John Martin didn’t have a face for television. Even his son allows that his father was “not a good-looking guy.” He was more the kind you would see in a pub, and to a large extent his life revolved around pubs. His former assistant jokes that he was a “ladies’ man”—with dreadful teeth.

Google doesn’t turn up much about him. But it would be unjust to overlook the significance of what the late Martin created behind the scenes of Canadian journalism and entertainment. Martin pioneered music journalism television in this country in the late 1970s, with the hour-long rockumentary show The NewMusic. He took the Rolling Stone magazine template—an intelligent focus on popular music, mixed with political and cultural commentary—and transferred it to television. The show predated the launch of MTV, and helped CHUM-owned Citytv push the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to green-light MuchMusic in 1984.

Martin was a visionary, but not one who demanded praise or accolades. His jovial character is what friends and co-workers remember. It’s been seven years since his death, but it’s important to put Martin back in the picture, to appreciate where TV music journalism got its start, and where it’s going today.

Martin meets Moses

Martin, a native of Manchester, England, came to Toronto in the early ’70s in pursuit of a young Canadian named Val Ross. They’d met while she was studying in London. (She would later write for Maclean’s and The Globe and Mail, before her death in 2008.) Their romantic relationship did not last, but Martin stayed in Canada anyway, pursuing television producing at the short-lived CBC show 90 Minutes Live, hosted by the late Peter Gzowski. After 90 Minuteswas cancelled in 1978, Martin became a cabbie, never abandoning his dream of starting a music documentary show.

Back in England, music interview shows had already taken shape. One in particular, Ready Steady Go!, gained a loyal audience during the swinging ’60s, largely due to the appealing young host. Cathy McGowan often showed her nerves, stumbled over lines, and had no background in journalism or broadcasting. She was a train wreck, yet became a massive hit. Audiences could identify with her genuineness. “McGowan-ism” became a model for what Martin wanted to bring to Canada and its music scene on television.

He shopped The NewMusic around to a number of stations, including CBC and CTV. But they all passed, not knowing what to make of it or what type of audience it would speak to. It wasn’t until Martin met with Moses Znaimer, the co-founder of Citytv, that he got a deal: Znaimer would take the show in half-hour segments on a trial basis if Martin would direct the 6 p.m. City newscast. The first episode aired on September 29, 1979, with hosts Jeanne Beker and John (J.D.) Roberts. It quickly caught fire and grew to be a one-hour show.

At a time when musicians didn’t undergo media training, Martin was able to present them to Canadians in the raw, and they would discuss anything, from their music to global politics. The breezy style of the hosts and formats was frowned upon by more traditional media. “I don’t think anyone in the early days took it seriously,” says Larry LeBlanc, one of Canada’s longest-serving music journalists, and a friend of Martin’s. “We didn’t see them as journalists. They were TV people. TV was not journalism and still isn’t journalism; it’s puff to a large degree.”

LeBlanc has been obsessed with music since booking bands in the early ’60s as a high school student. Since then, he’s written thousands of articles for most music publications, from Billboard to Rolling Stone, and has travelled the world surveying music culture. LeBlanc also does consulting work for Heritage Canada and was awarded the 2013 Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award at the 2013 Juno awards in Regina. Despite his successes, LeBlanc remembers looking at The NewMusic (episodes of which he still has on Betamax tapes) with some resentment in its early days.

“They could get anyone we couldn’t get. They got to hang out with the artists, travel with them, take pictures, trips to Jamaica. Are you kidding? Complete jealousy,” says LeBlanc.

It wouldn’t have helped if LeBlanc had known the laissez-faire approach the rumpled Martin had to being a producer and boss. Most often he was at his “other office,” across the street—he hated the office environment, preferring the dark corners of a pub and the loud music from a subpar sound system. He was a walk across the street for his staff if there were pressing issues, which they accepted.

“I think it was really smart,” says Laurie Brown, former host of The NewMusic, and current host of The Signal on CBC Radio 2. “If you are making rock-and-roll television, you don’t want to sit around a place that makes you think you are working for OHIP.”

Martin wouldn’t breathe down the necks of those he hired. Instead, he let them put in their hours until they got it right.

In its infancy, The NewMusic had a shoestring budget. The joke among the staff was whether there was enough money for Post-It notes. Script approval and perfectly shot angles were of no concern. This was the age of experimental live television. “Sometimes it’s Iggy Pop trying to grab Jeanne Beker’s tits, other times it’s a really thoughtful quote from Pete Townshend,” recalls David Kines, former editor of The NewMusic.

Despite sneers from the print world and the show hosts’ natural growing pains—on live television—it was all according to Martin’s vision as he continued to experiment. The show was making up the rules along the way, playing less well-known genres such as jazz, reggae, and rap (which was still in its infancy, and considered a “fad” by some critics), giving the music industry a wider selection to present to Canadians.

Rock (TV) around the clock

Martin had his finger on the pulse of the underground music scene, and lived the lifestyle as much as he was documenting it on TV. It wasn’t uncommon to see Martin with bands like Motörhead after shows, sharing a laugh and a pint. Martin ran The NewMusic through personal relationships with artists and his English charm. He could make an impression on Van Morrison at social events, call him up a week later, reprise a joke they’d shared, and ask Morrison for an interview with no hesitation. He could do a special in Jamaica on the death of Bob Marley and persuade Ziggy Marley to do an interview by challenging him to a “football” dribbling contest, knowing what a fan Ziggy was of the beautiful game. But for Martin it wasn’t a matter of “he could.” Mostly, “he did,” and with success. Martin didn’t punch out at 5:01 p.m.; he was at it 24 hours a day. The crew would often be at a show and wait for the final encore to get the clearance for an interview. They wouldn’t end up at Citytv headquarters till 2 a.m. and would work on their tapes with editors throughout the night.

The aura around The NewMusic was enticing for both music fans and those who wanted to join the team. That team did expand and added depth with Daniel Richler, Laurie Brown, and Denise Donlon. Richler, a London-born Montrealer with big hair, made a demo tape and called Znaimer every week for six months until he finally got the position, working the alternative underground street beat. Brown, a Citytv film editor and actor, had some experience with television. Donlon joined the mix after working a show called Rockflash News.

Turning the amp to 11

Despite never blatantly having the label, The NewMusic was a sociopolitical show that encouraged the audience to think beyond the hit parade. The crew would use music as a springboard to talk about bigger issues, such as drug addiction and politics. To get those stories, however, hosts sometimes got too close to the rock-and-roll lifestyle.

“There was a lot of bad behaviour on a work trip,” Richler recalls. “We found ourselves inCocksucker Blues moments,” he says, referencing the raw and controversial 1972 Rolling Stones documentary. According to Richler, journalists reporting on the rock scene could sometimes end up being privy to unsavory behaviour. “What do you do with that footage? That’s something that troubled me a lot.”

In those situations, Martin sent the footage back to the band manager; he was not obsessed with gossip and up-skirt moments. He wanted a more collaborative approach, not an us-versus-them situation. Richler describes Martin as discreet and fair, making sure there were no victims. However, Richler does bring up a moral question that he had to deal with in his early days at The NewMusic as a music journalist: “Do you want to be a goody two-shoes when you are a journalist? When you see someone snorting cocaine are you going to call the police?”

By the time an entire new cast of The NewMusic debuted in 1984, MuchMusic had just launched. Znaimer and Martin smartly kept the two entities separate. MuchMusic provided nonstop fun devoid of criticism or music discourse, while The NewMusic became the place for serious music fans, where the questions they had could be answered.

Soon, The NewMusic was becoming a heavyweight, getting more and more syndication worldwide and gaining the credentials and respect of those in the music industry. Martin’s baby had grown up. But as the show moved into the ’90s, establishing its relevance to the Canadian and international music scene, the music industry was becoming savvy about how the TV medium could be advantageous to image, a vehicle to promote buzz around an act and generate sales. Substance wasn’t necessary for profit. Not all artists were choosing this route, and MuchMusic wasn’t only catering to what music executives wanted, but it was hard to ignore the strategy when the results were clear.

“Why would you want to sit down with a snotty [print] person when you could go on TV and control the medium and the image?” asks LeBlanc.

The end of a long, strange trip

Corporate culture went into full swing at MuchMusic. The station was no longer an adolescent, and moved past its experimental, awkward phase. It wanted to be taken seriously, and that meant branching out from the practices of its early days. No longer was it okay to be taking professional calls at a pub. By this time, the CHUM-City building had an extensive video vault of music and music-related shows. Why create new television when the company was sitting on years of content?

CHUM started relying on its archival footage instead of producing and airing new material. Martin was slowly being pushed out of an organization he helped create. Every fibre of his being rebelled against what the music industry and CHUM were turning into. His days at MuchMusic were numbered.

“It was very difficult for John; it was his baby—he was being asked to leave home,” says Bill Bobeck, a friend of Martin’s who worked in publicity at CHUM Television for more than 10 years.

Depending on whom you ask, Martin was either fighting for relevancy in a company that was changing every day or getting bored without even realizing it. He was in a rut and being forced into a desk job, which was making him crazy. Running a tab on Queen Street with a phone in his hand, Martin was still conducting business the way he had been doing all along. “John Martin was his own worst enemy,” says Ward. “He was very engaging. If you met him, you would have learned a lot and laughed a lot, but he didn’t help his own cause in a lot of ways because of his own personal behaviour.”

Martin was fired by CHUM in 1993, a tough break for someone going through a divorce and with a young son. There was no company going-away party. Instead, LeBlanc and Richard Flohil, who has been promoting Canadian music for decades, threw a party on the second floor of the El Mocambo. LeBlanc purchased a gold record for $65 and had it framed, with Martin’s picture in the middle, as a tribute to his contribution to the Canadian music industry. LeBlanc swears he still has the receipt somewhere.

The new NewMusic

Denise Donlon took over as director of programming, and The NewMusic got new hosts: Jana Lynne White, Avi Lewis, and George Stroumboulopoulos. Donlon calls this era “the drive to relevance,” as MuchMusic pushed shows that engaged audiences and artists in such issues such as HIV, censorship, and politics, coverage that led to MuchMusic winning a Gemini Award.

Under Donlon’s command, The NewMusic was syndicated in over 13 countries and found individuals like Avi Lewis, who had a political background and could tackle music from that perspective.

I meet Lewis at a quiet Roncesvalles Timothy’s on a mild afternoon. The coffee shop is full of regulars escaping the day with a newspaper or a book in hand. An old couple sits across from us, speaking in Polish, occasionally smiling and trying to listen in on our conversation.

Lewis got his start as a local news reporter at Citytv, and was approached by Znaimer to cover politics for MuchMusic. He extracted a promise from Znaimer that he if covered politics for MuchMusic, he could work on The NewMusic, a dream since he was 12 years old.

“My friends and I were rabid watchers. We didn’t make plans for Saturday night until after the show was over,” says Lewis. “Watching The NewMusic on Saturday night was beyond appointment TV, it was do-or-die TV.”

Lewis, who has hosted and created serious political shows for CBC and Al Jazeera English, remembers a MuchMusic with a corporate mandate, executives coming down from meetings and congratulating the crew for keeping “everyone happy today.” That was revealing, says Lewis. “What that meant was we kept all the different record companies happy that day and the management saw that as its role.”

With huge commercial interests beating down the door, the show rarely paid for trips and CDs. It was a trade-off for Lewis and his colleagues: For every item of music journalism, there would be promotion for a band or musician. Lewis proudly remembers going to South Africa and looking at the role of music after Nelson Mandela was elected. The flip side: His first big interview for The NewMusic was with Jon Bon Jovi, who was disappointed that he couldn’t sit across from a journalist whose breasts he could stare at; the piece was fluff. But that was the game Lewis had to play in order to get to the artists he felt mattered.

“Once in a while you got to do a story that you really liked. I got to interview Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, which was one of the highlights of my life, forget my career.”

Despite artists often not being open to probing questions, The NewMusic asked anyway. Lewis remembers being very nervous before a David Bowie interview. As a long-time fan, Lewis felt that after the release of Scary Monsters, Bowie embarked on an entire decade of commercial records. Lewis knew he had to ask what the fuck happened.

“He was fantastic about it; he answered pretty honestly,” says Lewis. “Uncomfortable questions have to be embraced—not for the drama that they create, but if they need to be asked. Still, Lewis questions the level of music journalism that was accomplished during his time at The NewMusic.

“I want to be really clear. I am not saying that we didn’t do journalism,” he says. A little later, he elaborates: “We have to look at systems and structures in journalism because they determine so much of what is possible in journalism. What we look at right now is the crisis of journalism and the funding of journalism and how they make money online going to foundations for money; that has its own issues.”

Lewis left The NewMusic in 1998 and the show returned to a half-hour slot. As the years progressed, what had once made it special became ubiquitous, as analysis of music and social issues could increasingly be found online. Every music magazine was making these connections. Hannah Simone (currently playing the role of Cece Parekh on the hit TV show New Girl) was the final host before The NewMusic was cancelled in 2008. For many, it marked the end of an era.

The new NewMusic TV

Despite the dwindling of intelligent TV music journalism, some have continued to promote the genre. Aux TV, a Canadian music station founded by GlassBOX Television (now owned by Blue Ant Media), offers music documentaries and reviews. Launched in 2009 as a specialty channel catering to the 18-to-34 audience, it airs shows that take music fans behind the scenes. Hosts of music-related shows include Alan Cross and George Pettit of the band Alexisonfire. Aux can be viewed in over a million Canadian homes, but it isn’t part of basic cable packages, and carriers like Telus or Cogeco don’t carry it. But, according to Raja Khanna, co-CEO of Blue Ant, Aux TV didn’t start out wanting to gain mainstream Canadian attention.

“We launched Aux for music fans, for people who love music. Not people who just listen to music—that’s everybody,” says Khanna. “It was all about the real music fan.”

The heart and soul of the Aux brand lies in its website and digital publication, Aux Magazine, for iPad and iPhone. It’s obvious that care and extra planning go into the digital front. The first digital issue launched in June 2012, and despite being less than a year old, beat out the more established BBC Music and iGuitar to win the 2012 Digital Magazine Award for music magazine of the year. The website—the origin of the Aux brand—gets steady traffic, but according to Khanna, Aux has not gained a strong following in TV. He believes music fans are a “fickle thing” the station is still trying to figure out. “I am the first one to admit that we didn’t get it right.”

Khanna and his team have big plans for Aux TV, with a possible revamping of the whole TV model. The mantra is “Real Music Television,” and for Khanna, that means rethinking the channel’s purpose in today’s TV music culture.

“Music journalism on television has become a joke. Journalism is not the right word. It’s not even happening; it’s entertainment,” he says. Khanna, 39, who grew up on The NewMusic, attests that the show changed his life. He remembers almost every episode. “When we were cooking up the idea of Aux, we literally said the words, ‘We want to take what was The NewMusic and turn it into an entire channel,’” says Khanna. “For better or worse, that was our plan.”

The voice of the channel, Alan Cross, provides a degree of weight and legitimacy. Cross, now in his 50s, never intended to be a music journalist. But after lasting only 23 days as a news reporter, he realized he wanted to talk about and play music. He joined the CFNY radio team in 1986. In 1992, as CFNY was transitioning into “The Edge,” the station was looking to create a program segment with historical context. The only on-air personality with a history degree, Cross was chosen against his will and given an ultimatum: either do the show or get fired. “I had to really work hard to find information, to find stuff to write about,” says Cross. “After a while I found out I was actually really good at this, and I really enjoyed doing it.”

I meet Cross at Soho House Toronto. The private club for “creative types” in media, arts, and fashion is the most recent of the Soho Houses in the world. Antiques sprinkle the lounge; most could be props from an Indiana Jones film. We sit beside a black Steinway Boston piano between the entrance and the main bar. Cross, who recently got membership, is just as unfamiliar with the setting as I am. Despite his release from Corus Entertainment in 2011, he continues to work on a variation of his famous Ongoing History of New Music show (now entitled The Secret History of Rock) and has a close relationship with the Aux brand. When you talk to him about music and music journalism, he makes you care about it. He remembers The NewMusic vividly, and sees an uphill battle for smart music television today.

“The problem is that, like all news programs and documentaries, it’s expensive. It’s expensive to produce a documentary. Especially licensing audio and video is hideously expensive and it’s getting more expensive,” says Cross. “It’s very difficult to clear that video for broadcast, so it takes time, it takes effort, it takes people, it takes money.”

The lack of quality music television journalism is directly affecting the way we consume music. According to Cross, music, more than ever, is becoming more disposable, less savoured.

“What you end up doing is, with an iPod and a set of headphones, you end up sealing yourself in a bubble of music that you only find agreeable. There is no one taking you by the hand to say, ‘Hey, stupid, you need to listen to this, you need to pay attention to this or try this. I know it’s going to hurt at first, but you’ll thank me for it.’ I think it’s limiting people’s appreciation for music and limiting their musical experience.”

Cross would like to see a return to interviews done in more casual settings. It worked for The NewMusic and often led to interesting dynamics, as opposed to staged interviews. But, Cross says, it’s hard to rekindle what once was, especially with the current reality-TV culture. A&E, TLC, and History—with roots in promoting education and discourse about arts and culture—now rely on shows such as Storage Wars and Duck Dynasty.

“What happened to us?” he asks.

What’s happening now

NewMusic alumnus George Stroumboulopoulos hosted the show in 2000. He’s been preaching the importance of smart music and entertainment journalism for years. He has called the CBC home since 2005 and—much like The NewMusic—his show has switched from an hour to a half-hour format. At the time of our interview, his office was an explosion of Canadiana. Taking up all the real estate on his leather couch is a gritty painting of the Ontario flag. To the left, in front of his desk, is a box of knickknacks ranging from a Corner Gas mini-pump to a papier-mâché statue of himself. Behind him sits a bag of Holy Crap cereal that appeared on Dragons’ Den. Before our interview he pops open an energy drink, mentioning before taking a sip that it’s made by a Canadian company. The only exceptions to this patriotic theme are his desktop wallpaper of rap group Public Enemy and an Alexander Ovechkin hockey stick standing in the left corner. (Then again, the Ovi stick is made by Canadian company CCM.)

Stroumboulopoulos admits his first love was music radio. His mother often hid the TV in the closet and only let him watch on Friday nights. His first glimpse of music on television was The NewMusic; a twisted coat hanger served as the antenna and pliers turned the broken dial. He remembers the Jesus and Mary Chain, Grandmaster Flash, and later on, a band that had a tremendous effect on him: Public Enemy. After creating a fan base with The Strombo Show on 102.1 The Edge, he went to MuchMusic in 2000 and left in 2004. He brought a third of his staff from MuchMusic (most of whom worked on The NewMusic) to the CBC, to surround himself with his own pack, knowing he was throwing himself to the wolves.

His phone constantly flashes with text messages and calls during our interview. But much as he does on television, Strombo focuses on the topic at hand and pays no attention to anything else.

What he finds missing in music journalism today is what he calls the “myth.” “Back then, rock and roll was filled with shadows, and music journalism—when done right—would shine a light on a few corners, but not too much of a light, because it was journalism and it was storytelling, he says.

Now that he has been covering music for over 20 years in both radio and television, he has it on his mind 24/7. He has popularized the term “insongnia,” often tweeting and sharing songs in the late hours of the night. During our chat he takes out his iPhone and plays Tracy Nelson’s “Down So Low,” having listened to it about five times at three in the morning the night before. He is excited when he can share a track on his radio show.

“Whatever job I do in my life, this show, music is still a big part of it. I am still putting Jello Biafra and Tom Morello in the red chair,” says Strombo. “It doesn’t matter how old I get, I am going to be a music fan, a music guy, my whole life.”

While he understands the importance of business and revenue, he also feels television today is lazy when it comes to the arts. “I don’t think the CRTC has done a good enough job protecting Canadians and Canadian interests when it comes to music and culture. I think they have been very short-sighted,” says Strombo. At the same time, he points out that music fans don’t need mainstream media to create places to gather. Real music lovers form a “small but loud army” that drives the cultural shift. In his opinion, what often permeates music culture is the exposure of gossip, humiliation, and failures. A discourse on music is an afterthought.

“Most music programs on TV are insulting and idiotic simply because they make no effort to get under the surface of ‘So, what’s it like to be a star?’” says Daniel Richler, in an exaggerated American accent. “Who gives a fuck about what it’s like to be a star? You know what it’s like to be a star? It’s isolating and damaging and a dead end, that’s what it is. We should stop celebrating it.”

Even when music journalists try to go beyond the surface, the environment does not lend itself to natural discussions. Richler, who interviewed Mick Jagger in 2011 about his music project “SuperHeavy,” a collaboration between Dave Stewart, Joss Stone, A.R. Rahman, and Damian Marley, remembers being ushered into a room with bodyguards, sitting around a table with half-a-dozen European radio DJs and reporters. They were instructed not to ask certain questions. “It was impossible to get into depth,” says Richler.

Despite the obstacles, Strombo, like Richler, feels that music journalism, at its best, is about personal connection, and sharing that with an audience, whether it’s a top-40 hitmaker or underground rock band. “Music is just a song written by some cat that you will never meet in a country that doesn’t exist anymore and he wrote it about a girl we will never know, whose name is probably not recorded,” says Strombo. “How can something so disconnected from you work so well in that moment? That’s a real human connection. That’s what I built my life around, that connection.”

The last waltz

David Martin, son of John Martin and Margaret Konopacki, was born in 1987. He remembers his father as jovial and confident. He also remembers a man with no money, living in squalor. It was a hard upbringing, as his mom worked three or four jobs to pay the mortgage on their house, which they ended up renting out while they lived in an apartment after the divorce. David would see his dad on weekends, making the most of their visits.

“We weren’t going to baseball games or hockey games. At times we were sitting by candlelight in his apartment because he couldn’t pay his energy bill.”

John Martin continued working in the music field, directing the 1999 documentary The Genius of Lenny Breau, which ended up winning a Gemini. Despite Martin’s name being the first shown as the credits roll, his name is not mentioned anywhere on the IMDb page of the movie. In fact, the role of director is attributed to someone else. Martin followed up with another documentary looking at Nova Scotian country singer Hank Snow.

When Martin was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, he was working on other musical projects about Canadian artists. Close to the end of his life, he fell and broke his nose. David remembers waking up at 4 a.m., the hospital calling him to come. John was in his bed, wheezing, trying to breathe through an oxygen mask. To the surprise of the people in the room, he opened his eyes. They all waited to hear what they thought would be his final words. In a perfect Marlon Brando voice, he looked up at those around him and said, “I bet you’re wondering why I gathered you here today.”

That is what David Martin remembers of his dad. “He had this stoicism to the bitter end. He stuck to his guns and never sold out.”

John died in 2006. The NewMusic was cancelled in 2008. It still exists as a blog, but it hasn’t been updated since September 2010.

It’s hard to find another show that spawned talent the way The NewMusic did, and hard to imagine it all started with a working-class Manchester kid who had an idea while being a cabbie on the streets of Toronto. There has been talk about naming a Juno award after Martin, or a posthumous induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

“He had his foot in both sides of the industry. We have had no one since, not in Canada, with the scope and background and understanding,” says his old friend, Larry LeBlanc. “He’s the hidden man in our industry.”

The NewMusic helped launch names that have gone on to become staples in Canadian music and beyond. Former hosts and reporters include a president of a multinational company, hosts of their own radio and television shows, respected music journalists, a star in a popular comedy show, and a recipient of the Order of Canada.

“These people became icons of music television,” says Ward. “John saw them in the raw and he knew instinctively they would fulfil some kind of destiny.”

The legacy of The NewMusic is profound: It respected its audience, showcased a diversity of youthful talent and veteran musicians, and promoted political and social discussion in a musical context. It gained admiration from fans and musicians by challenging the conventional interview structure. Denise Donlon remembers covering a music festival in Knebworth, England, where Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, and Eric Clapton were playing. Donlon and her cameraman were up against the BBC and MTV, which had built their own sets and had several big trucks of equipment. Despite the odds, Donlon was able to grab interviews with all the musicians, thanks to the show’s reputation. At the end of the night, she and her colleagues found themselves trying to hitch a ride back to London; the makeup truck of an MTV host passed them by. In that moment, Donlon says, the difference between The NewMusic and everyone else was clear.

“I challenge any of those broadcasters there to have any of the material that we brought back. We aced that shoot—we got everybody,” says Donlon. “Everything in our backpacks was gold.”

Before Martin’s death, he frequented an English pub in Toronto on the Danforth called the Old Nick. A few of his awards, donated by his son, hang above the bar. If ever in the area, grab a pint, look up, and toast the man who helped bring music journalism television to Canada.

Emily Candy does not mince words.

“The internships that we have now are all over the place,” says Rogers Publishing’s peppy HR manager with unexpected frankness. “We have people who are really getting some good mentorship from senior editors, and then we have people who are just in the Flare fashion closet helping out with some merchandising or stuff like that.”

Though Candy insists that all interns receive a good experience, the company is introducing  the M-School (the “M” stands for magazine), a full-time, paid, four-month internship program that it says is designed to provide rigorous, formalized training for those looking to break into the industry. Aside from working with Rogers Publishing staff in different sectors—including editorial, marketing, and design—the 10 carefully selected interns will attend mandatory seminars that count toward a certificate of completion.

But while the program may appear to be a step up from the usual intern experience, it still fails to fairly compensate interns for their labour, and leaves Rogers’ less educational, unpaid internships unexamined and unchanged.

The M-School, which launches in May, was largely inspired by an internship program at Chatelaine. The brainchild of the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jane Francisco, and assistant editor Lora Grady, the Career Institute at Chatelaine (which Rogers is shutting down after its current interns finish up) took on paid interns for six months, and provided them with a two-day magazine boot camp, workshops, seminars, and one-on-one mentorship.

“They were really good ideas and they were exactly what we wanted to do,” Candy explains. “But we didn’t want it to be focused just on editorial. We wanted to extend to other areas of the business.”

M-School interns will be placed in different departments at a variety of titles, from consumer magazines likeChatelaine to lesser-known trade publications like Benefits Canada. (The “legacy” internships at Maclean’sand Canadian Business will be excluded from the program.) Though they’ll focus on the area of their preference, the interns will be exposed to other parts of the industry through seminars, which will focus on things like choosing a good cover, pitching ideas, using multimedia, and getting to know magazine readers.

Though the final amount has yet to be decided, Candy says interns will probably be paid a monthly honorarium of about $1,000. While this may seem lucrative compared to the many Rogers internships that provide no compensation, this is still considerably less than minimum wage in Ontario.

“People can’t afford to live and work in Toronto if they’re only getting paid $1,000 a month,” says Toronto-based lawyer Andrew Langille, who also blogs about youth employment issues. “It’s less of a meritocracy and more choosing from a pool of applicants from privilege.”

Langille says, “A centrally managed program is better insofar as there’s a greater, better look at what’s happening.” But he questions whether M-School internships—$1,000 honorarium or not—would be considered legal under the Employment Standards Act, because, based on the duties listed on its website, the M-School would require that participants take on jobs that are usually performed by paid employees. (An editorial internship, for example, would include fact-checking, writing web content, and contributing ideas to the magazine line-up.) According to the Ontario Ministry of Labour, an employer can only deny an intern the usual employee rights, including minimum wage, if “[the] employer derives little, if any, benefit from the activity of the intern while he or she is being trained.”

It’s doubtful that paying interns would be a financial burden at Rogers. In the fourth quarter of 2012, Rogers Media, of which Rogers Publishing is an arm, made $75 million in adjusted operating profit (its parent company, Rogers Communications, netted $455 million). Hiring 10 interns at minimum wage for the summer (about $1,640 a month each, for four months) would require less than one percent of that.

By choosing not to pay its interns in spite of its hefty profits, Langille believes Rogers is showing a lack of appreciation for the labour they provide, and a misunderstanding of what internships are really for.

“It’s foolish to view interns as a crew of disposable labour or cheap labour,” Langille says. “The best practice is to view interns as potential full-time employees and to use internships to test the waters and see if the intern is a good fit for the culture of the company.”

Candidates will have to work hard if they want that opportunity at the M-School. Along with submitting a résumé, applicants need to write a short essay detailing why they want to be a part of the program and what they have to offer. If they make the shortlist, they’ll have to go through multiple rounds of interviews and complete an assignment related to the department they hope to join. Then, maybe, they’ll get the position.. “It would really be like a pretty rigorous job screening process,” says Candy.

But for each of the 10 interns getting the holistic training experience, Rogers has a few other interns whose experiences are nowhere near as closely monitored. (Full disclosure: I interned at two Rogers magazines.) Candy admits that HR isn’t always aware of where or when these interns are working, and doesn’t receive feedback from anyone about their learning experience. (Chatelaine’s Career Institute was an exception, as the organizers did collect regular feedback from participants.)

Robin Green (not his real name) , a former editorial intern at one of Rogers’ most popular consumer magazines, remembers wishing that his experience had been more focused on education and training. Though he worked two to three days a week, he always felt as though he was “clocking in and out instead of learning, networking, and becoming part of a team.” “I feel like I was taken for granted. The interns are a key part of the production cycle, but I felt like I was just a cog,” he says.

When he started, he was expecting to receive one-on-one mentoring from editors, and to learn about the editing and writing process at magazines. Instead, he spent most of his time fact-checking, organizing freelancer contracts, mailing packages, and emailing public relations associates. His editors acted as though they couldn’t be bothered to assign him work, let alone share their experiences as young journalists, and his supervisor wasn’t even at the office to debrief him on his last day.

“Because it was unpaid, I really wanted more. I wanted it to be a curriculum for me instead of me walking in, begging for something to do and feeling awkward,” says Green, who worked full-time hours to support himself during his internship. “If I’m working for free, I want to learn something.”

Candy is doubtful that Rogers will go out of its way to make sure that the rest of its interns, most of whom are unpaid, get the same comprehensive experience as their incoming M-School interns. At most, they’ll be able to attend the seminars.

“Our business relies heavily on interns,” she says. “I think it’s a two-way street. Some of the schools and some of the programs rely on us to provide internships and, in turn, we’ve come to start relying a little bit on the amazing skills that we get from our interns to help us with our business.”

In spite of his own negative experience, Green is interested in applying for the M-School. He’s excited about the amount of structure and the prospect of a paycheque, even if it doesn’t cover his cost of living. One thousand dollars is a lot when you’re used to working for free.

“Working in a so-called rock star industry like media? I’ll take it,” he says. “I’d take that in a second.”

Photo by SimonP

The Fellowship in Global Journalism at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto is a journalism program unlike any other.

“What we decided to do was, instead of teaching a specialty in the course of a journalism degree, which is what a lot of places do, we would actually go and recruit the specialists and then teach them the journalism,” says program director Robert Steiner.

As Steiner suggests, most journalism programs teach students to be generalists, but he says there are more than enough programs like that to fill the demand. What readers want, he believes, is more niche content on subjects like health, science, business, and law. According to Steiner, this reporting needs to come not only from generalist reporters, but also from those who are already specialists in the given area. It’s with this in mind that the Munk School launched the program last September.

The current Munk Fellows, who will finish the program at the end of April, include a lawyer, an architect, and a former advertising executive. Though they come from different fields, they all have advanced degrees or years of job experience, as well as a common urge to share what they know with the world. Since their backgrounds typically aren’t in reporting, the Fellows get a crash course in pitching, research, and writing from former Ryerson journalism instructors Don Gibb and Shelley Robertson. They’ll also work with Steiner and Bernard Simon, a former Canada correspondent for the Financial Times, to write stories for publications such as The Globe and Mail and CBC News.

In December 2012, Burton Lim, a Munk Fellow with a background in mammalian zoology, wrote a a story for theToronto Star  about a fungal disease that had been found in the bat caves of North America. The fungus was decimating the bat population as they hibernated. But the real story, as Lim found out, was the financial impact that this could have on the Canadian and American farmers who rely on the bats for pest control.

The fact that he happened to specialize in bats meant that he got wind of the story before anyone else in the media, and had a more accurate understanding of the fungus and the research surrounding it. Coming from a field that values strong academic writing may have made it harder for Lim to learn the clear, simple style newspapers require, but it also allowed him to look more critically at the findings and claims of other scientists.

Munk Fellow Stephen Starr has been reporting on the uprising in Syria, where he lived and reported for five years before moving back to Toronto to be part of the Fellowship. It’s obvious from his writing that Starr has witnessed the Syrian revolt up close. “Being in the field gives you a sense of what you want to write about as a journalist, as opposed to sitting at a desk,” Starr says.

For example, in February, Starr wrote a story for The Globe and Mail about how the unrest, which had remained mostly in the poor, rural parts of Syria, was beginning to make its way to the wealthy, urban areas. But instead of simply writing that the rebels were moving in, Starr used his understanding of the social tension in Syria to bring deeper insight to what was taking place.

“Why is this important? Not because the insurgents need money and logistical support from their wealthier countrymen to beat the Assad regime… but because the divisions taking root between Syria’s urban and rural populations will take far longer to reconcile,” Starr wrote.

Having lived in Syria during the conflict gives Starr an edge over other foreign affairs reporters who are coming into Syria, he says, but the true advantage comes from having both the background and the journalistic training.

“I think this is the way that foreign correspondence should be moving,” Starr says.

After what seems to have been a successful debut, the Fellowship has begun recruiting for the coming year. So far, the program has received applications from a diplomat, a couple of doctors, and several economists, among others. From the applications he’s seen so far, Steiner believes the lineup will be quite different and diverse—just like journalism itself.

Photo courtesy of the University of Toronto.

It seemed like any other workday. Jagdish Grewal, editor and publisher of Canadian Punjabi Post, was in his newsroom in Brampton working late after attending a meeting. Around midnight, he walked out into the parking lot and slid into the driver’s seat of his van.

“There are days when I literally run out of bed in the morning due to the pressure of making payroll,” says Rachel Pulfer.

Pulfer is the executive director for Journalists for Human Rights, Canada’s largest non-profit media development organization. Seventy percent of her time as executive director is spent fundraising.

“In the first year, I had to manage and grow a million-plus budget in an environment where donor dollars are under enormous pressure,” says Pulfer. “Then there’s the pitch: Most private donors would rather support children, hospitals, chimps—but impoverished journalists?”

JHR is the only NGO in Canada specializing in rights media. Its mission is to make everyone worldwide aware of his or her rights. It does so by building the capacity of media by training journalists around the world to report on human rights and governance issues. Pulfer stresses that it fosters the exchange of professional skills between JHR staffers and journalists—creating a learning experience for both sides. But JHR’s major challenge is covering its core costs, salaries, and administration.

“Project finance in the non-profit sector tends to work at cross purposes to fulfilling the mandate,” says Pulfer. She quotes a recent grant proposal to make her point: granting agencies, foundations, and major donors like to “fund projects, but not project implementers,” meaning they’ll fund project activities but minimally fund the salaries of the staff managing the projects or the administrative costs. “That fosters a situation where the charity is under enormous pressure to take on more projects than it can realistically handle, in order to cobble together sufficient funds to keep high-quality staff at competitive salaries,” says Pulfer.

JHR relies on private foundations and government donor agencies to fund its large projects. (Historically, government grants have formed up to 80 percent of its annual budget.) But in November, Julian Fantino, Canada’s minister of international cooperation, fired a clear warning shot at aid agencies and those in the NGO community when he announced, “We don’t fund NGOs for life.” Then, last week, came the announcement that the Canadian International Development Agency is no more; it will merge with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to form the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.  

Pulfer says it’s difficult to see the larger implications of the CIDA-DFAIT merger at this point, but JHR is willing to work within the framework outlined by Fantino. She confirms that the merger will not affect CIDA’s current funding commitment to JHR’s youth internship program.

CIDA has been a significant supporter of JHR in recent years. JHR’s international operations are largely funded by grants from large donor agencies and foundations. In February 2010 JHR received two grants from the agency, totaling over $700,000 in two years: one to send 40 Canadians to Ghana and Malawi to assist local journalists covering human rights issues and work with journalism students and faculty at universities to produce rights media; the other to educate Canadian university students through rights media workshops about the significance of international development.

JHR’s domestic initiatives, such as online magazine Speak that showcases quality youth journalism, are financed by a combination of private donors, sponsorship, and volunteers. As Claire Hastings, director of fundraising and community engagement for JHR, says, “All of our projects have an element of private fundraising to support them.”

Donating funds is the most common way Canadians engage in social issues. Half of the population gives on a regular basis, and the Canadian Engagement on Global Poverty Issues poll found that, in 2012, human rights were among the top global issues concerning Canadians. Last year, JHR raised about 30 percent of its total budget of $1.4 million from private donations. This year, Pulfer is aiming for 40 percent, and hopes that number climbs to 50 percent in 2016.

JHR’s support from individual donors has remained consistent despite the economic climate. “We’ve been able to hold the line—at least in 2013—but that’s against the trend that many Canadian charities have experienced,” says Pulfer.

But despite generous donations from the public, a lack of money still threatens JHR’s initiatives. For the past year and a half, it has been working on developing a program to mentor Aboriginal journalists to cover human rights issues in Canada.

“Developments with Idle No More have shown an enormous need for more Aboriginal journalists to cover these stories from an Aboriginal perspective, as well as better bridges built between mainstream media and Aboriginal communities—both of which are needs our project aims to meet,” says Pulfer. Almost two weeks ago, JHR received the sought-after funding for the project. However, Pulfer says she is not at liberty to disclose the details until its official launch in late April.

Since 2011, a key focus of JHR’s programming is mentorship for media managers, showing them how to build business plans and tap into potential local markets of advertisers and sponsors to ensure their work is financially sustainable.

“In most cases, there is no real market—at least not yet—for the kind of quality journalism JHR is working to foster in target countries and communities. Until there is a local market that will do the work of supporting quality human rights journalism so we don’t have to, there will be a need for us to foster, mentor, and support it,” says Pulfer.

“Producing good rights media is very difficult and costly,” says JHR co-founder Ben Peterson, “I think there’s a lot of interest in it, but there’s a reluctance to produce it because it’s harder to do—it requires more time, money, and resources than really easy pieces of news—in a similar way to investigative journalism. When it’s done well, it’s very successful.”

Pulfer knows firsthand the importance of rights media coverage: “I grew up in developing countries where the media is weak (Lesotho, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea),” says Pulfer via email, “I saw the impact firsthand on what governments thought they could get away with—and did get away with—in the absence of a watchdog holding them to account.”

“One of my fundraising mentors told me to stay focused on the cause, and run my natural discomfort at the idea of asking people for money through the filter of the potential at stake for what could be done with that money,” says Pulfer. “When you think about fundraising that way, it becomes much easier.”

Even though he had already made the decision to flee Mexico many months before, Luis Horacio Nájera didn’t realize what he was leaving behind until the day he fled to live in exile in Canada. As his family was getting in the car, their lives packed into bags in the trunk, Nájera turned back to lock the door of their house in Ciudad Juárez.

“At that moment, I understood that I was leaving behind everything,” Nájera told the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that defends international press freedom. Nothing would ever be the same. Over four years later, he still looks back and wonders if he made the right decision.

Nájera has spent about 23 years working as a journalist. For nearly two decades he worked for Grupo Reforma, one of the largest publishing houses in Mexico. He covered Ciudad Juárez, located along the United States border, which, at the time, was one of the deadliest cities in the world.

“Not one of them,” Nájera clarifies. “From 2008 to 2010, it was the most.” He was followed, harassed, intimidated, and received many death threats because of his investigative work. Always the passionate journalist, Nájera was willing to cross the line into danger for the sake of a story.

But in 2008, a close source told Nájera that he was on a hit list of journalists who had been covering the area’s drug wars. In August of that year, he reported on a massacre at a drug rehabilitation centre that was being used to hide gang hitmen. He wrote in detail about the police’s role in concealing these criminals, along with other corrupt behaviour among state officials. By then, Nájera had published one too many articles exposing the government’s connection with drug cartels. With nowhere to turn and no one he could trust, he decided it wasn’t worth risking his family’s safety, even for the career he loved. He wrote a letter to Reporters Without Borders, outlining the situation of many journalists in Mexico, asking for guidance. The group referred him to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which in turn put him in touch with Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The CJFE was able to help him through the immigration process.

“I could not simply let myself be killed under some lonely streetlight,” Nájera wrote in a 2010 special report for the CPJ. A month after he sent his first letter, he fled with his wife, their two sons, and daughter to Vancouver. With little English and his experience lost in translation, he found a job as a part-time janitor after 14 months of unemployment. He ended up doing things he never thought he would have to do: frequenting food banks, cleaning washrooms, and picking up house furnishings from the garbage.

But, two years into exile, life changed once again for Nájera. In 2010, he received an International Press Freedom Award from the CJFE, which recognized him for his courageous reporting in Mexico. As a result of that, he was granted a scholarship to enroll in the journalism fellowship at Massey College, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto. Three or more fellowships are awarded to Canadian journalists each year. Nájera was the second Latin American to become a journalism fellow. His family picked up and moved to Toronto, where they still live today.

Today, the 42-year-old is a research fellow in The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, where he works on various Latin American research projects. He’s also working toward a master’s degree in global affairs at the Munk School.

“My gratitude for Canada has no measure,” says Nájera. Although he would like to get involved in journalism here, Nájera tries not to be naive about the challenges he faces. He’s missing the English skills and the background needed to go deeper into stories. And the crisis in the newspaper industry would add even more uncertainty to his future. Besides, his family has had to deal with other challenges, like the changes in lifestyle, language, weather, and the loneliness of leaving loved ones behind. But even though he hasn’t been looking for journalistic opportunities, it seems journalism is seeking him. He’s been approached to comment on the political situation in Mexico and his experience living in exile, which has led to him writing op-ed pieces for The Globe and Mail, writing for the CJFE,and appearing on Al Jazeera television. He’s tried to use his time here to shed light on the dire situation for journalists in Mexico.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters. The practice of self-censorship is common and often necessary for journalists in areas ruled by corrupt officials and drug cartels.

“In Mexico…this conversation, we can’t have it in a public place,” Nájera tells me.

The risk of being watched would be too great. “The criminals, or the government, want to control everything.” He has lost many of his colleagues who worked alongside him in Mexico. And he carries each of their tragic deaths with him everywhere he goes, reciting their names like a prayer. A fellow basketball team member stabbed to death in his car. A cubicle neighbour murdered just 10 minutes before his killer responded to one of Nájera’s texts. Another colleague shot to death while getting ready to take his daughter to school. In all of these murders, no one was charged. He strongly believes that journalism is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. As a result, he’s very honest with his advice to aspiring journalists.

“If you want to be a journalist because you want to be famous, leave it,” he says. He believes anyone who wants to be a journalist to make a change in the world should be aware of the sacrifices they will have to make. “There are some prices that you have to pay. And for some of us, the price has been really, really high.” Those who are aware of the cost, and are willing to pay it, have his blessing.

Despite everything he has been through, Nájera still loves journalism. He fondly recalls the buzzing newsroom, the writing and reporting that he once lived for.

But, he says, “I have to move forward and take any opportunity that I can get from life now, because I’m not a teenager. I have to think in my family, and think in myself.” Still, he would love the opportunity to work for a newspaper again after he’s graduated. “If you ask me what I miss the most from my country, I’ll say my job,” says Nájera. “You have no idea how much I miss journalism.”

It’s well known that many news organizations rely on advertisers to pay the bills. But at BestStory.ca, a fairly new website delivering long-form journalism, founder Warren Perley has adopted an ad-free model in an attempt to ensure unbiased reporting.

According to Linsky, the ad-free model still has a long way to go before we can make a definitive statement about its viability.

It’s early January and Canadian University Press’s president Sam Brooks and national bureau chief Arshy Mann sit in their new Yonge Street office in downtown Toronto, putting the finishing touches on the organization’s 75th national conference.

      Since then, CUP has grown from an informal network to a support system for university papers across the country. In the days before the internet, the wire service was crucial for letting campus papers know what was going on at other universities throughout Canada. Its online newswire continues to allow student papers to share their content, and CUP opened it to the public in 2009 to help showcase student talent.

     Currently, the organization is in the early stages of a rebrand. This is especially important if CUP hopes to keep up its membership numbers; it currently comprises about 70 campus papers. “We’re in a significant period of change throughout the history of media in Canada, and in a lot of ways we need to rethink it,” Brooks says. “We need to rethink the position that campus press holds.”