense at the posh Halifax Sheraton Hotel,” it was the first time in seven years of coverage of the controversial Marshall affair […]
The Battler
Bob Verdun, the redoubtable editor of the Elmira Independent, socks it to politicians in four townships
Bob Verdun proudly admits to being a muckraker. He publishes without fear or favor and systematically subscribes to the old newspaper adage of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Today such sayings are as dated as press cards in fedoras. But as editor and owner of the aptly named Independent in Elmira, Ontario, Verdun […]
The Long Arm of the Media: A Critical Cause and Effect
The clincher was the suicide of a St. Catharines, Ontario man who was arrested for gross indecency in January 1985. A 42-year-old sales manager, he was videotaped engaging in homosexual acts in a public washroom. When his victimless crime was publicly unmasked by the press, the man drove down a country road and doused himself […]
Growing Up on the Rock Beat
Though rock journalism has new respect it still doesn't state the art
On a Thursday night in November, Craig MacInnis sits in a dark corner of the Horseshoe Tavern, a downtown Toronto rock club, smoking a Winston and sipping a Coke. He watches impassively as Go Four 3, a promising young quartet that has recently moved east from Vancouver, crashes into its opening song. MacInnis, who writes […]
From Hero to Villain to National Shame
Hoisted on their own hype, the media ran amok with the Ben Johnson story
Last September 27, in the dark hours of the morning, a sleepy press village in Seoul, South Korea, awakened to the sniff of scandal. Lights flickered on across the compound as word of what was later called “the smelliest scandal in the history of the Olympics” spread to reporters from around the world. Ben Johnson, […]
