In the summer of 2014, The Globe and Mail narrowly avoided an editorial staff strike over native advertising—the practice of working with advertisers to create ads that resemble journalism. A leaked memo from Globe management to the paper’s union proposed a system in which editorial staff would write for advertisers, compromising, in the minds of many Globe reporters, their integrity as journalists.

Now, the Globe has launched a new website for Globe Edge—a potential solution to the hotly debated question of whether newspapers can produce native advertising without selling their souls to ad clients. Despite the inextricable problem with publishing clearly biased ads designed to blend in with theoretically unbiased journalism, the relaunch of Edge may represent the better of many evils, as well as an industry warming up to the idea of writing for someone other than readers.

According to Globe Edge managing editor Sean Stanleigh, Edge operates as a micro property of The Globe and Mail, much like a section of the newspaper. While Edge staff still write native ads in the same physical space as the rest of the paper, an important divide exists between Globe employee roles.

The seven members of the Edge team who work on native advertising—though many once worked as journalists—are distinct from the Globe’s editorial staff. This workforce divide distinguishes Edge from the Globe’s first bungled attempt at native advertising, which nearly caused the strike. Stanleigh says this is crucial because it separates editorial work from work supervised and directed by clients, which is outside the scope of acceptable journalism.

Another important divide appears within the articles themselves, albeit not as prominently as it should. Take, for example, “Roughnecks, armed with tablets, transform the energy industry,” a distinctly uncritical look at new technology in the oil fields: a tiny banner along the top declares, “sponsored content” (in size 7.5 font); the type shade is slightly lighter than the standard black (though nearly indistinguishable); and an italicized message at the end of the article clarifies that the Globe’s editorial staff had nothing to do with it.

As native advertising has become more standard–particularly online (BuzzFeed makes nearly all its money this way)–many believe these small design cues aren’t enough. In a 2013 article following a native advertising misstep that led The Atlantic to publish a glowing endorsement of Scientology, the Globe’s own Simon Houpt took a firm stand against native advertising, writing, “Given the way readers consume stuff online, scanning articles on tiny screens, simply sticking a label at the top or bottom of an article won’t do the trick.”

But Stanleigh has observed a shift in the Globe newsroom away from knee-jerk rejection of native ads as unethical without exception. “I haven’t felt any antagonism from my colleagues,” he says. “I think they understand that we need to make the money it takes to produce great journalism.”

This awareness of a newspaper’s financial needs is keener than ever, and the softening of journalists toward native advertising has likely been prodded along by declining revenues.

Another contributing factor toward the acceptance of native ads is increased responsibility on the part of the advertisers. In 2013, the U.S.-based Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) published the Native Advertising Playbook, which attempts to establish industry-wide standards such as clear and unmistakable disclosure to readers. “It’s eminently possible to protect institutional integrity and provide a platform for paid points of view,” says IAB President Randall Rothenberg.

But “integrity” is a distinctly subjective concept, and its definition for advertisers may differ wildly for journalists. For Stanleigh, who was once deputy national editor for the Globe and has also worked as a senior editor at the Toronto Star, bridging this gap is essential. “One of the most important parts of my role is making sure advertisers have an understanding of journalistic principles,” he says.

While the concept still makes many journalists queasy, the development of Globe Edge is a leading example of a bad thing done well. If we accept that journalism needs to be profitable to exist—and that it may soon have exhausted all morally sound means of making money—a careful, responsible approach toward native advertising may be our next best bet.

Dear readers,

After more than a year of questions and discussion about the future of the Ryerson Review of Journalism, our plan’s building blocks are in place. It will be an audience-focused, audience-driven, audience-supported multiplatform magazine brand that continues to include an annual print edition, plus much more.

By audience, we mean you. But first, some background.

More than a year ago, I began asking colleagues what the magazine of the future would be like, how this should affect the Review, and how the magazine could become more sustainable given the flight of advertising dollars from print. These private questions quickly fuelled passionate public discussions, which hearteningly affirmed the Review’s importance to readers.

As I podcast, our engaging weekly newsletter, steady engagement on Twitter and the edgy blog you’re reading now. And it’s now clear that the mix should continue to include an annual print edition.

But the most central insight threaded through all the recent discussions and developments is that a successful magazine today is a multidimensional brand that enjoys a dynamic relationship with its audience community. It is neither print-first nor digital-first: it is audience-first.

Our most important goal for the Review’s future is, therefore, a more intimate understanding of our audience community and its information needs. Starting this September, audience contact and analysis will be built in to each year’s masthead activities—so don’t be surprised if you get a call from a journalism student asking for your story ideas and suggestions for the magazine’s form and content.

To serve that audience well, the Review’s various manifestations will express complementary aspects of the magazine’s unified brand.  Our digital and print offerings need to grow more interrelated and interactive. They should be supplemented by other branded activity (such as events and merchandise), and electronic publication should eventually replace newsstand distribution for single-copy sales.

To make all this possible without diminishing the very brand we’re trying to expand, we need to support an equally high standard of reporting, writing and editing on every platform, and to increase the number of students bringing diverse skills and interests to both editorial and publishing activities.

All of this will cost more money, not less. Even in a period of austerity in funding for post-secondary education, Ryerson will continue to invest heavily in instruction, technology and support for the Review, primarily because it’s a serious asset for students’ career preparedness. And the vigorous support expressed for the Review, on this blog and elsewhere, suggests that its audience members stand ready to add their support.

If that includes you, you can prove it now by subscribing to the print edition, whose cover price will be increased to reflect its costs, and pledging a gift that expresses the level of your support.

Students, too, will play a part in the sustainability plan. Each future masthead will be given a set publishing budget and will make its own decisions on how to grow and spend that resource, replicating the kind of entrepreneurial sensibility that drives a successful niche magazine today.

I will spare you the many details involved in implementing the above ideas, but be assured that our eyes are firmly on the prize of a growing presence for the Review as a keen eye on the dynamic landscape of Canadian journalism, in partnership with J-Source, which is now housed in the RRJ editorial suite.

As always, my colleagues and I welcome your suggestions and questions on any of the above. You’re our core audience, so please consider yourself promoted to Editorial Director and Co-Publisher, effective immediately.

Ivor Shapiro

Chair: Ryerson School of Journalism

Publisher: Ryerson Review of Journalism

The former hierarchies of the journalism industry have crumbled by the weight of the digital realm, to be replaced by blurry parallel relations between journalists and readers.

The result is evident in the record 10,600 readers who participated in the Toronto Star‘s annual “You be the editor” survey. Administered by the Star’s public editor, Kathy English, the “highly unscientific, overly simplistic survey” served to provide insight into readers’ perspectives on the judgments made on to-publish-or-not-to-publish over the past year.

For example, 60 percent of readers voted that a cartoon presenting Toronto Mayor John Tory in bare-butt pants should have been published, which English now also agrees with. Fifty-five percent of the readers would have also made the decision to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed. English disagrees: “it would be offensive and hurtful to Muslims in this community.”

Online journalism, in its many forms, has created a system of interaction that enables and encourages collaboration between reader and editor to discover, distribute and discuss the elements that create the best possible version of a news story. Today, the function of readers has surpassed that of being an audience, with technology fuelling their willingness to be heard and their capacity to be listened to, even on core matters of journalism ethics that the industry continues to debate.

These include the examples English collated in her survey, especially those about issues relating to mental health stories, as shown in the image below.

“Neither of th[e]se references is in line with media best practices for writing about mental health,” writes English, “and, to my mind, neither should have been published in the Star.” I agree.

In fairness, English does recognize that “newsroom debate about what to publish is always deeper and more wide-ranging than what this light exercise in journalistic decision-making can depict.”

Yet in the digital age of journalism, what is considered good, thorough and balanced journalistic practice is often at odds with reader perceptions and expectations. That’s okay if journalists are aware that, while the hierarchy may have crumbled, they still make the final call on how to best tell the story to the reader, who can only play the role of editor. Survey results show that readers were aligned with the newsroom’s judgments in 12 of the 18 matters in question. I’m unsure what to conclude from that.

A day before the survey results were published, Mitch Potter, the Star’s foreign affairs writer, wrote how the decision to publish certain images of Syrian kids in conflict zones is important in defining whether the reader will perceive them with empathy or as furthering propaganda. “You, friends, are now the filter, every bit—if not more so—than those of us who used to be,” concludes Potter.

That’s a scary thought. The power of the reader is strong. The force of journalism needs to find a way to stay in line with, if not above, that.

Review multimedia editors Eternity Martis and Allison Baker are spreading the holiday cheer with our predictions for the next year of journalism.

In case you missed some of our more realistic (ahem, wishful) predictions in the video, here’s what we said:

Richard Moon, a law professor at the University of Windsor, came to Ryerson University on Monday, November 23, to speak to students and community members about the fine line between hate speech and free speech. His conclusion? He doesn’t have one.

Moon’s lecture was focused specifically on speech related to the Muslim faith in relation to the recent Paris attacks. “When speech that attributes undesirable or dangerous qualities to a group that has been the recent target of hate and hate groups, it is more likely to be hate speech,” he said, citing how this speech can lead to the burning down of mosques and global violence against innocent Muslims.

Moon said that religion is a cultural and personal part of identity. When such a belief is deeply held, the impact of insult can be devastating on the believer. It’s an experience that outsiders to that belief may not understand. “The impact and insult may be greater for marginalized groups that see it as further subordination of a group in public,” he said. However, Moon drove home the point that there are different levels of belief in each religious group—not everybody associated with that religion will be insulted by offensive speech.

There was some discussion on journalists’ use of offensive speech relating to the Muslim faith, such as Mark Steyn’s article in Maclean’s entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam” and Jyllands-Posten’s publishing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (see the image below). But while Moon asked his audience to question how this speech, used as a tool by members of the press, could incite hate against an entire group by calling its members “dangerous” and “violent.” But he also discussed the impact on free speech if religious criticism were to be silenced.

Moon said that personal beliefs should be open to debate. If religion is an untouchable area of free speech, then just about any belief can be claimed to be a part of an identity that can’t be insulted—political, scientific or cultural. How else would we function in this free and democratic society? But what if this speech, uncensored or unpunished by law, incites violence on the targeted group?

Confused? That’s the point. It’s a complicated debate, one where the chips fall on every side depending on your experiences and how you identify. As Moon said, there’s no other country where freedom of expression and freedom of religion can be so freely exercised. But in our multicultural landscape, they intersect. And so far, it’s been a collision, not a complement.

Amidst Moon’s own attempts to battle out the pros and cons of free speech on religion, there’s one stance he holds clear: it’s not the subjective experience of someone hurt by offensive speech that should be measured—it’s the context of that speech. But who decides that is another issue.

Offleash is the Ryerson Review of Journalism‘s first-ever regular podcast, published on RRJ.ca every second Wednesday at 3:33 p.m.

In this week’s episode of RRJ’s Offleash, Viviane and Allison speak to Alex Gillis, who recently made news in the journalism industry after his story was killed then used by The Walrus. We also interview Derek Finkle from the Canadian Writer’s Group about the different kinds of kill fees, and RRJ alumna and freelancer Carly Lewis about her experiences with kill fees and story theft.

Music courtesy of Paul Nathan Harper, also known as A F L O A T. Find his music here: @a-f-l-o-a-t

Justin’s Trudeau’s hair might be the best weapon in the political business, just slightly ahead of Donald Trump’s golden locks.

After all it has made headlines in the past two years and signified Trudeau’s trajectory from Member of Parliament to leader of the Liberal Party.

“Justin Trudeau: Great hair but no credentials,” read an October 05, 2012, segment on the Toronto Sun website.

“Hair apparent Justin Trudeau changes look in leadership quest,” read a March 11, 2013, article by Canadian Press.

“Hair apparent: Is the son of a prime minister ready to take over the top job?” wrote The Economist on October 3, 2015.

Apart from the article by CP, which was a serious discussion about Trudeau’s hairstyle changes quoting an image consultant, the other two examples were more analytical discussions about Trudeau’s political abilities. The headlines, though, were all about the hair.

If the journalistic attention to Trudeau’s looks is to be taken seriously, it would seem that that We The Voters really care about this stuff, and maybe we do because everyone can’t help but talk about it: his youth, his looks, his style.

At one instance, during her summary of the election campaign on CBC’s The National, Wendy Mesley said, “Justin Trudeau was talking about youth, and not just his own.” In a Maclean’s piece on Trudeau’s tougher image in debates, Jaime Weinman uses his hair to depict the new image akin to the CP article cited above:

“Above all, there’s the hair. When he became the leader of the floundering Liberal party two years ago, his hair was longer, sometimes frizzier, always giving the illusion that he was too cool to cut it. Now he’s got shorter, slicker hair to go with his tougher manner.”

This image-centric attention towards a political leader is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Hilary Clinton’s pantsuits, Tom Mulcair’s beard, Barack Obama’s ear-to-ear grin, Rob Ford’s ‘crack-confession’ tie, Chris Christie’s weight. The style and image of political leaders becomes the most memorable thing of election coverage because of its visual nature.

Accordingly, there is an evident feedback loop where one comment on a politician’s hair leads to another, which leads to another and so forth. First, The Huffington Post publishes a photo gallery of the evolution of Trudeau’s hair. Then, the Conservative Party puts out a TV ad stating that Trudeau is “just not ready,” but “nice hair, though.” Toronto Sun puts together a list of the highlights of Canadian prime ministerial hairstyles in response to the ad, which is aptly titled “A nice ‘do isn’t a don’t to become Prime Minister.” Margaret Atwood then responds to all of this in an opinion column for the National Post: “Some are born with hair, some achieve hair, and some have hair thrust upon them through laws and customs.” Then, I write this blog post.

In all these examples, there is no discussion of Justin Trudeau’s politics, his views on policy or his plans for government. It’s all about the ‘do.

It’s absurd that hair could be such a big issue. It’s more absurd that election coverage almost presents Trudeau more as a young man with a great head of hair than as a leader with a pro-middle class platform for instance.

Yet, hair matters. We want a leader with a great head of hair over a politically capable mind. And when out of the three leaders on the stage, one looks like Justin Trudeau, it’s hard not to write about it, even if perhaps we shouldn’t.

Mohamed Fahmy has been toeing the line between being a journalist and being a story for over a year now.

As the former Al Jazeera bureau chief in Cairo, Fahmy, 41, was arrested in Egypt in 2013 with two colleagues and convicted of terror-related charges. The case, the court trials, the journalist and his family have since then gone viral, nowhere more so than in Canada, his home country.

In an earlier news conference, Fahmy spoke at great lengths about feeling “betrayed and abandoned by Prime Minister Harper” and about the need to address the relationship between journalists who work abroad and their governments.

Speaking to the RRJ, Fahmy says that he is grateful for the many platforms he has received to use his voice to further the discussion about journalists who work abroad and how to protect them from situations like his.

So how does a journalist deal with becoming the story? We asked Fahmy in an exclusive interview with the RRJ.

Last year, I woke up suddenly from a hyper-realistic nightmare: it had become commonplace to write articles completely in emoji. As I frantically checked Twitter and came back to reality, I assured myself it was only a dream; this could never really happen to journalism.

I was wrong, so, so wrong. In January, a friend of mine who knew of my terrifying premonition sent me this: The State of the Union translated into emoji by The Guardian. After scanning through the lines upon lines of clapping hands in lieu of applause and American flag sprinkled throughout, I knew my vision was coming true.

It wasn’t an isolated incident. Less than a month later, The Washington Post published an article detailing 2016 candidates’ drug and alcohol histories in emoji: beers clinking for alcohol, a red maple leaf for weed, the hashtag emoji for hashish, a nose for cocaine and a puff of air for nitrous. It included the following key: “Faded icons indicate no evidence one way or the other. Slightly faded icons indicate a rumor. Brightly colored icons mean we know with confidence about a candidate’s drug or alcohol use (or lack thereof).” Of course, it came as no surprise that current president Barack Obama was in the lead with three emoji, though he tied with balloon-huffing Republican senator Rand Paul.

Even if news outlets aren’t directly incorporating emoji into stories, there are an increasing number of stories about emoji being published. Take the recent New York Times piece that asked the burning question, “Should Grown Men Use Emoji?”

This proliferation has also sparked a copy-editing debate: is the plural form “emoji” or emojis”? Since the term comes from Japanese, it’s not pluralized with an “S” in its language of origin, but you could, for instance, use “emoji characters.” However, as Associated Press has decided, since the term is being used in English, it can be pluralized like an English word. CP has yet to take a stance, but clearly I’m in support of the purist sans-S approach.

Given the above evidence, I’m assured that emoji are becoming integrated within journalism. The Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times are some of the most globally respected newspapers, and if all of these have begun to incorporate the elusive characters, this certainly isn’t the last time we’ll see them in journalism. And now that emoji are finally embracing diversity, maybe there is a place for these tiny graphics in journalism—as scary and self-prophecy fulfilling as that concept is.

Image courtesy of Erika Low.