Can Seven-Minute Speeches Save a Magazine?
How The Walrus Talks series is helping to keep a venerable publication alive
A heavy silence takes over the room as Sylvia Maracle, executive director of the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, takes a pause during her seven-minute speech. “You need to make sure that when people arrive they understand that some of the trauma they have left is the trauma that exists here for the original people […]
Chatelaine Rejoins the Fray
Can new editor Lianne George recapture the magazine’s former glory by bringing smart journalism and feminist values back to the mix?
Heather McIntosh was cleaning out her grandmother’s house when she found some pages from an old issue of Chatelaine that had been used to seal a painting into its frame. The University of Ottawa master’s student was captivated. McIntosh says while it’s easy to label the magazine as exclusively recipes and cosmetics, these pages from […]
Everybody’s Got a Story that’ll Break Your Heart
First-person journalism can bring out the critics, but that hasn’t stopped online publications from using it as a powerful tool to connect with readers
Leigh Stein’s boyfriend Jason threw her against the refrigerator and didn’t believe she was hurt until she showed him the bruises. They had moved to New Mexico together so she could write her book while he worked—it was the most romantic plan she had ever heard. She recounted her relationship in a BuzzFeed story about […]
Vignette Journalism: Storytelling for the Social Media Age
How news outlets engage readers and audiences with tales of unsung people doing extraordinary things
I sat in a heart surgeon’s office, waiting to ask what it’s like to touch a beating heart. It’s not every day that you get to put such questions to people, even as a journalist. But this summer at the Calgary Herald, my editor assigned me to a project called What’s it Like? The idea […]
How to Sell a Magazine in Three Seconds or Less
We talked to top editors about what goes into crafting an issue’s first impression and if it still even matters
For seven years, Toronto Life editor Sarah Fulford has seen the glossy covers of her magazine go through a demanding selection process before hitting newsstands. Since the editorial and art direction teams, as well as the publisher, are involved, the final version is often the result of many revisions and even late changes. The May […]
FHRITP: Confront It or Keep Rolling?
New CBC guidelines address verbal sexual assault during live hits, but one recommendation might let harassers off the hook
CBC Montreal reporter Tanya Birkbeck was operating her own camera and interviewing a jersey-clad football fan in front of the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium in downtown Montreal. What happened next would leave her feeling violated. A young bearded man wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses and black hoodie approached, stared straight into the lens and yelled, […]
Where the Wild Things Are
Cute clickbait may still dominate our newsfeeds, but serious animal journalism is rising to the surface
Cute clickbait may still dominate our newsfeeds, but serious animal journalism is rising to the surface
Don’t let the pretty pictures fool you: journalists need to take care with infographics
Audiences may think images are more objective than words, but both can be riddled with bias
By Allison Elkin Three heat maps with the accompanying titles “Our Sites’ Users,” “Subscribers to Martha Stewart Living” and “Consumers of Furry Pornography” look exactly the same to the untrained eye. The subjects seems to be directly related. But they’re not—maps purporting to show user data or subscribers with multi-coloured blobs are sometimes just regular […]
Whose brand is it anyway?
Unions still needed to protect journalists' integrity in the face of creeping advertorial
Last summer, The Globe and Mail wanted to introduce a drastic change: editorial staff writing and editing advertorial copy as part of their regular duties. If this branded content proposal became a mandate, journalists would serve advertisers rather than their readers. It might have happened at the Globe if the unionized staff did not take […]
Bloomberg News embraces longform journalism in Canada
The news agency’s domestic division looks to features and investigative reporting under former Globe and Mail editor Edward Greenspon
By Erica Commisso The Ottawa office of Bloomberg News is just minutes away from the Rideau Canal and Parliament buildings, directly down the street from the National War Memorial. Most days, this makes for nothing more than a pleasant view. But on October 22, 2014, Bloomberg employees were some of the first to broadcast […]
