After receiving a US $10.6 million windfall of venture capital financing in July 2007, NowPublic.com co-founder and CEO Leonard Brody boldly promised that in 18 months the participatory news site would be “by reach, the largest news agency in the world.” The small Vancouver start-up that began as an experiment in co-founder Michael Tippett’s garage, Brody continued, was “changing the news business.”Now, nearly halfway through Brody’s time frame for world domination, NowPublic has an estimated 100,000-plus contributing members in nearly 5,000 cities and is growing steadily. About a year before receiving the grant, it had about 13,000 members.

NowPublic was launched in 2005 by three web entrepreneurs: Tippett, Brody and Michael Meyers. The idea for the site grew out of Tippett wondering how the proliferation of wireless technology, camera phones and blogging was going to change the way news was put together and then consumed. The three partners recognized that there would be a need in the market to collect, organize and distribute the vast amount of online content. They also wanted to challenge the traditional idea of top-down editorial decision-making by letting contributors dictate content”. We want to try to reinvent the supply chain of news,” says Tippett. “We want to provide people with a mechanism for participating in the making of news.”

However, NowPublic has been criticized for the type of news it is providing. Rather than offering in-depth coverage, most posts either feature reprinted articles from mainstream media sites or member editorials. But content is almost beside the point. NowPublic isn’t poised to replace traditional news outlets; rather, it represents an evolution in news gathering that is becoming one more weapon in the mainstream media’s arsenal.

NowPublic has since moved out of Tippett’s garage and into a downtown Vancouver headquarters that has a staff of 20 (10 more employees are scattered throughout North America and Europe). Most of the venture capital funding goes towards paying staff. About a third of the NowPublic employees are there to provide editorial guidance to contributors. Providing it is legal, members can post anything and everything on the site, and there is no formal editing process. However, the editorial staff does highlight the good stories, make suggestions for improvement and flag the fishy posts. “It’s very rare that the bad stuff floats to the top,” says Rachel Nixon, NowPublic’s recently appointed global news director. “It’s a more democratic approach to news.” The site’s staff members aren’t the only ones who are able to flag stories. The site also has a fluctuating roster of “guest editors”—active volunteers who are given a certain degree of editorial control. As the global news director, Nixon focuses on increasing the number of editors and contributors around the world.

Active members who post content are crucial to the site’s survival. Without its army of citizen reporters, it is unlikely that the Associated Press (AP) would have been interested in the site. NowPublic currently has a deal with AP that allows the wire service to distribute any of the site’s photos and videos (subject to the approval of the contributor). “We can provide them with the kind of content they wouldn’t be able to get on their own,” says Tippett. AP gets access to the material submitted by thousands of users and in exchange they pay a fee to the contributors whose media they use. NowPublic plans to take a cut of the fee, but has yet to decide how much. So far, AP has used some of NowPublic’s photos on the wire, but in the words of Tippett, “it doesn’t happen everyday.” The company is also experimenting with a text messaging system which would allow them to mobilize contributors in the area of any major news event.

“In a sense with the AP deal, NowPublic is more like a business-to-business commercial model,” says Alfred Hermida, former news editor for BBC News website and current assistant professor of journalism at University of British Columbia. (Full disclosure: Hermida is engaged to Nixon). “What they’re saying is, ‘We can offer value to established media because we can do things they can’t. We can provide them with material they need but don’t have the time, resources or money to invest in developing this kind of operation.’” NowPublic can fulfill the role of a news gathering organization if it manages to keep its numbers up.

Hermida refers to the 90-9-1 rule: 90 per cent of people on the web come to just look, nine per cent occasionally contribute and only one per cent are active members. “Most people tend to be passive,” says Hermida. “The really hard part is building that community of regular contributors.” That’s what NowPublic strives to do. A third of their staff is committed to development—building up the amount of members. So what motivates members to post on NowPublic? “People do it because they want their voice heard,” says Tippett. “They want people to hear what they’re saying.”

Dave Semeniuk, a chemical oceanography grad student at UBC, contributes frequently to NowPublic under the moniker “Science Dave.” He became involved with the site in May 2007 after hearing about it through a date’s roommate. “I got involved as a favour to a friend,” says Semeniuk. “I hadn’t really given thought to the online journalism thing, but I was interested in popular science writing.” For Semeniuk, NowPublic provides an opportunity to improve his writing and get feedback on his stories. NowPublic even covered the fee for him to attend a science journalism conference at UBC.

“The question that keeps coming up with people I tell about NowPublic is motivation: why should someone want to do something for free?” asks Semeniuk. “With the amount of time you put into articles, if you want to do a good job, you shouldn’t want to do it. After maybe five or six months of posting, I stopped putting as much into them because I just didn’t have time.” Although he is one of NowPublic’s guest editors, Semeniuk gets his news elsewhere. “When I first started and got into the citizen journalism mind frame, I thought NowPublic would replace traditional news. I truly believed that anyone could write and anyone could talk about what they knew. That’s not true.”

But wiping out the mainstream media isn’t NowPublic’s goal. “It’s making traditional news outlets aware that theirs isn’t the only perspective on the news,” says Nixon. “It’s about challenging mainstream outlets to integrate citizen journalism into their own content.” Tippett sees NowPublic as complementary to mainstream media. “I think in the end we’ll be partnered with traditional news outlets,” says Tippett. “We think that everyone has something to say and we want to keep the doors as wide open as we can.”

Peter Legge is a wildly enthusiastic man. The chairman and CEO of Canada Wide Media Ltd. says he has an “exceptional circulation department,” “exceptional sales people”—just an “exceptional staff” altogether. But he has reason to be optimistic: Canada Wide (CW) is the largest independent magazine publisher in Western Canada. And the 66-year-old’s family-run company now has annual revenues of $30 million, employs 131 people and reaches about six million readers in print.

It all started over three decades ago. Fired from his job as the general sales manager of a Fraser Valley radio station in 1976, Legge was heavily in debt and, with a wife and young daughter at home, he had to make his next move fast. When he heard about a bankrupt magazine called TV Week, he bought a 50 per cent share for $76,000 and became publisher.

Today, CW—which still publishes TV Week—has almost 50 print and online products and continues to grow. Last year alone, CW launched a new city magazine called Granville, five e-newsletters and several websites. And the company’s small, regional and uncontroversial publications aren’t just profitable, the Western Magazine Awards Foundation named BC Business the BC/Yukon Magazine of the Year in 2007. “BC Business,” Legge says happily, “established us as really influential.”

Magazine consultant D.B. Scott says publishing tends to be easier with several titles. Demand for TV guides has decreased with the Internet and digital programming guides, so if Legge had stuck to just TV Week, “he’d be bust now,” speculates Scott. CW started Granville for $130,000, instead of the approximately $2 million it would have taken a new publisher without the necessary infrastructure. In addition, standalone publications often exist at the whim of “a single rich person,” Scott says, “who, if they change their mind, gets to pull the plug.” This happened to the Western Standard and Toro, for example, and the magazines folded. If one of CW’s products fails, the others will survive.

The company’s magazines may not be the best in the field, says Scott, but they are “fine for what they are.” And he points out that Legge is unusual because he has stayed an independent publisher rather than selling out to a printer or wireless company.

CW remains one of the few companies with consumer, custom and trade publications. Custom publishing seems more lucrative than consumer magazines because it’s easier to sell ads, but it’s not an easy business because all decisions come from the clients. Scott says, “You can get clients from hell.” Running magazines focusing on special interests, CW can get the same audience reading several books from the company. The publisher doesn’t put out general interest magazines and doesn’t intend to start—and Legge doesn’t wish to expand the family operation out of Western Canada either.

Legge, who moonlights as a motivational speaker, author and community leader, and his wife Kay, own 75 per cent of CW. Eldest daughter Samantha Legge is the vice president of marketing and digital media, and publisher of Granville and TV Week; her sister Rebecca, former general sales manager at BC Business, has been appointed to media sales for all products beginning April 14. Samantha believes CW’s strength is Western Canadian–based, local publications. “It’s our niche—it makes our magazines interesting to readers,” she says. “We want to do local best.”

CW operates out of one office in Vancouver, and its 99 North magazine recently folded because the company needed to employ someone full time in Whistler, B.C. “We couldn’t run it out of Vancouver,” Legge explains. “We thought we could, but we couldn’t.”

Among Canada’s biggest publishers, only Transcontinental is a player in the West. Its Vancouver Magazineand Western Living are regional publications that are comparable to national ones. “Whether CW has any magazine that can get to that size, I’m not sure,” says Marco Ursi, editor of Masthead, who adds that being alone in the “ second tier” gives the company an edge.

But CW isn’t immune to competition. Its Garden Wise faces Gardens West, BC Business battles Business in Vancouver and TV Week sits next to People and Us Weekly on newsstands—and American magazines spend heavily for good positions. When the Canadian edition of Hello! magazine launched, Samantha was informed it spent $100 per pocket per store. CW spends considerably less per pocket, so TV Week lost its preferred spots. “We can’t compete against that kind of money,” says Samantha.

CW is now trying to carve out a strong online presence to win people’s attention. In January 2007, the company started its own digital department, which now has six employees. Shannon Emmerson, the director of digital media, says despite its late entry, it is doing really well, taking a different approach with plans to create fresh content solely for the sites. CW will also work on marketing its websites through cross promotion in its magazines and e-newsletters.

Despite its success in the Western Canadian publishing industry, CW rarely pops up in the papers. And Samantha Legge admits the company is not as widely known as it could be, simply because the family hasn’t aggressively marketed CW as a brand. That’s the next step.

For Peter Legge, the secret of success is this: “As you sow, you shall reap—if you sow good habits, loyalty to staff and integrity, good products, it works.” And remember, he says, enthusiastic as always, “It’s not all about the money.”

As I pull out my high-tech Sony recorder, the producer, Elizabeth Bowie, startles me. She stares at it and says, “Oh, look at that”—and I thought Nora Young, Dan Misener and Bowie, the people behind the technology-based radio show and podcast Spark would laugh at my two-year-old digital recorder. But of course, the show’s website says Spark is “not just technology for gearheads, it’s about the way technology affects our lives, and the world around us.”

Last September, Spark—created by radio host, producer and journalist, Nora Young—debuted on CBC Radio One. Young and co-producers Elizabeth Bowie and Dan Misener had big ideas about how to encourage collective storytelling. Instead of accepting feedback from its listeners after an episode, Spark allows its audience to give input on stories before it goes on air. With the fusion of creators and audience, Spark has changed traditional story production by pooling a mixture of perspectives to create a more authoritative voice.

To do this, the producers read the responses to the blogs they’ve posted and the posts on the message board; they also listen to audience phone calls.  A producer might also contact someone who leaves a particularly interesting comment or message. “It’s a great way to do a lot of imaginative and thought-provoking things,” says Young, “without having to spend a lot of money, which gives you a huge amount of freedom.”

Using the newly installed SocialText, which is a wiki (a collaborative website that allows users to discuss and add content on a continuing basis), listeners can suggest ideas on show topics, add their knowledge, contribute questions for upcoming guests and interact with Young and the rest of the staff. Sparkexperimented with the wiki in February, airing “The Collaboration Show,” an entire episode comprised of input from the audience on a script posted online. All this interactivity means listeners now have the ability to help decide what will make it on air.

This is how it works: a producer posts an idea or observation on the blog and asks for feedback with questions such as, “Is this you? Do you have a funny story about helping your parent out?” She waits, usually a week, to collect comments and anecdotes before editing the information, which Young will later use during her interviews. Completed interviews then go up on the blog and listeners have a chance to comment. The final show has all these layers. Because audience reactions are less of an afterthought—less “here’s the show, what do you think, audience?”—it makes for a more informative, insightful and often funny program.

Misener explains this journalism mash-up best when he says that part of the appeal of Spark is that the process is cooked into the show itself. “When Nora is doing an interview and she can immediately cut to a question that someone posted on the blog for that particular interview … I think that’s really neat and I, as a listener, would like to hear more of [that].”

After the show airs, it becomes a podcast. “What we’ve been doing for the last several years, around things like podcasting, is that we’ve been trying to pilot things and experiment to see where we should be and how valuable it is for us,” says Steve Pratt, director of radio digital programming for CBC Radio 3. So far, audiences seem to really like the format.

As great as this all sounds, the question remains: will the voice and perspective of a self-selecting group of CBC listeners ever prove to be more popular than that of a team of trained, reputable journalists? “Traditional radio itself still has far larger numbers and I don’t see that collapsing overnight,” says Pratt. “I think the interesting thing is that different people are choosing to do it in different ways.” Young adds, “There are different audiences and I think this is the reality that all media are going to have to start thinking more of as we start spreading across different platforms.”

Spark is a fresh way of understanding how a story can be made, and it benefits from not having a single voice, a single point of view or a single agenda. “I think it is relinquishing a bit of that know-it-all control aspect and recognizing that maybe you don’t know all the answers; there are people in your audience who might know more about the subject than you do,” says Young. “And that’s all for the good, I think.”

Riding on the success of their newest self-titled EP, New York indie band, Interpol strolled into Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern in September 2001. Hailed as the “next big thing,” several newspapers in Toronto decided to send reviewers to cover the show. The Toronto Star music critic Ben Rayner attended, as did NOW magazine’s music critic Sarah Liss. A strange thing happened, though, upon their exit and subsequent evaluation of the band’s performance. Rayner loved it, Liss didn’t. Blame it on gender, on music taste, on whatever, but two people went to write about a show and each came out with a different story of how it went inside.

Music critics and reviewers are hired to objectively judge, and then write about, a performance or compact disc. But in most cases, it is not so clear-cut. Nor is it so objective in the end. “Criticism is inherently subjective,” says Exclaim magazine’s punk-rock critic Stuart Green. “Admittedly, objectivity gets a little lost, but you must explain your position using good logic.”

It is hard to rid opinion writing of personal views and attitudes. A traditional method among music reviewers is to approach the CD or concert as a fan would – with an open mind, and a certain idea of what to expect from the performing artist. If it’s Christina Aguilera, then the critic knows to anticipate a pop performance complete with sexual gyrations and dancing. If it’s Marilyn Manson, the reviewer expects a more shocking, gothic show, with pagan imagery and bizarre costumes. Critics must accept that there are no concrete standards that apply across the board, and from there, no matter who the performer is, there is a certain bar from which the critic can judge. Still, despite the surety of this method, sometimes the status of a band makes a difference in the outcome of the review, says Liss. “I try not to take cheap shots,” she says. “I find that local bands need the money and support more, so I’ll definitely be a lot more critical of huge bands.”

Her logic is simple. If a band is raking it in, then they should put on a better show. If a band generates less money, then the audience, and in this case the critic, should be expecting less, especially such things as pyrotechnics or visual screens. The amount of money a band makes is only one of the factors that play into the critical outcome. Others include the audience reaction at the show, the professionalism of the band and the overall atmosphere. “I try to take in how well the performance dominates the stage, and I always look for rapport with the audience,” says Liss. “The charisma of a band or performer can take over technical problems.”

She cites Winnipeg band The Weakerthans, whose songs tend to follow a simple three-chord pattern. She says that even though their songs are not complex, the band’s love for its music is apparent, and it stands out when they perform. In order to do her job properly as a reviewer, she must take in all facets of the act.

Perhaps most important for a critic, though, is to make sure that the audience reaction after the review is written doesn’t sway the writing. Knowing that fans will not react favourably to a review can be motivation to alter it, changing the review in favour of the reader. Rayner has experienced the anger of fans that are more than displeased with an unflattering review of their favourite band. “I have one standard and that’s to be honest,” he says. “I try to be open and up front. I mean, I’ve given good reviews to Savage Garden. But there’s always the fans that react badly to a harsh review.”

Rayner received death threats from Guns N’ Roses fans who didn’t like his review of their 2002 “reunion” concert, in which he described the touring unit as “a good cover band.” Amusingly, a sour Yanni review by Rayner also got the same reaction from fans. “When I go to a show, ultimately, it’s me, me, me, me, me,” says Rayner. “But you can’t just take cheap shots, you have to prove it. I personally believe that you have to assume an objective stance if you’re pursuing subjectivity. So it’s objective subjectivity or subjective objectivity, whichever.”

Green finds it hard to assume such a distanced stance. “Music strikes you on a personal level first, so yeah, personal opinion influences you.” He compares watching a band to forming a relationship with someone. “No matter what people say, the first thing you’re attracted to is looks, right?” he says. “It’s the same with music, you’re going to like something better if it suits your fancy.”

Even for the seasoned critic, it is common that mistakes in judgement are made when writing reviews. Several lesser factors sometimes influence the outcome of a review, like mood or events of the day. “There have been things I’ve published and thought twice about later on,” says Liss. “Sometimes I’m too positive about a performance, and then in retrospect I realize I didn’t like it as much. Or when I review a CD favourably and then go see the show, and they suck, I feel like I’ve been duped.”

Regardless of the band, genre or venue, writing a balanced critical review is not so much an impartial description as it is an individual conveying his or her own feelings about a performance. It seems that personal opinion is a necessary ingredient for well-rounded criticism, so long as it doesn’t render the objective voice completely silent. The last thing a reviewer wants is rabid Yo-Yo Ma fans breaking down the door.

It’s three in the morning on a sweet April day in 2003, and Naeem “Nick” Noorani wakes up in his Vancouver home. Despite having left Dubai five years earlier with his family, he still finds something strange about this country. “Everyone says Canada is a country of immigrants,” he says. “There are magazines on wilting daffodils and three-legged squirrels, fishermen and furniture, but there’s no magazine for immigrants.”

A year later, Noorani launched an English-language monthly called Canadian Immigrant. The magazine swapped the tales of gangsters and “penniless losers” that he found so disappointing in Vancouver’s mainstream media for inspirational success stories, tips on how to get a job—as opposed to pieces about how hard it is for immigrants to find one—and the voices of those who had been discriminated against, devalued and disillusioned. By sheer coincidence, a month earlier in March 2004, Dale Sproule launchedCanadian Newcomer Magazine in Toronto, a service-oriented bimonthly publication for those who had arrived within the past two years. Since then, both magazines have grown and successfully carved out a new niche in Canadian media by pinpointing the aspects of the immigrant experience common to all ethnic communities.

It’s about time. With the immigrant population standing at upwards of 6.2 million, one in five people living in Canada were born elsewhere, and about a quarter of a million more come each year. By 2017, visible minorities may make up half of the population of Vancouver and Toronto. And that will only increase the media and advertising opportunities in ethnic publications, according to Albert Yue, managing director of Dynasty Advertising & Communications in Markham, Ont. “The whole thing feeds into itself and grows,” he says. In the last decade, an increasing number of advertisers—including financial institutions and companies that sell real estate, cars, entertainment systems and cell phones—have started paying attention to the cultural markets. “In advertising, the game is being stepped up and I think it would become more obvious in the next few years.”

Torstar’s acquisition had surprised Thomas Saras, president and CEO of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, who didn’t expect the company to buy such a small English-language publication, but on the other hand, he adds, “I understand the strategy in creating an empire block in the market.” When a large corporation invests into these publications, it may discourage others from venturing into it. But Torstar’s move also legitimized the niche. In the last five months, Sproule, who is both the publisher and editor ofCNM, has noticed advertisers paying more attention to the magazine. Recently, CNM increased its circulation incrementally to 63,000 and widened its distribution to Barrie, Kingston, Ottawa, Peterborough, Sudbury and Thunder Bay, Ont. The expansion was made possible by a boost in government funding; Citizenship and Immigration Canada covers more than $30,000 per issue for printing and distribution.

As these magazines succeed, mainstream publications are gradually warming up to ethnic groups. In the last two years, Rob Roberts, Toronto editor of the National Post, has received more pitches about them from freelancers. “I’m 400 per cent more likely to accept a pitch from someone from a minority community who has a pretty interesting story about that community,” he says. “Any news outlet that doesn’t take a look around the city and want to reflect it better is making a mistake.”

Meanwhile, advertisers such as RBC and Rogers are finally showing interest in Canadian Immigrant. But why did it take so long for this market to be recognized? Frattini thinks that many companies initially failed to acknowledge that the immigration system now targets skilled professionals. New immigrants are not the manual labourers that Canada needed 50 years ago, though several misconceptions remain: “One of them is that immigrants don’t speak English. That is not true. That immigrants aren’t educated. That is not true. Thatimmigrants don’t have income-earning potential. That is not true,” explains Frattini. “We have to work at overcoming some of those erroneous perceptions.”

Guided by its “inform, educate and motivate” tagline, CI doesn’t merely report on immigrants, it analyzes the problems they face. The first issue profiled former B.C. premier Ujjal Dosanjh, tackled the topic of why foreign-born doctors were unable to practice in Canada and addressed the glass ceiling for visible minorities. Meanwhile, readers talked about their own experiences in a column called “Immigrant Impressions.” In May 2006, CI launched the annual Top Companies For Diversity Awards, and recent issues have incorporated ethnic community profiles, special reports—such as on the views of diversity by children—and a feature that plans to track a New Delhi family as it prepares to move to Canada.

Mainstream publications may have struggled to communicate with ethnic communities because of language barriers, but for CI and CNM, it made sense to print in English, the language that would enable immigrants to successfully integrate into Canadian society. CI reads at about a Grade 10 level while CNM is a level five to seven, according to the Canadian Language Benchmark levels. The key is to keep the writing simple without dumbing down the content. “To write effectively on a topic like this,” says CI editor Margaret Jetelina, “you have to make sure you don’t talk down to people.”

Early on, Sproule found it challenging to write at that level without being condescending, but it paid to recognize his readers’ intelligence. “The audience that I’m writing for,” he says, “is probably as educated as the audience that reads The Walrus.”

The Globe and Mail’s Washington bureau correspondent John Ibbitson vividly remembers the first time he saw U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama speak in person. On an early December 2007 day in Columbia, S.C., he was standing in a press pool 12 to 15 metres from the stage, listening intently. Obama spoke and paced the stage for 40 minutes in front of a largely black audience. He recalls the power of Obama’s speech affecting him emotionally, poking holes in his reporter’s detached objectivity. “I was mesmerized,” he says. “I found it very hard to be a reporter that afternoon.”

More like a revival meeting than political rally, Obama owned the ecstatic crowd. “I just thought,” Ibbitison says, “what a compelling presence this man is.”

Ibbitson is just one of a horde of reporters covering the extraordinary 2008 United States primaries. Horde might be an understatement. Christopher Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation, is blunt about the numbers. “This is the most covered election, I would dare say, in the history of humans on the planet.”

As a result, American media coverage of the primaries is laced with pollsters, pundits and prognosticators. Networks and newspaper websites obsess over the horse race and dedicate large amounts of coverage to it in the belief that viewers want the play-by-play commentary. But this play-by-play, Super Bowl-like coverage — Obama’s race, Huckabee’s “aw shucks” folksiness, even Hillary’s infamous quaver — benches the real substance of any political campaign: issues. In the whirlwind of coverage surrounding the candidates themselves, the issues simply aren’t getting enough play — and Canadian media are following suit. Outlets such as the Star, The Globe and Mail and CBC provide vigorous, updated campaign coverage on a daily basis, but it’s questionable whether the coverage is adequately informing Canadians of what’s important to them.

Ibbitson says he’s confident that the Globe covers the U.S. primary issues important to its readers. He isn’t trying to scoop The New York Times, he says, so he has time to write about debates over issues such as health care and immigration. And, as a Canadian columnist, he tries to avoid being obsessively comparative. “I’m trying to treat the race as a race and the country as a country,” he says, “not just as a foil for Canadian issues.”

But as the horse race continues, and as delegates consider the leadership qualities of each potential president, Ibbitson believes these concerns start to slide to the back of people’s minds. And Canadians, he says, inevitably are attracted to the same criteria used by delegates: “Whom do I trust? Whom do I think is closest to my values and concerns? Whom do I believe that, once in the White House, can handle an unexpected emergency?” And finally, “Who has the knowledge and experience?”

When that happens, Ibbitson says, the nitty-gritty of candidates’ positions becomes less important. “The issues of trust, of confidence, of reform and of leadership,” he says, “are far more important than whose health care plan is going to be more inclusive.” The political narrative of the Democratic race is intensely compelling, he says, citing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as being “two terrific stories” and the battle for the Democratic nomination as “one terrific story.”

Toronto Star Washington bureau chief Tim Harper began his trek on January 1 in the snowy state of Iowa. Then he hopped east to New Hampshire on the fifth, ending up in South Carolina 11 days later. Once there, he stayed put for 12 days straight. Almost two weeks after South Carolina Republicans had chosen John McCain, Harper’s trip ended with a night camped out in front of the television in his Charleston, S.C. hotel room, waiting to find out the Democratic Party’s choice for the state.

Harper is responsible for suggesting and then deciding what he thinks should be reported and why, and when and how it should be covered. Working with foreign editor Martin Regg Cohn, Harper maps out his route and coordinates who flies in to help him on the trail. Covering the races is certainly harder this time around, and requires more reporters on the ground than previous elections. “There are two to juggle,” Harper says. “In 2004, there was only the Democratic race.”

Harper says he’s made a point of going beyond the standard horse race coverage. He tries to explain to readers the specific demographics and political landscape of the state where each contest is taking place. Canadian foreign correspondents might as well be as foreign to Americans as Albanians, yet he’s had almost unlimited access to voters, and found many Americans eagerly wanting to share their opinions. At a rally in Derry, N.H., for example, he spoke with people who’d lined up for two hours to see Obama, many carrying babies. Some had driven all the way from Massachusetts. At the same rally, he saw teenage girls squished against barricades, cameras in hands, full of anticipation, too young to vote, but waiting for Obama.

Harper also says he’s tried to make the race relevant to Canadians. He’s written extensively on the candidates’ differing views of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are important to Canadians. He’s written stories about Clinton’s health plan proposal and compared her stance to Obama’s policies on this topic. He’s also written about the Democrats’ general opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as well as the Republicans’ obsession with border security. “I’ve tried to write about that,” he says, “because Canadians can get side-swiped by anything that happens on the immigration front.”

But, Harper admits, he hasn’t explicitly pointed out to his readers that for all their left-leaning appearances, Obama and Clinton are more conservative than Canadian left-wing politicians. For one, both are against gay marriage. “It’s pretty well-known by anybody paying attention that what’s considered left wing in the U.S. is considered moderate in Canada,” he says. “And that the Republican Party,” he adds, “is much more to the right and conservative than Canadian conservatives.”

Not all commentators think the upcoming election is of the greatest urgency to Canadians. “I don’t think it’s important,” says Chicago native Clifford Orwin, a Globe contributor and professor of political philosophy at the University of Toronto. “I doubt the fundamental character of Canadian-American relations is at stake.”

Orwin does allow that the world is in a critical state and that Canadians are experiencing it through their participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. In terms of coverage of where candidates stand on Afghanistan and other issues Canadians consider important, Orwin blames the candidates themselves rather than the media. He insists that candidates have not focused on policy issues from the start and instead concentrated on issues surrounding the candidates personally, which has justly been reflected in the media. While Obama is the first black contender with a serious chance for the presidency since Jesse Jackson, and Clinton is the first woman, Orwin is concerned with the unclear policy implications of these obvious factors. “Since both candidates are about change,” he says, “you might think there would be discussion in regards to the kind of changes they want.”

Along with political issues, the media could also be accused of ignoring the candidates who are not Clinton, Obama, McCain and Mitt Romney. Candidates such as John Edwards, whom Orwin describes as an underdog from the beginning, couldn’t get himself to be taken seriously. He describes the vicious cycle Edwards was caught in: “If you don’t do well, the press doesn’t pay attention to you,” he says. “And you do less well, and the press pays less attention to you.” Harper agrees with Orwin, offering this image: “Edwards was like a candle trying to find room between two spotlights.”

Orwin’s comment certainly rings true for Rudolph Giuliani as well.  If Canadians wonder why they didn’t hear more from “America’s Mayor” before he dropped out, it’s because he fell off the media radar right from the start. Harper says, “It’s hard to write about a guy who isn’t campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire or Michigan.”

While Orwin hoped for more coverage of the issues in Canadian media on Super Tuesday, the horse race coverage won out again. And that’s understandable to some degree — it is the most competitive political horse race for the Democrats in decades.

For the first time since Super Tuesday, at the Elephant & Castle Pub and Restaurant on King Street in Toronto, there’s a handwritten sign on the Simcoe Street entrance that reads “Democratic Primary Voting Back Room!” Tonight, February 11, expatriate Americans living in Toronto can vote in the primary contest and send delegates to the Democratic national convention with the Democrats Abroad organization.

Robert Bell, a committeeman, is busy handing out forms to expatriates so they can register. He bustles back and forth in the tiny room answering questions. Adrienne Jones, chair of Democrats Abroad Canada, moves around the room making sure everyone is taken care of. “We were packed last Tuesday,” she says. “There were hundreds of people here.” Even Mayor David Miller. Tonight, Mary Ellen Hebb and her husband drove in from London to vote because she missed the opportunity last week in her hometown. While Jones agrees Canadians are interested, she says, “I don’t think the Canadian media has covered the issues.”

She doesn’t blame the journalists, though, because she says, “There’s not enough time in radio and TV.” The coverage will change after the nomination tussle is over, she thinks, “because the disparities between the candidates will be bigger.” That’s when, both she and Bell agree, the Democratic candidate and party will be more receptive to Canadian issues and concerns such as the environment and universal health care.

In 2006, the advertising team for watch manufacturer Swiss Army met with the representatives of Toro and suggested that the Toronto-based men’s magazine publish an article showcasing the brand. Swiss Army was an occasional advertiser, but when editor Derek Finkle found out about the idea, he shot it down. That’s not what Toro was about. It was devoted to award-winning stories, professional photography and keeping ads separate from its content. “As an editor I didn’t really want to be told that I had to write a four-page thing on the history of Swiss Army.” Finkle said later, “Frankly, I didn’t think my readers would give a shit.”

For most magazines, advertising is usually the largest source of revenue, but it’s not always easy to maintain editorial freedom and pay the bills. Although men’s magazines are plentiful in the United States and Europe, they can’t seem to stay in business in Canada. Staging advertisements as editorial may be one way to keep a magazine running, but it won’t win awards or attract long-term readers. The solution for publishers may be to move to online, though that may not produce much excellent journalism either.

A few months after Toro’s April 2003 launch, Finkle met Brian Segal, vice-president of publishing at Rogers, who told him flat out that the magazine wouldn’t last. Rogers had researched the market and concluded there was not enough advertising to sustain a good quality men’s magazine. “We’ve crunched all the numbers on the men’s side and it’ll never fly,” Segal said. “You’ll never make any money.”

Sure enough, Toro closed in February 2007. And the few Canadian men’s magazines that are still alive don’t mind publishing advertorials. Last year, during a presentation for a Ryerson University journalism class, Finkle opened an issue of Driven magazine and pointed out a “story” on the history of Swiss Army — the same advertorial he’d turned down. After Toro declined to run it, the magazine no longer received ad revenue from Swiss Army. “You can see the blatant prostitution,” Finkle said. But he wasn’t surprised — Driven’sfashion shoots often feature expensive watches on their models’ wrists. “We used to call it ‘watch porn, ’” he said. “The sad part is that it works. Advertisers, for whatever reason, see that as value added.”

Since young men are tricky to reach, advertisers often want publishers to give them more for their money, according to Dennis Dinga, vice-president and director of broadcast investment at M2 Universal Toronto. “A lot of our clients,” he says, “are requesting or demanding that we incorporate the added value components into the campaign.” Finkle describes it as a tactic that attracts advertisers in the short term, but in the long term, advertorials don’t stimulate readers and will drive them away. He points to Driven’s exclusion from the annual Print Measurement Bureau surveys. If it did participate, believes Finkle, its numbers wouldn’t look good.

But Michael La Fave, until recently editor-in-chief of Driven, was apparently unabashed about the watch porn in his magazine. “The failure of our primary competitor does not lend credence to the theory that men won’t read about products,” he said in a press release just after Toro’s death. “Only that despite offering a quality publication, Toro failed to assess exactly what men are interested in.”

Given a choice between a short decorated life and a longer, less distinguished one, some publishers and editors are looking at a third option: moving online. Websites such as Askmen.com and xyyz.ca are trying to provide editorial for men that isn’t all about girls, sex, beer — or pushing advertisers’ products. Men’s magazines, particularly Canadian ones, tend to play on two stereotypes: that guys are slobs breaking wind while eating chips on a couch all day, or that they’re jet-setting millionaires who can afford luxury goods, says Peter Coish, a former advertising executive and the founder and publisher of Toronto-based xyyz.ca. He says the magazine attempts to find middle ground with useful information. Topics such as women and sex are approached in a fun but straight-forward way, rather than with frat boy humour. Askmen.com attracts over eight million visitors per month, and editor-in-chief James Bassil says he has the freedom to write for men without having to worry about paying to print a glossy magazine. Ads do pay for the cost of running the site — including writers’ fees — but the line between advertising and editorial is not blurred.

“People get bored of products, especially men,” says Russell Smith, a former Toro contributor and Coish’s partner at xyyz.ca. “They’re not as interested in shopping. So we wanted to stay away from just product reviews.” Instead, they send subscribers daily emails that include information about products, services and events. But Coish says they are never sponsored ads, and criticism of products is not off limits.

So far, there’s little to suggest that any of these websites will offer the award-winning features and photography that Toro did. And a new magazine with ambitions of producing excellent journalism is even less likely. “I don’t think you’re going to see another magazine like Toro any time soon, because our country’s population and market are frankly too small to sustain it,” says Finkle. “You have to have what Toro had: an owner with a lot of money who is willing to potentially throw it away to take that risk.”

Erin Tandy: What first got you interested in corrections?

Craig Silverman: There was one in particular that inspired me to look more into the topic. It’s the one listed in Regret the Error’s introduction, from the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2004, where they apologize for not covering the civil rights movement 40 years previously: “It has come to the editor’s attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.”

I’d been thinking in the months before that about wanting to start a blog that was somehow media related. I hit upon the idea of corrections because they seemed to be something that worked really well for a blog: they’re short, they appear every single day and the larger issue is that nobody was really paying attention to corrections or accuracy on a daily basis. So it seemed like a good idea for a site, but also it seemed like it was an important idea — that it could actually add something to all of the many, many media-related blogs and websites that were out there. It seemed like it had something to offer that was new.

ET: When did you decide to expand the site into a book?

CS: It was relatively early on because the first day the site went online there were roughly 10,000 people who visited it. So I saw right away that people were interested in this — that it was something unique. I started having to spend more and more time on the website and the more time I spent, the deeper into the issue I got. I saw that there was a tremendous amount of important things related to accuracy and corrections that had never really been discussed before. It naturally started to seem like a book was the way to do that — to put it all together in a format that could potentially reach more people and be more of a serious take on the issue. Because obviously when the site first started I was just printing the best of the worst of corrections and apologies. I guess in early 2005 I started thinking about putting together a book proposal.

ET: How have other journalists reacted to both the site and the book?

CS: I was curious when it first launched to see what the reaction would be because certainly there was the potential for people to see it as something that was perhaps mocking journalism or only showing the worst of the profession. But I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised, and it speaks well for journalists. I haven’t had any negative reactions from any journalists about either the book or the website. It’s something that those of us in the profession do recognize as important in terms of accuracy and correcting our errors.

Overall, I would say that probably 70 to 80 per cent of the audience is working journalists. I even have journalists sending in corrections from their own paper or their own media outlets — although one of the most common things is that journalists will email me a correction from one of their competitor’s papers. But nobody has said it’s hurting the profession or anything like that. Most of us really do care about the issue, but the problem is that it’s a difficult thing to be obsessively focused on every single day, and that’s the way you have to be in order to attain a high level of accuracy. Hopefully, if people are visiting the site everyday, it makes them a little more accurate in the work they’re doing that particular day because they see what could go wrong.

ET: In your book, you talk about how errors and inaccuracies erode the trust of the readers and public. If we don’t make more commitments to accuracy and transparency, what do you think is going to happen?

CS: In today’s environment people have a tremendous number of options in terms of where they get their information. We’re living in an era where news is commoditized and people are going to go to the place they feel serves them best — both in terms of the kind of information they’re looking for, but also a place that they feel they can trust.

There’s a proven link between perceptions of credibility and financial health. It was shown in a study in the United States called “Trust and the Value of Advertising: A Test of the Influence Model,” which was conducted by University of North Carolina journalism professors Philip Meyer and Joe Bob Hester. Their research showed that a newspaper with a high credibility rating maintains readership better than a newspaper with a lower credibility rating. And, the newspaper with the higher credibility rating was able to charge more for its advertising than a similar newspaper with a lower credibility rating. There’s almost what you could call an accuracy or credibility premium. People will actually stop reading a newspaper if they feel that there’s no credibility in what’s provided.

ET: Ideally, how should the press deal with its errors?

CS: The fundamental thing, first of all, is every journalist, editor and organization should realize that errors are going to happen. It is the rule and not the exception. And they’re not only going to happen to the people who have less experience, or who are perceived as being less skilled than others in the newsroom; they’re going to happen to people who’ve been in the profession for 40 years.

So, to start, what are the things people can do to be more accurate? For an individual journalist, I recommend they use a checklist. I’m talking about a piece of paper that lists all of the different factual areas that are typically used in a news story. It tells people to check all the names and titles. Check all the numbers, whether it’s dates or statistics. When I say use a paper checklist some people roll their eyes, but they’re used in emergency trauma centres so physicians know exactly the process they should go through to help save a life. They’re used by airplane pilots when they’re starting up. They’re used in nuclear facilities for safety checks. The checklist is a simple, effective tool for individual journalists.

For an organization as a whole, a culture of accuracy has to be created. It has to be something that’s valued. Part of that is realizing that errors will happen. It’s also dedicating your resources to actually try to prevent them and track them. For example, the Toronto Star is about to unveil an error database. Every time there is a correction, the public editor is responsible for entering that into a database. How did the error happen? Who was responsible? What section was it in? All the details of it. Then, as you go through, you see the trends of what you’re getting wrong — you see the most common errors. And that becomes your road map to start introducing training programs — to start helping people avoid the common mistakes that happen in your particular organization.

Then there’s that cultural aspect, which is getting people within your organization to be passionate about the idea of accuracy, so that they take the extra five minutes before they send the story on to the next level to just do that quick check.

Frankly, I also think news organizations should be doing random checks for plagiarism using some of the detection services that are out there. And we should, on the editor level, be instituting random fact-checking before a story actually appears to help catch things and to show everyone, “Hey, your work might be checked. So spend that extra five minutes and get it done.”

A lot of times it’s a matter of just a few minutes; it’s a matter of one email or one phone call or asking somebody in the newsroom to check a particular thing. I have a personal example: when I wrote a story forTheNew York Times, I went through a checklist and my typical procedure. It came down to one point with one person who I was quoting from a post on that person’s website. I checked the post and thought, “I should send an email just to verify these things,” and then decided, “Oh well, it’s on the site, it’s there, that’s my source.” And I ended up getting it wrong because I didn’t take those extra two minutes to send this person an email to verify a very simple fact.

ET: One of the things you mentioned was preventing errors by making people passionate about accuracy. Why aren’t we passionate about accuracy already? As journalists you’d think that’s one thing we’d be stressing.

CS: It’s true. You ask any journalist, “What are the most important aspects of your job?” and I’m sure within the top three things they would say being accurate. Everybody knows it’s important. But there is that gap between the idea we have and what we actually do on a daily basis, and that’s where the idea of passion and culture comes in. In the typical newsroom, there aren’t tools provided to reporters to help them be more accurate. There isn’t ongoing training to help them be more accurate. There aren’t constant communications going out about the issue of accuracy. It’s something we all care about but don’t really think about on a daily basis. That’s where the change has to happen.

ET: What are some of the main reasons for journalists making errors?

CS: We’re making errors on a consistent basis just doing things the way we’ve always done them — being pressed for time or taking something from a source verbatim and not cross-checking it. But in the larger sense there a few different categories that cause error. Number one is the way our brains work. Whether we’re writing it or speaking it on the air, our brains process language in unique ways. The way our brains process language can sometimes introduce errors — that’s the human element.

Then there are other things like technology. Spell checkers don’t introduce as many errors as they correct, but a spell checker can’t understand the context of a word. And so, for example, in an Australian newspaper they meant to call Syria a “Baathist” state, and instead a spell checker turned it to a “bastard” state. The technologies we’re using every day — keyboards, spell checkers — these things sometimes cause us to introduce errors where there hadn’t been before.

The third element is the process we use. At a newspaper, the reporter writes a story and it goes from one editor to the next. That’s supposed to be a process that improves quality, but it could just as easily introduce an error. When an editor thinks a reporter got something wrong he or she may just change it without talking to the reporter.

The last big element is the sources we use. A lot of times you get information from the police and they’ve made an honest mistake where they’ve got somebody’s address wrong or somebody’s name wrong. Then we reproduce the error. Or a press release comes in and you write it verbatim. Often the sources we’re using — sources of information or the human sources — make mistakes.

One of the big factors introducing errors today is our addiction to speed. People want to be first, they want to get the exclusive. So many news organizations now publish online and are turning into 24/7 news organizations. They want to get things up there fast, and we often sacrifice accuracy for speed.

ET: Why are errors important?

CS: Errors are important because, number one, they have a significantly detrimental effect on the reputation of our profession, and that can translate into financial issues. For journalists, it can hurt your reputation as a professional.

Often though, we forget the consequences errors have for the victims of them. If journalists realized the lasting effect errors have on their victims they would probably be a little more careful. People don’t forget when a newspaper or radio report gets something wrong about them. Even if it’s just their name, it’s going to stay with them forever and they’re going to tell their friends and acquaintances and this word-of-mouth factor is going to erode credibility.

There are errors that have a huge impact on people’s lives in an immediate sense. An example from the book that is one of the worst consequences I’ve heard of is the Fox News commentator who went on the air, read out an address in California, and said, “Law enforcement isn’t doing anything so we’re just going to tell you now that there’s a suspected terrorist living at this address.” There was no suspected terrorist living at that address — just your typical family who suddenly had graffiti sprayed on their house and people yelling obscenities. It got to the point where a squad car had to be placed outside the residence in order to ensure their safety.

The final consequence of errors, which again goes back to what’s going on in our news environment today, is that when something goes online — and most reporting ends up online in some form or another — and it’s incorrect, it’s going to spread rapidly. It’s going to be picked up by other websites potentially. It’s going to be cached by search engines, so that original version will stay there forever. And then usually it’ll end up in a news database like Nexis. So errors live on today longer than they ever have before. If we’re going to embrace all these wonderful new technologies we have to realize there’s a sense of permanence to them. That makes accuracy more important than ever.

ET: From your research for the book, what surprised you the most?

CS: The criticisms people have of the press today in terms of accuracy and errors have been with us for centuries since the dawn of the newspaper. People felt early newspapers were sensationalized, untrustworthy, and driven by bias and self-interest — all criticisms we hear today. It speaks to how difficult it is to attain accuracy. It’s not an easy thing. You can’t go out and purchase an accuracy machine, install it in your newsroom and suddenly there’s a high level of accuracy. It’s something that comes down to the people, the processes and the technologies. Our people are better trained than ever, and our processes and technologies have improved over centuries, but we’re still finding the same issues, the same problems. It’s a difficult thing to achieve.

It’s also interesting that even in some of the earliest newspapers they recognized the need for a correction. At the end of the 1600s, the guy who started the first newspaper in the United States expressed in his prospectus what is essentially our corrections policy today. He was aware that he was going to need to correct errors because nobody would buy his next edition if he didn’t correct the things that were wrong in the first. It’s been around for so long, yet we’re still doing a poor job of it today.

ET: How has the rise of independent fact-checkers changed journalism?

CS: What we’ve seen is the rise of what I call the new checker. Fact-checking has been around in U.S. magazines for a long time. It started at Time magazine, then moved onto The New Yorker. Now, unfortunately, it’s in decline at mainstream magazines in the United States and Canada, yet at the same time it’s being taken up by readers and by people who are politically engaged. They love to prove the so-called mainstream media wrong, and they’re engaging in fact-checking to do it. Facts have almost become weaponized in a form where it’s the preferred method to try and tear down a particular publication or a particular reporter. It’s ironic that at the same time fact-checking is on the decline in magazines, it is rising among bloggers and politically active people.

ET: Why did you decide to create a corrections page for the book itself?

CS: If I was going to write about the errors and mistakes of others, I was going to have to acknowledge my own. I was actually excited about that because what I wanted to do was not just have a corrections page online for the book, but I wanted to actually create a new kind of platform, a new way to correct errors in books.

The first part of that is having a statement of accuracy at the front of the book that talks about all the things I did in writing and in researching to try and ensure accuracy. But the most important part of that section is I’m very clear and I say, “I will have made errors.” There will be errors in that book. I’m not hiding that — so what am I going to do to correct those mistakes in an effective manner? The very last page of the book is a form that people can fill out and mail to me to report an error in the book.

Then, on top of that, on the website there’s a form people can fill out. As well, in the statement of accuracy one of the things I tell people to do—and to my knowledge nobody’s ever done this before—is I tell them to put down the book and go to the book’s website so they can read all the current corrections. That’s so much better than just putting them somewhere on my personal website for anyone who might happen to go there. If you’re going to do the corrections, you need to make it easy for people to get them. And you need to draw attention to it.

So that’s for the people who first pick up the book, but what if somebody reads the book and three months later I’ve made more corrections? On the book’s website, I have an RSS feed for the corrections, so people can go to the website once, sign up for the RSS feed and they will get corrections for as long as they keep that feed active in their reader. And the second thing is that I have an email subscription. So somebody can just enter their email address and they will be automatically emailed any correction added for the book.

This is part of the fundamental change that we need to see in terms of corrections, which is rather than making people jump through hoops to find them in a newspaper, we need to be pushing them out and we need to be placing corrections in the context of where they appeared. You have papers like the Times that place corrections in the online version of the article itself. That’s great, but people usually read an article once and don’t go back to it. So I’m trying to push the corrections out and make it easy for people to get them.

In a basic way, I’m just trying to walk the talk.

ET: At the beginning of the book, you mention that you distributed chapters to experts to have them look it over. Did you have anyone fact-check it, or did you fact-check it yourself?

CS: I’d hoped to hire a fact-checker for particular parts of it, but the honest-to-God truth is that I simply didn’t have the money to hire one. And so what happened was, yes, I did my own checking. I had an editor who worked with me on the style and the content of the book, and she did checking, and then there was a final person, who actually operated very much like a fact-checker. The final person was really supposed to do a copy edit, but she fact-checked every endnote, every attribution and a lot of the content of the book. So I didn’t have one fact-checker. I had a few half-checkers, which frankly is not the best.

But if this book becomes a bestseller and I have a lot of money, I will absolutely apply those resources to hire a fact-checker for future stuff. This is why you’re seeing fact-checkers cut, because it’s being seen as an unnecessary expense by a lot of magazines. And I saw it as very necessary but I didn’t have the financial resources to do it. It’s something that was too bad, but I was thrilled by that third editor who did a really great job, particularly checking attributions and citations.

Outside my Soviet-style apartment a rhythmic ghraavk-ghrrraaavk-ghravvvk fills the air: someone is shoveling snow. Inside, some Russian anchor, whose name I’ll never remember, fills a small television screen to announce the results of yesterday’s parliamentary election. President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won, but the correspondent briefly alludes to complaints about violations at the polling stations and immediately dives into the next subject. “Hello-oo?” I yell at the screen. “What kind of violations?” I react that way a lot while trying to get news from local reporters.

Western observers often criticize Putin, the former KGB agent who has been president since 2000, for strict controling the media. But journalism in Russia remains political, even if it’s the one subject reporters wish to avoid. Let’s call it the politics of silence and avoidance. Fluff — such as a lengthy piece about European pilots preparing for an air show — fills reports here. Just a few weeks ago, the local media became obsessed with a single question: when will it get warmer in Russia? Russian journalist Igor Malakhov complains, “Most of the media in Russia cannot serve as a source of balanced and well-informed coverage as it is often used by politicians and in commercial interests for manipulating public opinion.”

Putin receives plenty of one-sided coverage. His pale blue eyes, projecting hawk-like concentration, often stare from television screens in Russia. But with an omission here, a one-sided presentation there, gaping holes still corrode political reports. Though no one wanted to admit this on the record, state-owned national channels have lists of people they aren’t to cover and opponents of the United Russia party received limited exposure during the parliamentary election campaign.

Censorship has been around since the czars governed this land. Some literary critics argue that Russian novelists carried out political journalism instead and this gave rise to literary journals. The battered and thick light-blue spines of old issues of Novii Mir (New World) still appear on some Russian bookshelves. But demand for these publications died down after Perestroika. Though never completely free, reporting seemed simpler for a while.

Russia is now a pathetic 144th place on Reporters Without Borders’s World Wide Press Freedom Index, and only 25 countries were worse (Canada was 18th). The Press Ministry shut down TVS, the last privately-owned national network, in 2003, blaming financial and management problems. And three reporters were murdered in 2006 alone. So serious investigative journalism remains dangerous and almost unpublishable. “Journalists perform a very different social function in Russia,” explains local reporter Nadia Popova. In a way, correspondents exist here to entertain the masses.

After Leonid Parfyonov, a trusted Russian broadcaster who was critical of the administration and hosted wildly popular historical documentaries, interviewed the widow of murdered Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev, he lost his job. The Kremlin disapproves of journalists communicating with Chechen terrorists, especially when they’re talking about a murder Russian intelligence officers were involved in. Parfyonov rarely appears on local television these days.

Fluff is safer. A few days before the parliamentary elections, I saw no stories about arrested opposition leaders. Instead, a local newscast featured a lengthy piece on the caviar industry. Spiced up with clichés — valued highly in the Russian school of writing — such reports often feature entertaining, though politically neutral, information.

The local political elite remains unaccustomed to persistent questioning from journalists, says Popova. Accountability to the media remains half-theoretical. With an overwhelming conviction among the locals that most reporters are easily bribed, those meant to be watchdogs shrink to the size of Chihuahuas. Even the coverage of this month’s Georgian presidential elections demonstrates that the Russian media remains muzzled, says Malakhov. Most foreign media wrote that Western and European observers deemed the election of a pro-western president broadly fair. Most Russian media promoted the opposition’s theory of extreme falsification of the results.

Russia Today’s (RT) website claims it is “the first 24/7 English-language news channel to present the Russian point of view on events happening in Russia and around the globe.” Many consider the state-funded station with its British-sounding hosts too biased, even in Russian standards. When the city of Sochi won the 2014 Olympic Games, for example, RT pushed the story ahead of other headlines for weeks. The emphasis is on selling, rather than reporting.

Amid the weather and caviar stories, however, journalists still try to talk politics and publications still conduct investigative work. RT let independent Canadian journalist Fred Weir openly comment on the parliamentary election in a live broadcast. Popova tells me that a correspondent from a Russian news website www.gazeta.ru posed as a teacher to discover that educators were informed they must vote together on the day of the elections. And Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper known for its investigative journalism, published some of Anna Politkovskaya’s internationally acclaimed reports on the Chechen conflict, before she was murdered over a year ago.

But, for now, weak media laws offer little protection. Natalia Morar, a Moldovan-born journalist working for a Moscow-based New Times magazine, was banished from Russia last month because, she believes, she wrote an article examining the state’s funding of the parliamentary elections.

Those who report for the foreign media — as Popova and Malakhov do — are safer, but many journalists simply learn to work around their leashes and the Russian people learn to read between the lines.