Dan Smith, chief steward, editorial, for the Toronto Star, and Kathy Vey, an active member of the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild, are handing out black-and-white stickers to staff on December 3, which SONG has declared Core Values Day. Some of the stickers say, “Star to the core!” or “Editors are core!” or “I’m hard core!” Others are blank for people to fill in. The “core” theme comes from the bombshell memo Star publisher John Cruickshank sent to staff via e-mail on November 3: “The Star’s strategic plan calls for a fundamental transformation from a newspaper company into a multi-platform news and content organization. We must find the best way to operate our business at the lowest possible cost, including contracting out non-core functions where there is a sound business case to do so. Changes will affect every job in every corner of the organization.” Ironically, the date was the 117th birthday of the paper whose history is strongly rooted in the Atkinson Principles, a set of values articulated by Joseph E. Atkinson, the publisher from 1899 to 1948, which include a commitment to help the common man and support the rights of workers.

Cruickshank’s message suggested that workers’ rights perhaps didn’t extend to its editors: “[W]e are exploring the contracting out of some or all of copy editing and pagination work, and the scopeïmay expand to include other editorial production and related activities.” In other words, editors aren’t “core.” In total, theStar may eliminate 78 of approximately 390 editorial staffers, who perform such jobs as copy editing, web work, pagination and photo assigning. The plan is to either outsource the work to Pagemasters North America, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Canadian Press, or have the work absorbed by remaining staffers, or some combination of the two options.

Pagemasters North America, launched this past August after nearly two decades of success in Australia, handles any aspect of editorial production a newspaper wants. When articles appeared in the Star saying the company was launching in Canada, staff became nervous. Their anxiety only grew on November 23 whenStar editor Michael Cooke sent a memo saying the paper might contract out jobs to Pagemasters. Whether it ultimately does this, the Star hopes to save between $3- and $4-million annually. Some staff members bitterly compare that sum to the controversial $9.6-million-plus severance package paid out to former CEO Rob Prichard earlier in 2009.

The same day the November 3 memo was sent, Smith held two meetings for newsroom staff about what was going on at the paper. Reporters, photographers and editors streamed into the old smoking section of the fourth-floor cafeteria at 1 Yonge Street, overflowing into the next room. A somber Smith explained the union had until December 23 to present plausible alternatives to outsourcing—otherwise, the jobs would be eliminated. The team appointed to come up with this alternative consisted of Vey, page editor John King and Bill Dunphy, a former columnist for The Hamilton Spectator who is now working on a new content management system for Torstar papers. Since the meeting, 166 Star employees—12 percent of its 1,350 total staff—have accepted a voluntary severance package. In mid-December, Vey and others printed T-shirts for those targeted by the layoffs, enough for all of the editors and page editors, of whom there are about 150. The front of the black, long-sleeved T-shirts read either “Dead editor walking” or “Dead pre-press walking” with a “-30-” encircled by crosshairs on the back. The plan was to have the “core” editorial staff buy the shirts for their “non-core” coworkers, a sort of adopt-an-editor program, in hopes of reaffirming that they are a vital part of the Toronto Star ecosystem and show solidarity in the newsroom. The editorial shirts sold out in less than a day, and that afternoon the newsroom was overrun with black T-shirts.

Stewart Muir, managing director of Pagemasters North America, currently one of two full-time employees, would not divulge what its staff might be paid or whether any Canadian papers are in active negotiations with the company, but said a number of papers are considering the possibility. While some Star editors believe Pagemasters jobs would be filled by people with limited experience, Muir says employees will have the same level of training and skills as those in newsrooms. On the wage issue he becomes coy, saying Pagemasters will save papers money because “it’s about specializing and centralizing and focusing on just the act of production and leaving the creation of content for newsrooms, where it belongs.”

The idea for Pagemasters North America arose after Eric Morrison, president of The Canadian Press, spoke with the president of the Australian Associated Press, which acquired the 11-year-old Pagemasters Australia in 2002. In September 2008, Morrison took a trip to Oz to see how the company worked, and any skepticism he had about the company performing quality work was dispelled. What he found were enthusiastic, well-trained employees who impressed him.

Surprisingly, Paul Tolich, senior national industrial officer of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union in New Zealand, seems equally positive. He says that in 2007, when Pagemasters took over 70 copy-editing jobs for papers owned by APN News & Media, including The New Zealand Herald and smaller papers like the Wanganui Chronicle and, Bay of Plenty Times, the union was concerned there would be a decrease in quality. But he says those qualms have disappeared, and, in fact, the approximately 70 Pagemasters employees, who are now unionized by EPMU as well, are paid about the same as staffers at the papers involved. The total number of jobs has dropped, though: savings came from fewer doing the same jobs as there were before, and maximizing efficiency. The fact that papers such as The Daily Telegraph in Britain,The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, and The New Zealand Herald are all Pagemasters customers may suggest that jobs integral to a polished finished product may be destined to leave Canadian newsrooms, if not the Star“s specifically.

It’s unclear what Pagemasters North America will charge for editing services, but according to an August 2009 article in The Guardian, it billed a minimum of 45 per page, about $77. No one seems to know what the current rate is at the Star, but the team working on alternatives to is trying to figure out a way to reduce costs without decimating staff. (Editors in the full-time positions that may be eliminated started at $55,848 as of January 1, 2009; the same scale gives a page editor with four years’ experience $86,840.)

Outsourcing editorial work isn’t new in Canada. Canwest has been running its own centralized editorial service in Hamilton since 1997, where employees provide full pagination services for papers including theVancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen.

Is that outsourcing? Is that what the Star may be planning? Pagemasters sets up custom centres that can be as close to a paper’s location as the paper wants. Pagemasters calls this “nearsourcing.” While the Canadian Association of Journalists doesn’t really have a definition for outsourcing, from its perspective, once jobs are sent out of the newsroom, to Mangalore or a location 20 minutes away, that counts as outsourcing. Mary Agnes Welch, a Winnipeg Free Press reporter and president of the CAJ, adds while the association knows there is a need to cut costs, ripping apart the team that puts together the paper leaves room for err ors. In a newsroom you can yell over four desks to the copy editors and say, ’What’s the style on this?’ or ’Anybody remember this?’ That kind of teamwork disappears when you start sending those jobs out. This cohesive team that kind of miraculously puts the paper out every day begins to disintegrate.

Another kind of team was the main preoccupation for Cooke, Muir and a Pagemasters Australia representative the night of the November 3 announcement. From the Torstar corporate box in the Air Canada Centre, they watched the Maple Leafs disintegrate against the Tampa Bay Lightning, losing 2-1.

The decision was a year in the making: If a viable woman ran for the Toronto mayoralty in 2010, Women’s Post would promote her. And when that woman turned out to be Sarah Thomson, the magazine’s owner (and, until recently, publisher and CEO), the plan didn’t change at all. First, she teased her intentions in the “Publisher’s Journal” column. Then, after a November 2009 blog post on womenspost.ca by “Schreecher” trashed the male front-runner and implored a female “entrepreneur, a business owner to step into the race,” Thomson—an uncanny match for that description—popped up in the comments, noting that though she hadn’t officially announced it, she planned to run. Finally, she appeared on the cover of the February/March issue; the sell line read: “Toronto’s next mayor…”

Thomson defends her bold move by explaining that she paid for the cover story as a campaign expense—though, as both publisher and advertiser, she was essentially paying herself. She may not doubt the ethics of her decision, but others do. To be trusted, says David Swick, a journalism ethics instructor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, journalists should be free to criticize all parties and open to changing views, but when electioneering masquerades as reporting, that trust can be broken permanently. A democracy, after all, requires groups with distinct and different powers. Journalists’ power, he says, “is to tell the truth, to criticize everybody, to speak loudly and be transparent about why we’re doing so. Isn’t this power enough?” Sometimes, apparently, it isn’t. But when political candidates use their media positions to advance their campaigns, they discredit themselves and their publications.

For journalists, the desire to change teams is understandable. “You’re dealing with politicians, some of whom you think are idiots, or are not working hard enough, or who are hiding issues,” Swick says. “I think it’s a natural instinct to want to get in there and get your hands dirty and do it yourself.” And there’s plenty of historical precedent—even Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, was a newspaper owner and writer. Ralph Klein, former premier of Alberta, was once a political reporter, as was former Quebec premier René Lévesque. Former Global TV news anchor Peter Kent left journalism to run for Parliament (he lost a 2006 bid but won in 2008). Adam Vaughan quit his job as a political reporter for Citytv in 2006 to run for the Toronto City Council seat he now holds. And Ben Chin, a TV news veteran, lost a provincial by-election in 2006 and has stayed away from journalism ever since (the campaign came in between stints as a senior advisor in the premier’s office).

John Tory went the other way. A former Toronto mayoral candidate who later became provincial opposition leader, Tory now hosts the daily Live Drive program on Newstalk 1010. He believes there’s an acceptable grace period for journalists to remove themselves from their duties if they want to run for office. Although his radio show briefly became an issue last fall before he announced he wouldn’t run for mayor again, he says that as long as he was transparent about his plans—and the station acted quickly to replace him if he decided to run—listeners would have been satisfied.

And speed is indeed a factor in maintaining the public’s trust. The Toronto Star broke the story that Toronto Sun city hall columnist Sue-Ann Levy would run in a provincial by-election last summer, two days before she planned to take an unpaid leave of absence from her paper. Vaughan left Citytv when he started to seriously consider a campaign, weeks before he officially announced his candidacy. He feels he handled the transition appropriately, though he admits he had fielded suggestions that he run for office many times before. “If I stepped aside every time I’d been approached to think about it,” he says, “I’d have never been a journalist to begin with.”

Politically, Vaughan has no problem with what Thomson did, as long as the expenses were properly registered. “During the campaign, we all become publishers to a certain degree,” he says. “I think the decision she made has a more dramatic impact on the legitimacy of the paper she’s publishing than on her campaign.” When Vaughan left Citytv, Steve Hurlbut, then the network’s vice-president, told the National Postthe reporter might be rehired if he lost the election, but not as a political journalist. “You’re on either side of the fence, you can’t walk down the middle.”

Others have no problem going back home. The Globe and Mail‘s Michael Valpy ran as an NDP candidate in the 2000 federal election, taking temporary leave from the paper to do so. Five days after he lost, his byline returned, attached to a lengthy diary of his campaign. He still covers politics. Though, in a recent column on Adam Giambrone, who was briefly a mayoral hopeful, the paper included a statement disclosing Valpy’s past candidacy, on which Giambrone had worked.

Levy, too, reappeared in the Sun three days after losing. She says a conflict of interest never occurred to her when she decided to run: she covered city hall and rarely referred to provincial politics. Although she’s aWomen’s Post reader who has profiled the publisher, Levy was surprised to see Thomson on the cover of her own magazine. But, the columnist says, “She owns it. She has a right to use it.”

According to municipal guidelines, at least. The Canadian Society of Magazine Editors, however, frowns on this sort of manoeuvring, and has established principles on the mixing of advertising and editorial. CSME president Bob Sexton wrote about the Women’s Post matter in a comment on thestar.com: “The cover is considered an editorial page, just like any other editorial page in the magazine, so, therefore, placing an ad on the cover contravenes the industry guidelines.”

Though Thomson says she’s “pretty much stepped down” from Women’s Post and claims to have relinquished her publisher and CEO titles, she remains the owner. Her campaign also rents office space from the magazine, and campaign manager Wendy Stewart handled the request to speak with editor-in-chief Adam Mazerall for this article. Mazerall, who answers the phone, “Women’s Post and campaign office,” says the editorial team thought about what to do if more than one woman ran, “but as no other woman has entered the race, it is a moot point.”

Thomson says another female candidate might have received editorial play, but there was only space for one cover. “It’s no longer Women’s Post, it’s Sarah’s Post,” says Vaughan. “And that’s fine. She’s entitled to that. But that undermines the credibility of the magazine.”

Wherever Kerry Mitchell goes, tales of an interfering publisher follow. There are judgments: incessant micromanagement, a hungry ambition and a cool demeanour. There are whispers: former Chatelaine editor-in-chief Sara Angel allegedly threw furniture at her after one too many fights over editorial control. There is vitriol: some people can’t stand her, plain and simple—though they’d never say it publicly. And the latest rumour: she’s crossed Rogers Publishing leading man Ken Whyte, a feat that could herald the end of the Mitchell regime.

Loved by some and feared by many, Mitchell is a rapidly rising star in magazine publishing. Her voracious quest to find something more, something better, something, perhaps, unreachable has affected every publication she’s worked for. And not just in atmosphere. Mitchell has tentacles in all aspects of her magazines. Industry rumours even accuse her of dabbling in display writing—angering editors as a result.

Her involvement may seem intrusive to some of her underlings, but it’s no longer an anomaly in publisher-editor relationships. “Hands-on” is the new “removed overseer.” While there are no “maybes” about Mitchell—those who have worked under her either extol or despise her—her successes don’t lie. Though it may seem she’s just in it for herself, her profit-turning prowess has made her popular with the higher-ups.

Mitchell has been in the magazine industry for over 20 years. Once a researcher at Chatelaine, she started taking the reins in the mid-1990s. An executive with publishing house Key’s Where International from 1992 to 1995 before joining Telemedia, Mitchell became publisher of Equinox, founding publisher of Style at Homeand publisher of Canadian Living. She left Telemedia in 2000, shortly after Transcontinental bought the company, and then joined Rogers in 2002, becoming the publisher of Profit until 2004. Later that year, she added the publisher job at Chatelaine to her resume.

She hasn’t relied just on her pumps to take her to new heights. Mitchell and Whyte now run the show over at Rogers. Several publishers have left, quietly surrendering or “retiring.” Former Flare publisher Orietta Minatel was ousted when Mitchell took over that magazine (along with Glow and Cosmetics) in June 2009. Today’s Parent publisher Ildiko Marshall has also left the building.

Mitchell has collected magazines much as Whyte amassed titles. He became publisher of Canadian Business, Profit and MoneySense, along with his posts as publisher and editor-in-chief at Maclean‘s. Some observers, such as David Swick, instructor of journalism ethics at University of King’s College in Halifax, are wary of their abilities to juggle their growing dominions. As he said in an e-mail, “Fractured energy naturally means less energy for each individual focus.”

As the industry evolves, the presence of the micromanaging publisher becomes more familiar and resistance is (somewhat) subdued. In days of old, publishers and editors respected the “church and state” divide—publishers stuck to business and editors to content. But for better or worse, that chasm is closing, and publishers such as Mitchell are at the forefront. “Kerry tends to be less ‘church and state,'” says Dré Dee, who worked with her as a senior features editor at Chatelaine. “It’s not the old days anymore when it comes to women’s books.” Indeed, Mitchell had her hands in every aspect of the publication, down to asking editors to change the colour of cover text.

Lee Oliver also had an issue with her changing text, but what sticks out in his mind was a call for a change at the end of a production cycle. Oliver, who was senior editor at Profit from 2003 to 2004, says the team took a copy of the finished magazine to Mitchell as a courtesy. But she didn’t like the cover—the shade of blue text was off, and she wanted it changed. Some staff members traded frustrated glances. And then they did as they were told.

Such incidents didn’t always bring out Mitchell’s cordial side. “I wouldn’t characterize her as an openly warm or friendly person,” says Dee, before qualifying, “but I wouldn’t expect that of a publisher.”

Others weren’t so quick to concede—notably Kim Pittaway, who quit the editor-in-chief position at Chatelainein 2005 after less than a year. There’d been “a fundamental disagreement about which areas of responsibility were mine and which were the publisher’s,” The Globe and Mail quoted Pittaway at the time. “The publisher told me my opinion was important, but hers was very, very important.” Mitchell wanted lively covers to boost newsstand sales. So, copies of Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping and O started appearing during story meetings to serve as examples. Next came a consultant, hired in August 2005 to suggest further changes. Soon after, Pittaway went on vacation, returning only to collect her things. And that’s when Chatelaine‘s revolving door started spinning.

“Editor-publisher conflict can create a better product,” says Swick. “That is if they actually listen to and learn from one another. When the relationship is based on power and fear, no one wins—especially the reader.”

Since Mitchell took over the magazine in 2004, there have been four editors-in-chief, and about 15 other staffers have left—movement that can be attributed to “poor hires and mistreatment” in Dee’s view. Still,Chatelaine flourished in the second half of 2005. Readership surged by nine percent and Mitchell survived all the chaos. The magazine embraced new ways of approaching advertising. Models started appearing on covers again, replacing mouth-watering food spreads. Another change was more shocking: the July 2005 issue included a 16-page “bonus section” on outdoor living, clearly branded with Home Depot and Chatelainelogos. It was a throw to the section on the front cover, though, that caused the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors to slam the edition for too radically blurring the line between advertising and editorial.

And yet the magazine is still successful, raking in an estimated $56.5 million in 2008 under Mitchell’s leadership, despite the ever-changing masthead.

But can it last? “Whatever’s happening there, the symptoms are clear,” says Paul Benedetti, program coordinator of the Master of Arts in Journalism Program at the University of Western Ontario. “If you hire talented, smart, experienced people to run your magazine, you have to let them run it. The more you meddle, the more you run the risk of losing your editor or derailing your magazine.”

He believes a healthy publication has the right people serving specific interests. That means publishers working with advertisers, and editors writing to readers. But recent trends reflect more publishers picking fonts, and when they can’t tell Arial from other sans serifs, the results aren’t pretty. The content suffers when “the wrong person is creating the wrong content for the wrong audience,” Benedetti says. “The publisher still sees the advertiser as the customer, and that’s wrong.”

Still, some observers think the shift is inevitable. “Shrinking revenue probably has a lot to do with it,” says Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia. “As finances get tighter, the editorial job gets trickier and the whole newsroom goes into survival mode.” But Hamilton doesn’t think the greater editorial role played by some publishers is necessarily a bad thing, “as long as there’s a willingness to listen and communicate.”

Mitchell can play that role, too. Lise Ravary, editorial director of women’s titles and new magazine brands at Rogers Publishing, says, “Kerry is very, very open. She loves to surround herself with people who will argue with her. She respects that.” But in the end, Mitchell makes up her mind and the debate is finished. “That,” says Ravary, “is what a good manager does.”

When Mitchell was publisher and ad director of Profit, she reported to Deborah Rosser, who was publisher ofCanadian Business, and the two had a professional, respectful relationship. “Kerry helped improve the profitability of the publication,” says Rosser. “She’s very smart, focused, knows what she wants and goes for it.”

And she wasn’t going to settle, whether she was dealing with copy or her own career. When Rosser hired her, she knew Mitchell, who was experienced and overqualified, would soon want bigger and better things. “I told her, ‘I want two years from you.'” She got a year-and-a-half. Oliver also sensed her restlessness. “Maybe I’m a big baby, but her head always seemed somewhere further in the game,” he says. “She always seemed to be thinking three steps ahead. She wasn’t that engaged with her staff.” To him, Mitchell’s year-and-a-half was clearly just a stepping stone.

In spite of her supposed transgressions, Mitchell has her allies. Ian Portsmouth, long-time editor-in-chief atProfit, says, “I loved working with her. I was very sad when she left; I was the first person she called.” The pair still meets for coffee, and Portsmouth has fond memories of their time working together. “Her door was literally always open.”

Craig Offman, too, who worked under Mitchell as an executive editor at Chatelaine in 2006, said she was always warm with him. She remembered his kids’ names, and even threw a party for him at the Drake Hotel in Toronto when he left. “Which was nice,” he says, “because she always adhered to a strict budget. It shows the kind of person she was with me.” Offman didn’t face the same sort of power struggles with Mitchell as Pittaway did. “I went there with an understanding that I was helping out,” he says. “I had no desire to be editor-in-chief.”

Mitchell’s manner hasn’t always curried favour with her staff. “When at a function, you’d see people break into groups,” says Oliver. “And you’d see people like Kerry who gravitate towards CEOs and power brokers over the editors.” The workplace wasn’t much different: she’d walk by him and act like he wasn’t even there. “She did not have a lot of words to say,” notes Dee, “and when she did, they were in CEO-speak.”

The way she carries herself has tended to isolate her in the past. A former Telemedia employee fondly recalls how much the team socialized, but “Kerry definitely didn’t fit in,” he says. Perhaps that’s what she wants, though—to maintain a distance from those working under her.

That same effort to ensure separation does not extend to her “church and state” philosophy when it comes to magazines. “She was not afraid to wade into matters editorial,” according to an e-mail from Janice McLean, who was art director at Equinox. “That quality didn’t (and doesn’t) distinguish her from many other male publishers of that era and this one. It may have left a little metaphorical blood on the office floor, but that’s not uncommon either.”

Though Mitchell’s bouts with editor Jim Cormier were legendary, Alan Morantz, another former editor atEquinox, likes her. When the magazine sold, he was the only staff member to stay on, moving up to editor-in-chief. Mitchell mailed him a letter “out of the blue,” wishing him well. “She didn’t have to do that,” he says. Morantz admits he wasn’t privy to the day-to-day tensions at Equinox, though he heard about the fights, which neither he nor anyone from the defunct magazine will recount. He admits, however, that he can see how others might perceive her as frosty.

Like her or not, little of Mitchell’s personality creeps out from the cloaked image she presents in the workplace. Some find that professionalism admirable and respect it. Others are just dying for a sense of the real person, who refused to speak to the Ryerson Review of Journalism. Ken Whyte also did not respond to interview requests.

But her rising star status is now in question. Ask one person and she’s planted her feet. Ask another and she’s battling Whyte for a top spot at Rogers, allegedly made vacant by senior vice-president of consumer publishing Marc Blondeau’s departure last fall. Maybe she’s being groomed, or maybe it’s only a matter of time until someone pulls the chair out from under her, too. It’s hard to tell if hers is a situation that is truly unknowable, or if those around her are simply hedging their bets.

And as for the staff at One Mount Pleasant? The ground continues to tremble with ferocity. In early March, six more Chatelaine employees were shooed out of the glass building, this after editor-in-chief Maryam Sanati was fired to pave the way for Jane Francisco back in December 2009. This led to plenty of rumours, of course, but here’s a fact: Mitchell is missing from the magazine’s most recent masthead. In her place? Ken Whyte.

Two cars pull into the driveway of a farmhouse outside Kitchener, Ontario. In one, Mary Garofalo, host and consulting producer for Global’s 16:9, and camera operator Kirk Neff have been waiting nearby for days for Dave Switzer, a paralegal they suspect has duped his clients out of large amounts of money. As Switzer and a female companion lock up their car, Garofalo and Neff jump out of theirs, the camera already recording.

“I’d like to talk to you about all these people who are angry at you across the country,” the reporter says after introducing herself. “People are calling you a con man, Mr. Switzer. They say you took their money.”

The couple walks to the house as Garofalo keeps asking questions. “Mr. Switzer, anything at all?”

But it’s too late. The couple is inside the farmhouse.

What the industry refers to in hushed voices and defensive tones as “an ambush” is a last resort for broadcast news magazine programs such as 16:9. While ambushes are most effective when the subject responds or agrees to a later interview, critics argue that when the subject says nothing, the practice is more showbiz than journalism. Either way, ambushing—long a staple of television news and current affairs programs—is here to stay.

No matter how quick and jumpy ambushes look on television, they are meticulously planned and executed after weeks of trying to contact a source. At 16:9, the reporter, executive producer and deputy editor will sit down and discuss whether they want to find this person and attempt to conduct an “unscheduled interview” (a term Garofalo coined). They go through careful discussions with lawyers about private property, trespassing and dealing with people who don’t want their stories exposed.

16:9 journalists go through all of this because they believe ambushes are effective. Mary Perrone, the associate producer-turned-freelancer, says even when people slam doors on them, these encounters are just as important as long, formal interviews. The program, which fits three stories into 30-minute episodes, uses the technique to show its viewers that its reporters are going the extra mile as journalists. “I feel I’ve done my job by trying to find him, and a lot of people will say that’s ambush journalism,” says Garofalo of her attempt to speak to Switzer. “I don’t think that way. I’m simply trying to get the other side.”

And, as journalists in favour of ambushes point out, the tactic often pays off. One 16:9 episode about animal cruelty, for example, showed two sources answering reporter Christina Stevens’s questions during “unscheduled interviews.” After she ran up to a man who was hiding under his coat while knocking on the door of a house, he admitted he’d kicked a dog because he was drunk. A second man, who had a cockfighting ring in his barn, responded to Stevens by claiming he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.

CBC’s the fifth estate also airs ambushes. Reporter Bob McKeown has conducted what he calls “spontaneous interactions” with people such as televangelist Benny Hinn and David Frost, agent of troubled hockey player Mike Danton. He thinks the approach is valuable. Hinn, for example, gave answers that contradicted what he preached, while Frost revealed himself with his abrasive remarks. “Whether they try to talk their way out of it or not,” McKeown says, “you hope they do engage in a conversation because it gives you a chance to show who they are.”

CTV’s W5 was lucky when reporter Victor Malarek approached Robert Primeau, a mortgage broker he was investigating for allegedly compromising investments from people who hired him and his company, Primforce, at a hotel. Primeau agreed to do an interview later, when he was prepared. Executive producer Anton Koschany says his team works carefully to make sure each ambush, or what they sometimes call an “attempted interview” or “jump,” is critical to the story. But, he admits, “The fine line is that you could turn this into a very poor street theatre that has nothing to do with journalism.”

Although reporters and producers argue that ambushes are about “getting the other side,” the way they present these scenes—often gratuitously—suggests that’s not always the case. The Switzer episode on 16:9, for example, repeated parts of the ambush scene nine times in 10 minutes, then in a follow-up piece, and again on Global’s News Hour. In a recent episode of W5, parts of an ambush scene ran four times in a 20-minute episode. “I guess it speaks to the drama of the tape,” says Brad Clark, an associate professor of broadcast journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary, who worries that jumping out at a subject only makes for good television. “It’s showbiz—it’s not really journalism.”

He argues that ambushes, when warranted, should be used calmly and respectfully instead of quickly and relentlessly. “Treat them the same way you would treat any other character in your story.” Showing the other side in these cases would have meant, for example, Switzer making a comment or giving an interview.

As Garofalo sits at a picnic table at the Don Valley Brick Works, a heritage education centre in Toronto, waiting to tape a stand-up, she admits ambushes aren’t her first choice, saying she would much rather sit down and “hammer” someone with a debate. But in her line of work, that usually isn’t possible. “Someone who is hiding something is not going to sit down with you because they know you’re going to make mincemeat out of them.”

Garofalo says she often ambushed subjects when she worked at Fox’s A Current Affair. Once, a Massachusetts district attorney she was investigating for suspected ties to the Mafia punched her in the face. The ambush may be her last resort, but she always finds satisfaction in the pursuit. “I think you get used to that kind of adrenaline high,” she says. “Nothing really compares unless you’re jumping out of an airplane. The funny part is you never know what they’re going to do.”

When Sylvain Blais was 14, he knew he was hooked on fashion. Each month he’d pick up a copy of both American and Italian Vogue from the only store that carried them in his hometown of Sherbrooke, Quebec. As soon as he finished school in 1997 he started working as a freelance photographer for Montreal-based designers and publications such as Strut and Nightlife Magazine and eventually moved on to take photos for national brands like Buffalo Jeans and chains such as Reitmans and Bikini Village. On an afternoon in November 2007, between gulps of coffee in his Montreal dining room with two colleagues, the 32-year-old Blais said the words he had dreamed of saying since he was a teenager: “Guys, let’s start a magazine.”

“That’s a brilliant idea,” said Kathia Cambron, who would become the publisher. She had met Blais (now editorial and creative director) and Ewa Bilinski (future art director) in 2003, when they were freelance photographers. A few years later, they reconvened with the notion of opening an advertising agency for fashion brands and designers. With a small clientele in Montreal and no portfolio, however, the responses were not encouraging. Instead, they decided to reach their audience in a different way: through an arty, high-fashion magazine called Dress to Kill.

With a name inspired by a line from a Sister Sledge song—”He looks like a still/that man is dressed to kill”—the publication debuted almost two years ago as a free 100-page French-language quarterly with a distribution of 10,000: 7,000 in Montreal and 3,000 in Quebec City and smaller towns nearby. It features high-quality photography and editorial focused on avant-garde couture, plus profiles and features. What it doesn’t have are the little black dresses of fashion publications: service pieces and Hollywood stars, though it will include style icons who double as celebs. “Service pieces are like imposing orders, and I find that a bit disturbing,” says Stéphane Le Duc, Dress to Kill’s editor-in-chief.

In an effort to attract more national advertisers, the Dress to Kill team decided to launch an English-language version during last fall’s Toronto Fashion Week. “It was always a part of the primary plan,” says Cambron. “We decided to start in Montreal, and when we were comfortable enough, we moved to Toronto. We knew we had to push.” Ten thousand copies were distributed to more than 100 boutiques in upscale shopping districts like Yorkville, Bloor Street West, Queen Street West and King Street West. Printed standard-size on glossy stock, the 98-page issue included a mixture of elements: collages of accessories, a guide to local trends and short articles on topics as diverse as Karl Lagerfeld’s influence on Coco Chanel to the possible revival of a late-1970s clothing line, Parachute.

The magazine’s founders are sufficiently confident that their target 20- to 35-year-old reader is eager enough for what they have to offer that she (or he) will be willing to pay for it: 1,700 copies of each English-language issue are on newsstands for $4.99 per copy.

Le Duc believes the answer to overtaking big Canadian fashion titles like Flare lies in knowing DTK’s readers—fashion-savvy design lovers—are mature enough to create their own style through the magazine. “It’s inspirational. It’s about appreciating and discovering. It’s not about buying things,” he says. Nor is it about celeb clotheshorses: the audience should love fashion for fashion, not because it’s draped on Madonna, he says. So he and the rest of the team insist on bringing fashion back to its roots with models, designers and professional photography.

Jacquelyn Francis, executive editor of Toronto-based Fashion magazine, is rather dubious about this approach. “Service pieces are what everybody wants,” she says. She adds fashion should be educational, in a slumber-party sort of way. “It’s like standing in the change room with your girlfriends and talking about what looks good.” And realistically, she notes, celebrities sell.

However, Francis concedes that DTK could be onto something: “Niche markets may be the new gold mine because these publications can completely focus on their target audience and their advertising groups.”

Giorgina Bigioni, who spent 20 years as publisher at Fashion, among other titles, is a bit more skeptical. She believes celebrities are an important part of fashion inspiration, and without service pieces, she says, the magazine may become irrelevant to its audience, and could result in a loss of readers, or worse, advertisers.

But at the moment, there aren’t all that many advertisers to lose anyway, since only about 30 percent of the magazine is made up of ads (50 or 60 percent is not uncommon in fashion books). Given the 20,000-issue circulation of the two editions, which translates to about $40,000 in ad revenue per issue, Dress to Kill staff aren’t likely to be buying the Chanel shoes touted in its pages. In fact, Cambron considered lowering the magazine’s ad rates, but decided to expand its circulation to generate more ad sales instead. There’s more expansion ahead: the team is planning to make another debut in New York in March. “We’re not making money just to make money. We’re doing something that is important to us,” Cambron says. “And that’s offering people a sense of freedom that mainstream magazines don’t.”

Still, another fashion press insider, Leanne Delap, The Globe and Mail’s fashion editor, says of Dress to Kill’s non-commercial format, “[When magazines try] to get the mass numbers advertisers want, editors and publishers are forced to dumb down copy and content to get more readers. But hey, if someone wants to support a high-art fashion book with no filler material, then that just means more power to the publication.”