Rogue Reporter
Nobody could report-or raise hell-like Norman DePoe
Legend has it that after his last broadcast for the CBC in 1976, Norman DePoe took a swing at his boss, Mike Daigneault, in the hallway outside the Montreal studio. Daigneault says this is “just not true,” that it was merely an argument between the two. DePoe also denied the incident, saying that it was […]
Quasi-Quotes
With all the fixing, mixing and mis-interpreting, reading is no longer believing
Carsten Stroud likes the way people talk. He drops in and hangs out with bikers, cokeheads and street kids, hoping to capture the way they sound in his magazine pieces. To him, the inarticulate are eloquent. But in March, 1983, Stroud was confronted by the prototypical reporter’s nightmare: having someone deny ever having talked to […]
Time, Gentleman, Please
For 15 years, The Body Politic had led the fight for gay rights. Three men had been at its heart. They'd ridden the highs and somehow lived with the lows. But by late last year it was clear: for TBP the day was over
Gerald Hannon had a hand in every issue of The Body Politic but one. He bought the premier TBP at a gay dance in the winter of 1971, joined the paper’s collective soon after, and wrote an article for the second issue. That one he hawked on street corners in Toronto. “Gay liberation!” he hollered, […]
Reporter in a Strange Land
For a Latin American correspondent the idea was to trace the events and issues-not to shape them
It was one of those gorgeous Salvadoran mornings: sunshine like soda water, an earlfj mist burnt away, the rising heat sharp and dry. There was a slight breeze. Following a 36-hourmarch, much of it under sniper fire, the Lenca infantry battalion of the Salvadoran Army was bivouacked atop a hill called Ocotepeque in the northeastern […]
Nicaragua Through U.S. Eyes
Why the Star leaves it to AP
Last June 25, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill giving $100-million to the contras, the terrorist group fighting to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua. After four months of debate and intense lobbying, arm-twisting and promises by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government had taken another step to prevent what Reagan […]
Not the Full Story
Studio D, the women's unit of the National Film Board, has been stymied by sexist decisions. Or so the media reported.
Men at the film board, as they now sheepishly admit, sneered at the women’s unit when it began 12 years ago, but the jokes abruptly dried up after the stunning popular success of Studio D …And yet, preposterously, Studio D, which the film board should be celebrating and applauding, is imperiled. Even as its popularity […]
Faults of the Fourth Estate
This year’s Ryerson Review of Journalism reflects the interests and backgrounds of the small group of students who created it. After two intense years of reading every magazine and newspaper that came our way, painfully learning reporting and interviewing skills, struggling over leads, transitions and the sheer hard work of writing, we embarked on the […]
Tricks of a Trade
How the Star and the Sun Played their cards in the Wayne Parrish-John Robertson switch
It was around five in the afternoon last September 3 and The Toronto Sun’s flamboyant columnist, John Robertson, had come to the ballpark early. But the Blue Jays weren’t on his mind as he moved through the press box at Exhibition Stadium. He was thinking instead about a job that had come open at the […]
Great Scott, Killer Kates and Other Stars in Their Courses
Measuring the power of restaurant reviews
The neon proclaims it The Rosedale Oyster; the public apparently couldn’t care less. On a cold Thursday evening in mid-January, four patrons linger at the bright stand-up bar, but in the darkened dining room for 85, only six brave souls have chosen to ignore The Globe and Mail’s warning. Killer Kates has struck again-or so […]
Newshounds from Outer Space
Why the wire services are the black holes of science reporting
What the deuce is it to me? [Holmes] … interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work. -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study In Scarlet Being a teenager in suburban Toronto in the […]
